of Cato and Fabius, a commission of tribunes was sent to Sicily to examine Scipio's activity. Upon their review of his extensive and careful arrangements for the transport of the troops, they determined he was not guilty of Cato's charges. Plutarch's version, which would seem to attribute to Cato the wrongdoing of quitting his post before his time, is barely consistent with Livy's narrative. If Livy is correct, the commission was sent because of the complaints of the inhabitants of Locri, who had been harshly oppressed by Quintus Pleminius, Scipio's legate. Livy says nothing of Cato's interference in this matter, but mentions the bitterness with which Fabius blamed Scipio for corrupting military discipline and for having illegally left his province to take the town of Locri. The author of the abridged life of Cato, commonly considered the work of Cornelius Nepos, asserts that Cato, after his return from Africa, put in at Sardinia, and brought the poet Quintus Ennius in his own ship from the island to Italy. But because Sardinia is rather out of the line of the trip to Rome, it is more likely that the first contact between Ennius and Cato happened at a later date, when the latter was praetor in Sardinia. Aedile and praetor In 199 BC Cato was elected aedile, and with his colleague Helvius, restored the Plebeian Games, and gave upon that occasion a banquet in honour of Jupiter. In 198 BC he was elected praetor, and obtained Sardinia as his province, with the command of 3,000 infantry and 200 cavalry. Here he took the earliest opportunity to demonstrate his main beliefs by practicing his strict public morality. He reduced official operating costs, walked his trips with a single assistant, and placed his own frugality in contrast with the opulence of provincial magistrates. The rites of religion were celebrated with thrift, justice was administered with strict impartiality, and usury was severely punished. According to Aurelius Victor, a revolt in Sardinia was subdued by Cato during his praetorship. Consul Enactment of the Porcian Laws In 195, when he was only 39 years old, Cato was elected junior consul to his old friend and patron Flaccus. During his consulship, he enacted the first two of the Porcian Laws, which expanded the protections of Roman citizens against degrading or capricious punishment under the Republic's Valerian Law. Repeal of the Oppian Law In 215, at the height