Biography was at this time a favourite form of literature, and some of
the memoirs then written were available for use by later writers, such
as Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, and Plutarch; yet it is curious how
little has come down to us of the childhood or boyhood of the great
men of the time. Plutarch indeed was deeply interested in education,
including that of childhood, and we can hardly doubt that he would
have used in his Roman Lives any information that came in his way. He
does tell us something, for which we are eternally indebted to him, of
old Cato's method of educating his son,[249] and something too, in his
_Life of Aemilius Paullus_,[250] of the education of the eldest son of
that family, the great Scipio Aemilianus. But in each of these Lives
we shall find that this information is used rather to bring out the
character of the father than to illustrate the upbringing of the son;
and as a rule the Lives begin with the parentage of the hero, and then
pass on at once to his early manhood.
The Life of the younger Cato, however, is an exception to the rule,
which we must ascribe to the attraction which all historians and
philosophers felt to this singular character.
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