+Context.+ After Zama Hannibal held the highest office (_Suffete_ = L. _praetura_) at Carthage, and effected useful democratic reforms. However, his political enemies denounced him to Rome _as making plans for a new war_, and in 195 B.C. he was forced to flee from Carthage and took refuge with Antiochus. After Magnesia, H. found for seven years a safe asylum with Prusias, king of Bithynia; but the Romans could not be at ease so long as H. lived, and Flamininus the Liberator of Greece undertook the inglorious quest of demanding the surrender of Hannibal.
[Linenotes: 13-15. +non tempore magis congruente quam+ = _not so much in coincidence of_ (+congruente+, lit. _agreeing with_) _date as_. --R. 18. +Philopoemen+, the heroic chief of the Achaean League, was taken prisoner by Dinocrates, imprisoned in a dungeon at Messene (+in carcere+, l. 19), and compelled to drink poison. 20-23. +Scipio+ was accused, at the instigation of Cato, by the tribune Naevius (185 B.C.) of having been bribed by Antiochus to procure for him favourable conditions of peace. Too proud to defend himself against such a charge, Scipio retired to his country-seat at Liternum, where _by a voluntary act he consigned both himself and his grave to exile_ (+voluntarium ... indixit+). ‘_Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem mea habes._’ Epitaph of Scipio, written by himself.]
At Cato, censor cum L. Valerio Flacco, severe praefuit ei potestati. Nam et in complures nobiles animadvertit et multas res novas in edictum addidit, qua re luxuria reprimeretur, quae iam tum incipiebat pullulare. Circiter annos octoginta, usque ad extremam { 5} aetatem ab adolescentia, rei publicae causa suscipere inimicitias non destitit. A multis tentatus non modo nullum detrimentum existimationis fecit, sed, quoad vixit, virtutum laude crevit.
In omnibus rebus singulari fuit industria: nam { 10} et agricola sollers et peritus iuris consultus et magnus imperator et probabilis orator et cupidissimus litterarum fuit. Quarum studium etsi senior arripuerat, tamen tantum progressum fecit, ut non facile reperiri posset neque de Graecis neque de { 15} Italicis rebus, quod ei fuerit incognitum. Ab adulescentia confecit orationes. Senex historias scribere instituit. Earum sunt libri vii. Primus continet res gestas regum populi Romani, secundus et tertius unde quaeque civitas orta sit Italica, ob quam rem omnes { 20} Origines videtur appellasse.