Pod Insights The Daily Stoic Premium (🔓) The Stoic All the Stoics Admired About this episode Cato’s life was his philosophy, and the Stoics never stopped looking to his example. In today’s episode, Ryan explores why Cato the Younger became one of Stoicism’s most admired figures, and what his life can teach us about courage, character, and standing for what’s right. 📚 Learn more about Cato the Younger in Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Ryan Holiday? Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues: courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.
0:14 Ryan Holiday? Cato wasn't always Cato. He was a towering figure even in his own time. He was known for his honesty, his commitment, his self-discipline, and his incorruptibility. Even his enemies and political adversaries couldn't help but be impressed by it. "We can't all be Catos," they would say with a shrug. And they had to hand it to him. He was better than they were morally and professionally. But you know, it's worth remembering that Cato wasn't perfect. He had flaws. He made exceptions. He made mistakes. He lost his temper. He miscalculated. He had an ego. Even his sense of justice, his most impressive asset,
0:57 Ryan Holiday? was sometimes too unyielding and at other times too self-righteous. The author Ta-Nehisi Coates once said something that echoed that popular expression about Cato, but it had an important addition. "Not all of us can always be Jackie Robinson," he said. "Not even Jackie Robinson was always Jackie Robinson." "The examples of Cato and Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King and Marcus Hurrellius are rightly awesome, literally causing awe because of their incredible virtue and strength and power. Yet we should not forget that they were not superhuman. They were not perfect. They struggled like we struggled. And we should not let the magnitude of their accomplishments
1:39 Ryan Holiday? intimidate us from struggling to be like them." And in any case, we'll get better for trying, just as they did.
1:51 Ryan Holiday? The Stoic that all the Stoics admired was Cato. In his last moments on earth, Seneca is thinking of Cato. Thrasse is modeling his life on Cato. George Washington, for his part, makes Cato his hero. It's the basis of his whole life. So of the Stoics, Cato has always been the hero.
2:10 Ryan Holiday? But what's fascinating about Cato is that Cato didn't write anything down. He's not a hero because of his philosophical writings. He's a hero because of the towering example. His philosophical contribution was his life, who he was as a human being. I'm Ryan Holiday. I've written now 10 books about Stoic philosophy. I've talked about Stoicism all over the world, from the NBA to the NFL, sitting senators and special forces leaders. And in today's episode, I want to talk to you about one of my favorite Stoics, the great Cato the Younger. There's two Catos in ancient Rome. There's Cato the Elder, who's Cato's great, great grandfather. And then Cato the Younger comes later, and he's the one who's explicitly the Stoic. And that's who we're going to talk about in today's episode. And I'm going to give you some tips and strategies and lessons from Cato's life that you can apply in your own.
2:57 Ryan Holiday? One of the best pieces of advice I ever got came when I got my first job in Hollywood. I sat in this meeting with a bunch of important older people. And I remember I spoke up about something. I didn't really know what I was talking about, but I just said something. And then afterwards, one of my mentors took me aside and he said, "Why did you say that? Did you feel like it really needed to be said? Or did you just want to have something to say?" I was speaking out of ego, really, I was speaking out of insecurity. I didn't actually have anything I want to say. So when I heard Cato's advice that he only speaks when he's confident that what he has to say is not better left unsaid, that's the advice that I was getting. And it's this timeless, amazing piece of advice. The idea that you don't just have to talk for the sake of talking. You can keep your mouth shut. You can listen. Two ears, one mouth, as Stoics say. That's the way to think about it.
3:44 Ryan Holiday? Somebody once asked Cato, the Stoic philosopher, why there was no statue of him in Rome? And he said, "I'd rather you ask that question, why there is no statue, than ask why there is a statue of me." Point is, it's better to be obscure, it's better to be underrated than overrated. And I think about that with my books. I'd like to be, I heard this great expression from a friend. It said, "You want to be your favorite rapper's favorite rapper." You don't need to be the most popular. You don't need to be the most famous, the most well-known. You want to be the person that the people in the industry are fans of because you're legit, because you actually do it. So My book, Perennial Seller, I talk about this. Don't chase fame. Chase the real tastemakers, the real people who are doing the real shit. That's who you want to impress, if anyone.
