The Past Is Looking Brighter All The Time

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0:33Ryan Holiday: They've got thousands of products at every style and budget whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom this holiday season. Wayfair's got great reviews as well, so you can find more than 20 million verified five-star reviews from real shoppers. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5 % back on every purchase. Head over to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:21The past is looking brighter all the time. There was once a time when rulers were philosophers. There was a time when the emperor of Rome sold the palace furnishings to pay down the empire's debts. There was a time when a politician like Cato would rather die than submit to Caesar. There was a time when men like Agrippinus or Rutilius would choose exile over going along with corruption. A time when Stoics like Helvidius spoke truth to power, regardless of the consequences. It was long ago, but it was real, the glory that was Rome, that was classical Greece. And although we have inherited that legacy, it's not one that's lived up to.

2:03If meditations is antiquity, the Soviet dissident Joseph Brodsky once said, then it is we who are the ruins. But that example still shines for us. That's what examples are for, after all. The life of Cato, the life of Epictetus, the lives of Helvidius and Zeno are there to inspire us, to call us to our own great deeds. Indeed, Seneca talked about how we need to choose ourselves a cado, a standard to measure ourselves against. The point is not to wish that we lived then, but to ask what their example demands of us now.

2:50Ryan Holiday: We were looking to spruce up our front porch. The weather's finally getting better. We wanted to spend some time hanging out outside with the kids. So we got these awesome hammocks and we actually got them from today's sponsor, Wayfair. If you drove by our house, you'd see us out there with our kids reading. We've got this new kitten all hanging out in the hammocks. It's been awesome. And that's because on Wayfair, you'll find quality materials that stand up to real life. They sell furniture and decor that's built to last. And when you shop with Wayfair Verified, it's your shortcut to durable pieces that are hand vetted by product specialists using their 10 point quality inspection.

3:24Ryan Holiday: They've got thousands of products at every style and budget, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom this holiday season. Wayfair's got great reviews as well, so you can find more than 20 million verified five-star reviews from real shoppers. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5 % back on every purchase. Head over to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show we recommend.

4:05In today's information ecosystem, it can be easy to hear the same voices over and over. I'm Mary Harris, host of What Next from Slate.com, and I do not want to hear the same voices over and over. I want to hear from the upstarts. Hassan, Adam, welcome to the show. I disavow myself all the time. Every day I wake up, I'm like, I disavow myself. I want to hear from the people on the ground. I videoed one ICE detainment. One of the ICE agents walked up and tried to hand me a little plastic Jesus. And I want to hear from tomorrow's leaders today. I've been arrested because I'm a political opponent to the harm and the cruelty that they are pushing.

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5:19Every 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 Cato's. This superiority was almost in his blood. He was born in 95 BC to a family that, despite its early plebeian origins, was, by his birth, firmly entrenched in Rome's aristocracy.

6:08His great-grandfather, Cato the Elder, began his military career as a military tribune and rose through the ranks as quester, aedile, and praetor all the way to consul in 195 BC, 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. It was he, after all, who wanted to throw the Athenian philosophers from Diogenes' diplomatic mission out of Rome back in 155 BC.

6:57How 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. 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.

7:41Not that you would have expected it at first. As with Cleanthes 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, 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.

8:22And 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 plebs, Cato ignored him. The soldier, disliking Cato's lack of deference, attempted to frighten him. Cato, only four years old, stared back, unmoved. The next thing he knew, the soldier was holding him by the feet over a balcony.

9:04Cato 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. He did not stand for bullying, even in childhood games, and would step in to defend younger boys from older ones.

9:44Once, 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. 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.

10:37Washington, born with the same fiery temper, knew the importance of subsuming his passions beneath a firm constitution. 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 Tira, 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.

11:21I begin to speak, Cato once explained, only when I'm certain what I'll say isn't better left unsaid. 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.

12:02Armed with a resolute or fearless character, stoic ethical principles, and a powerful proficiency in public speaking, Cato would become a formidable political figure and 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 BC, 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.

12:50Fresh from this crucible, he was ready in 68 BC at age 27 to stand for Military 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.

13:28It 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 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.

14:07War, although it began as a grand adventure, would soon break Cato's heart. In 67 BC, a letter brought word that his beloved brother Capio was ill. Cato and Capio had always been different, Capio favoring luxuries and perfumes that 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.

14:50Cato 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 glow, and Cato mourned almost without restraint. There are times his biographers, Jimmy Soney 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.

15:30Historians, 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. 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 Capio'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 Quester.

16:14It 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 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, and to state-funded luxuries. His commitment was so legendary that it became almost political cover for his less stringent colleagues, Plutarch tells us.

16:55It'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 Catiline and other powerful figures vying for 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.

17:36In 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. 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.

18:13He 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 he was to face in the future. Plutarch says that Cato was accustoming himself to be ashamed only of what was really shameful and to ignore men's low opinion of other things.

18:53We naturally care what people think of us. We don't want to seem too different, so we acquire the same taste 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, 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.

19:43Reputation didn't matter, doing right did. lives of the Stoics. I'm really proud of because it's not what the Stoics said, it's what they did. Grab a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com or come grab one at the Painted Porsche, the Stoic Pokey Lake.

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