Book 36
8
When Marcius Porcius Cato heard in Rome of the glorious achievements of Scipio he uttered a palinode to his criticisms of him: What have you heard? He alone has the breath of wisdom in him: the rest are but flitting phantoms.Odyssey, 20, 495. Cato had always been opposed to the Scipios, but Livy seems to attribute his former criticisms of the younger Africanus to his general habit of caustic disparagement (vir promptioris ad vituperandum linguae), and we know that his elder son had married a daughter of Paulus, sister to the younger Africanus.