4:28 Ryan Holiday? That's where you want your work to resonate. You don't want to be the person who's got an inflated reputation. You want to be a person who's underappreciated, but actually great. That's who's going to stand the test of time. And Cato is a great example of that.
4:44 Ryan Holiday? Cato walked around Rome bareheaded. He walked barefoot. He wore thin togas. Even though he was quite wealthy, he dressed as if he was not. And he was OK standing alone, looking different, being judged, being misunderstood. And this wasn't just for fun. This wasn't just kind of tourism in a different way of life. What Cato is actually doing, I think, is preparing for the moment when it really counts. When he has to stand alone against Caesar, when he has to stand alone against corruption, when he has to stand alone against the decadence of his time. He's practiced this. He's prepared for it. It's how he's lived his whole life. He doesn't care that he's getting sideways glances. He doesn't care that people are criticizing him. He doesn't care that people are doubting him. He doesn't care that people are saying what he's doing is pointless and silly,
5:27 Ryan Holiday? and it doesn't mean anything, and that he should just go along with everyone else. No, he's practiced this. He's prepared for it. He's made it a daily habit, which is what we have to do to prepare for a moment like that in our own lives.
5:44 Ryan Holiday? All the great moments in Stoic history involve standing up for the little guy. Cato stands up for the little guy. Rutilius Rufus stands up for the little guy. Marcus Aurelius passes laws that not only protects Rome's slaves, he even gives wooden swords to the gladiators so they won't get hurt in the arena. Right? We're all privileged. We all have advantages. And at different times, we're going to see ourselves in positions of power or influence where we can do something for someone. And a huge part of Stoicism is using that power, using that privilege, to lessen the burden, to make life easier and better for other people. Right? It's Stoic virtue of justice. Right? Justice is a core Stoic virtue. Just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter.
6:28 Ryan Holiday? The fruit of this life, Marcus Aurelius says, is good character and action for the common good, which especially and particularly means speaking up and standing up for people who can't stand up and speak up for themselves.
6:44 Ryan Holiday? Helal's famous question was, "If not me, then who?" And then he said, "If not now, then when?" And I think this is a really important Stoic question. And this is why you see the Stoics stepping up in moments of crisis and difficulty throughout the history of Stoicism, because they knew that if they didn't do it, if Cato had simply rolled over, then no one would have stood up. If Marcus Aurelius had declined being the emperor, because what he really wanted to do was be a philosopher, then who would have taken his place? I think even Seneca realizes this in Nero's service. He says, "If I don't do this, someone else worse will do it." And I think this is just such a key question. If you're not going to do it, who's going to do it? And if everyone
7:28 Ryan Holiday? backed out, if no one stepped up, where would that leave us? If not you, then who? And if not now, then when?
7:38 Ryan Holiday? Cato the Younger, Rome's Iron Man. Born 95 B.C., died 46 B.C. Origin: Rome.
7:50 Ryan Holiday? Every few generations, or perhaps every few centuries, a man is born with an iron constitution that consists of harder stuff than even his hardiest peers. These are the figures who come to us as myths and legends. "My God," we think, "how did they do it? Where did that strength come from? Will we ever see a person like that again?" Marcus Porcius Cato was one of these men. Even in his own time, it was a common expression, "We can't all be Catos." This superiority was almost in his blood. He was born in 95 B.C. to a family that,
8:32 Ryan Holiday? despite its early Plebeian origins, was by his birth firmly entrenched in Rome's aristocracy. His great-grandfather, Cato the Elder, began his military career as a military tribune and rose through the ranks as questor, edile, and praetor, all the way to consul in 195 B.C. All the while earning a fortune in agriculture and making his name fighting for the ancestral customs, the mos maiorum, against the modernizing influences of an ascendant empire. Ironically, the one influence most important to Cato that his great-grandfather fought most stridently against with his conservative zeal was philosophy.
