Letters from a Stoic

by Seneca

Would you like another example? Take the modern one of Marcus Cato, with whom fortune dealt in an even more belligerent and unremitting fashion. At every point she stood in his way, even at the end, at his death; yet he demonstrated that a brave man can live in defiance of fortune and can the in defiance of fortune. The whole of his life was passed either in civil war or in conditions of developing civil conflict. And of him no less than of Socrates it is possible to say that he carried himself clear of slaveryfn50 (unless, perhaps, you take the view that Pompey, Caesar and Crassus were friends of freedom). When his country was in a state of constant change, no one ever saw a change in Cato. In every situation he was placed in, he showed himself always the same man, whether in office as praetor, in defeat at the polls, under attack in court, as governor in his province, on the public platform, in the field, or in death itself. In that moment, too, of panic for the Republic, when Caesar stood on the one side, backed by ten legions of the finest fighting men and the entire resources and support of foreign countries as well, and on the other stood Pompey, by himself a match for all comers, and when people were moving to join either the one or the other, Cato all on his own established something of a party pledged to fight for the Republic. If you try to picture the period to yourself you will see on the one side the populace, the mob all agog for revolution, on the other the ...