"If, perchance, any one has seen the house of my Cato, with marble slabs
of the richest hues, and his gardens worthy of having Priapus [874] for
their guardian, he may well wonder by what philosophy he has gained so
much wisdom, that a daily allowance of three coleworts, half-a-pound of
meal, and two bunches of grapes, under a narrow roof, should serve for
his subsistence to extreme old age."

And he says in another place:

Catonis modo, Galle, Tusculanum
Tota creditor urbe venditahat.
Mirati sumus unicum magistrum,
Summum grammaticum, optimum poetam,
Omnes solvere posse quaestiones,
Unum difficile expedire nomen.
En cor Zenodoti, en jecur Cratetis!

"We lately saw, my Gallus, Cato's Tusculan villa exposed to public sale
by his creditors; and wondered that such an unrivalled master of (516)
the schools, most eminent grammarian, and accomplished poet, could solve
all propositions and yet found one question too difficult for him to
settle,--how to pay his debts. We find in him the genius of Zenodotus
[875], the wisdom of Crates." [876]

XII. CORNELIUS EPICADIUS, a freedman of Lucius Cornelius Sylla, the
dictator, was his apparitor in the Augural priesthood, and much beloved
by his son Faustus; so that he was proud to call himself the freedman of
both. He completed the last book of Sylla's Commentaries, which his
patron had left unfinished. [877]