9:17 Ryan Holiday? It was he, after all, who wanted to throw the Athenian philosophers from Diogenes's diplomatic mission out of Rome back in 155 B.C. How perfect it is that his great-grandson, known as Cato the Younger, would become a famous philosopher, though we should note that Cato the Younger was no Carneades or even Chrysippus. There would be no clever dialectics for him. He was cut from a different cloth than even a genius like Posidonius. Nearly every Stoic before and after was in part famous for what they said and wrote. Alone among them, Cato would achieve towering fame, not for his words, but for what he did and for who he was.
10:00 Ryan Holiday? It was only on the pages of his life that he laid down his beliefs as a monument for all time, earning fame greater than any of his ancestors or philosophical influences. Not that you would have expected it at first. As with Clianthes before him and Winston Churchill nearly 2,000 years after, Cato's early school days were underwhelming. His tutor, Sarpedon, found him obedient and diligent, but thought he was sluggish of comprehension and slow. There were flashes of brilliance. What Cato did understand stuck in his mind like it had been carved into stone. He was disruptive, not behaviorally.
10:42 Ryan Holiday? One struggles to imagine this disciplined boy ever acting out, but with his imperious and intense demeanor, he demanded an explanation for every task that was assigned to him. And luckily, his tutor chose to encourage this commitment to logic rather than to beat it out of his young charge. Physical force would have never worked on Cato anyway. There is a story about a powerful soldier visiting Cato's home to argue over some citizenship issue during his childhood. When the determined soldier asked Cato to take his cause up with his uncle, who was serving as a guardian as well as Tribune of the Plebes, Cato ignored him. The soldier, disliking Cato's lack of deference, attempted to frighten him.
11:25 Ryan Holiday? Cato, only four years old, stared back, unmoved. The next thing he knew, the soldier was holding him by the feet over a balcony. Cato remained not only unafraid, but wordless and unblinking. And the soldier, realizing that he had been beaten, set the boy down, saying that if Rome was filled with such men, he'd never convince anyone. It was the first of a lifetime of battles of political will for Cato, and also a preview of the lengths his frustrated opponents would be forced to go if they ever were to best him. It was clear that beneath this determination, there was also an intense, almost radical commitment to justice and liberty.
12:07 Ryan Holiday? He did not stand for bullying, even in childhood games, and would step in to defend younger boys from older ones. Once, after visiting the House of Sulla, Cato asked his tutor why so many people were there paying homage and offering favors. Was Sulla really this popular? Sarpedon explained that Sulla received these honors not because he was loved, but because he was feared. "Why then didn't you give me a sword?" Cato said, "so I could free my country from slavery." It was likely this intensity, and a temper that Plutarch described as inexorable, that led Sarpedon to introduce Cato to Stoicism, hoping that it would help the young boy to channel his rage and his righteousness properly.
12:52 Ryan Holiday? Centuries later, inspired by and in fact cribbing from a play about Cato, George Washington would speak often of the work required to view the intrigues of politics and the difficulties of life in the calm light of mild philosophy. Washington, born with the same fiery temper, knew the importance of subsuming his passions beneath a firm constitution.
13:17 Ryan Holiday? Most strong-willed leaders have a temper. It's the truly great ones who manage to conquer it with the same courage and control that they deal with all of life's obstacles. Cato would study under Antipater of Tirae, who taught him the basics of Stoicism. But unlike many Stoics of his time, the young Cato studied not only philosophy, but also oratory. Rutilius Rufus had been quiet in his own defense that would never be Cato's way. Still, he did his great-grandfather proud with his circumspection and bluntness. "I begin to speak," Cato once explained, "only when I'm certain what I'll say isn't better left unsaid."
