On Old Age, On Friendship, On Divination

Paulus, and the son by adoption of Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of Africanus the Elder. He was a great student and a patron of Greek and Roman letters, and numbered among his intimate friends Polybius, the Greek historian; Panaetius the Stoic, and the Roman poets Lucullus and Terence. At the age of seventeen he fought under his father Paulus at Pydna, and in 151 B.C. was military tribune in Spain. In 148, though only a candidate for the aedileship, he was elected consul. As consul a second time he destroyed Carthage in 146. Thirteen years later, in his third consulship, he captured Numantia. His death occurred in 129 and was due, it was thought, to violence. Carbo, the popular leader, was suspected of having strangled him in his bed as he slept. According to the evidence of Cicero and Polybius (Hist. xxxii. 9-16), Scipio was one of the purest and noblest men in history.

6. GREEK SOURCES OF THE CATO MAIOR

Cicero, in the letter of dedication of the Cato Maior, refers to Aristo Cius as the author of a treatise on old age, and he may have drawn upon that author in writing his own treatise. In Chapters 2 and 3 the conversation between Cephalus and Socrates in Plato's Republic is closely followed. Chapters 17 and 22 contain passages from Xenophon's Oeconomicus original: "On the Management of the House" and Cyropaedia original: "The Education of Cyrus". In the form of the dialogue Cicero adopted the method of Aristotle rather than that of Plato, to avoid the frequent and continuous exchange of question and answer, and to permit one speaker, after a few