Note 726 — LIFE OF CATO.

Cato was prætor in B.C. 54. It does not appear that he ever was prætor before, and it is not therefore clear what is meant by the "extraordinary prætorship" (c. 39). In place of the word "Rostra," in the fifth line of this chapter, read "tribunal." Plutarch uses the same word (βῆμα) for both, which circumstance is calculated occasionally to cause a translator to make a slip, even when he knows better. The "tribunal" was the seat of the prætor, when he was doing justice. But lower down (line 8 from the bottom) Rostra is the proper translation of Plutarch's word (ἐπιλαβέσθαι τῶν ἐμβόλον) and it was the place from which Cato spoke, after he had got up. In c. 43, when Cato gets up to speak, Plutarch makes him mount the Bema (βῆμα), by which he means the place when the orators stood at the Rostra. The Rostra were the beaks of the Antiate galleys, with which, it is said, this place was ornamented at the close of the Latin war (Livy, 8, c. 14).