13:59 Ryan Holiday? When Cato did choose to break his silence, he was compelling. "Cato practiced the kind of public speech capable of moving the masses," Plutarch tells us. "The rage and fury that had frightened Sarpedon was channeled through his training in Stoic philosophy and rhetoric into a fierce advocacy for justice that would stand out as a defining feature of his personal and political character." As Plutarch put it, "Above all, he pursued the form of goodness which consists in rigid justice that will not bend to clemency or favor." Armed with a resolute or fearless character, Stoic ethical principles, and a powerful proficiency in public speaking, Cato would become a formidable political figure, and
14:44 Ryan Holiday? a rare one in that all knew his vote could never be bought. But before he made his name as a politician, Cato was a soldier. In 72 B.C., he volunteered for service in the Third Servile War against Spartacus. It would have been unconscionable to let someone else serve in his place. To Cato, it was the actions one took, the sacrifices one was willing to make, especially at arms defending one's country, that made you a philosopher. And so in that war, as in the battles he fought in, he was fearless and committed, as he believed every citizen was obligated to be. Fresh from this crucible, he was ready in 68 B.C. at age 27 to stand for military
15:27 Ryan Holiday? tribune, the same position his father had served in before him. In fact, the Basilica Portia, the public forum where the tribunes conducted their business, was named after its builder, his great-grandfather. Pregnant with respect for this legacy and always deeply committed to what he felt was proper, Cato would be the only candidate who actually adhered to the canvassing restrictions and campaign laws. Corruption may have been endemic to Rome, but Cato was never one to buy the argument that everyone else was doing it. It was a strategy that won him respect. At the very least, it made him stand out. As Plutarch recounts, "The harshness of his sentiments and the mingling of his character
16:10 Ryan Holiday? with them gave their austerity a smiling graciousness that won men's hearts." That included the troops he led over the next three years as his military service took him across the empire, exposing him to the provinces. Some thought visits to these exotic locations might soften the man or his iron grip on himself, but they were mistaken, and this in part is why he was so well-liked, because he carried himself like a common soldier. War, although it began as a grand adventure, would soon break Cato's heart. In 67 B.C., a letter brought word that his beloved brother Capio was ill. Cato and Capio had always been different, Capio favoring luxuries and perfumes that
16:55 Ryan Holiday? Cato would have never allowed himself. But sometimes, when it's your brother, you look the other way. Cato did more than that. He idolized Capio, and hearing that he was near death, rushed to his side, braving wild and dangerous seas that nearly killed him, in a tiny boat was the only captain he could convince to take him. Life is not fair, and it cares little for our feelings and our plans. Cato had seen this wisdom written countless ways in the books of the philosophy he loved, but he landed in Thrace after a perilous journey to discover that he had missed by hours his brother's death. It was a crushing blow, and Cato mourned almost without restraint.
17:36 Ryan Holiday? There are times, his biographers Jimmy Sony and Rob Goodman would write of Cato at his brother's deathbed, "When the mask will slip, when our resolve will fail, when our attachments will get the better of this." Yet, much closer to Cato's time, Plutarch believed that those who found inconsistency in Cato's grief missed how much tenderness and affection was mingled in with the man's inflexibility and firmness. Historians, too, seem to have overlooked how the loss of his parents and then his cherished brother, without an opportunity to say goodbye, might have hardened an already hard man. Certainly, it did not soften his incorruptibility and commitment to his ideals.
18:17 Ryan Holiday? Even as Cato grieved, he politely declined expensive gifts that friends sent for the funeral rites and repaid out of his own pocket what others sent in the form of incense and ornaments. The inheritance went to Capo's daughter without a penny deducted for funeral costs. Cato covered the expenses himself. Emerging from his grief, Cato was already, at age 30, firm and without illusions, to stand for the office of Caster. It was his first entrance into the Senate, and more importantly, a larger platform for his intractable dedication to eliminating corruption and returning Rome to its core values. He used his term to overhaul the treasury, ousting corrupt clerks and scribes, and seeking
19:01 Ryan Holiday? to redress the ill-gotten gains under sullen prescriptions and to track down deadbeat debtors. He was the first to show up for work each morning and the last to leave, and seemed to relish saying no to the pet projects of politicians, to needless diversions into state-funded luxuries. His commitment was so legendary that it became almost political cover for his less stringent colleagues. Plutarch tells us, "It's impossible," shrugging politicians would tell their constituents lobbying for handouts. "Cato will not consent." Did this strictness create enemies? Yes, it was inevitable. Like Cicero, he was at odds with Catalin and other powerful figures vying for
19:43 Ryan Holiday? control in an increasingly kleptocratic state. Biographers tell us that powerful people were hostile to Cato nearly all his life because his very essence seemed to shame them. Even when Cicero aligned with Cato, there was a distinction, for there was never a sense that Cato was benefiting from these reforms, or that he was quietly accumulating his own wealth through them. In fact, despite his public positions and his wealthy family, Cato often looked like he had no money at all. He rejected the extravagant, brilliant-colored purple robes that were fashionable in the Senate and wore only a plain, ordinary dark robe. He never put on perfume. He walked Rome's streets barefoot and wore nothing under his toga.
20:28 Ryan Holiday? While his friends rode horses, he declined and enjoyed walking alongside them. He never left Rome while the Senate was in session. He threw no lavish parties and declined to gorge himself at feasts, and was strict about reserving the choicest portions for others. He lent his friends money without interest. He declined armed guards or an entourage, and in the army, he slept in the trenches with his troops. He was a man, Cicero would say, who acted as if he lived in Plato's Republic, not among the dregs of Romulus. Cato's iron constitution may have been partly given to him at birth, but it's unquestionable that his choices forged additional armor plating and prepared him for the ordeals
21:12 Ryan Holiday? he was to face in the future. Plutarch says that Cato was customing himself to be ashamed only of what was really shameful and to ignore men's low opinion of other things. We naturally care what people think of us. We don't want to seem too different, so we acquire the same tastes as everyone else. We accept what the crowd does, so the crowd will accept us. But in doing this, we weaken ourselves. We compromise, often without knowing it. We allow ourselves to be bought without even the benefit of getting paid for it. Of all the Stoics, it was Cato who most actively practiced Aristo's ideas about being indifferent to everything but virtue, public opinion, keeping up with appearances,
21:55 Ryan Holiday? his brand. Cato could have lived in great luxury, but he chose the Spartan life. And while there might have been a sliver of haughtiness to his demeanor, we are also told that his walks through the streets of Rome were filled with polite salutes to everyone he met, and many unsolicited offers to help those in need. Reputation didn't matter, doing right did. "This might be difficult, it might be exhausting," he said, "but soon enough, we forget about the hard labor. The results of doing well, though, will not disappear as long as you live," he said. "And conversely, though taking a shortcut or doing something bad may bring a few seconds of relief, the pleasure will quickly disappear, but the wicked thing will stay with you forever."
22:39 Speaker 01 From a city in which a live Stoic had provoked a sensation, Rome had become, by Cato the Younger's time, a city in which no leading house was considered entirely cultured if it lacked its own tame philosopher. Philosophical study was no longer a suspect youth craze, but a finishing school. Cato the Younger was by no means unique in seeking that kind of training. He was unique in the lifelong doggedness with which he pursued it, and the thoroughness with which he put his career on hold for it. And he was a true reflection of his ancestor in his disdain for philosophy as art, or performance, or diversion. Others were shopping for a conversation piece. Cato was seeking something deeper.
23:27 Speaker 01 What exactly? More specifically, what about Stoicism appealed to a privileged young man who could have had his choice of competing schools? And what caused him to reject the genteel, non-committal eclecticism affected by so many of his contemporaries? To begin with, the Stoics were as hard as uncompromising as Cato the Younger aspired to be. They taught: whether you were a foot underwater or a fathom, you were still drowning. They were no more or less good, no more or less bad. All virtues were one and the same virtue, all vices were the same vice. Your lungs were either full of water or of air.
24:11 Speaker 01 In that austere scheme, the vast diversity of characters and types were reducible to two: the sage and the fool. Fools were universal. Even practising Stoics lumped themselves in as equally foolish, equally mired in error and sin, and equally miserable. Of sages who alone were happy, Socrates himself was perhaps the only known case. What could such a philosophy possibly offer to the aspiring fool? At the very least, it offered the possibility of swimming toward air. The aspirant might learn to sever happiness from everything fickle and fading, and to guard it in the single place it was safe, in the practice of virtue.
24:57 Speaker 01 A Stoic trained himself for indifference to all things outside the magic circle of the conscience. The choice between comfort and pain, wealth and starvation, even life and death, was always indifferent. To be sure, it was preferable to eat rather than go hungry, but there was no real happiness in the choice. It was always secondary to maintaining the virtuous life. Pain was always welcomed as a chance to grow in virtue. And what was a virtuous life? To live in agreement with nature. Reason was nature's best gift, so living by nature meant, first of all, living by reason.
25:38 Speaker 01 Self-seeking, cowardice, grief, and all evil emotions could only enter the mind with reason's ascent. The trained Stoic was skilled at holding back. What was promised in return was no less than freedom from passion, a word that, for all of its positive connotations today, carried in the classical world nuances of suffering and passivity, meanings that are preserved in the phrase "the passion of Christ". Plato taught that the passions were natural, if ignoble, parts of the soul. Aristotle recommended moderating them, not stamping them out. But to the Stoics, they were alien. With enough practice, the passions could be exiled from the citadel of the self.
26:22 Speaker 01 No unhappiness could touch the well-intentioned man. Banish the passions, and you were proof against misfortune. Banish the passions, and you were independent of the world, the owner of an unshakable contentment. Others could fight fate; the Stoic would choose to love it. And this "amor fati" was the deepest meaning of agreement with nature and the highest reward of their practice. As one Stoic taught, "If I actually knew that I was fated now to be ill, I would even have an impulse to be ill." What the Stoics offered Cato was not idle speculation, but a way of being, a simple and ready-made life that had already been cut to fit his character.
27:07 Speaker 01 There were, in fact, highly-developed Stoic metaphysics and Stoic logic, but in making the journey from Athens to Rome, a second-rate Greek philosophy had developed into a first-rate Roman religion.
27:20 Speaker 01 Stoicism became, above all, a practical guide to life. The Stoics who flourished in Rome were the ones who set aside their more implausible doctrines and tailored their teaching to a people who loved things that worked. Similarly, what Cato took from his tutor, a Hellenized Middle Easterner named Antipater, was not first and foremost dialectics or paradoxes, but exercises that could be put to use the day they were learned. He learned how to subsist on a poor man's food or no food at all, how to go barefoot and bareheaded in rain and heat. He learned how to endure sickness in silence, how to speak bluntly and how to shut up,
28:01 Speaker 01 how to meditate on disaster and suffer the imagined loss of everything again and again. In effect, Cato was learning how to reincarnate his holy ancestor and to do so in the most intellectually respectable way possible. Why Stoicism? Because the values of Cato the Elder, the ones that came from Latin soil, were potent but dead. In Stoicism, Cato the Younger found them again as part of a living tradition. The old Cato never knew how stoic he was. It took his descendant to merge Greek philosophy and Roman patriotism to make that foreign school fully Roman by the force of his example.
28:45 Speaker 01 From the very beginning, Cato the Younger's example, the bare feet, the out-of-date and wrong-colored clothing, the ostentatious poverty, was derided by some as a transparent act, and part theater it may have been. Rejecting creature comforts, living the hard soldierly life, those virtues were still every bit as publicly lauded as they were in the days of Cato the Elder, even if they were honored more in the breach than in the observance. That could hardly have been lost on the younger Cato, growing up as he did in a city obsessed with rediscovering the lost ancient formula for the good life. Cato the Elder, it was agreed, had had it. If the great grandson was cut from the same cloth, why not pay attention to him?
29:31 Speaker 01 Cato was determined to wear the mask until it fit. This was the source of his commitment to a school that promised to teach him how to endure laughter and abuse, to teach him to harden himself by seeking it out, to teach him to be ashamed only of what was really shameful. Seneca, the great imperial stoic, relates the story of what Cato did when visiting the baths one day, he was shoved and struck. Once the fight was broken up, he simply refused to accept an apology from the offender. "I don't even remember being hit."
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