Cato the Younger

Cato was a Roman senator, great-grandson of a legendary censor, and the rare politician whose enemies conceded his honesty. In an age when every office in Rome could be bought, Cato as treasury official audited the books, prosecuted the corrupt clerks everyone else found convenient, and made exactness fashionable for about as long as he held the job. He wore a plain toga, walked where others rode, and voted his conscience with a stubbornness that infuriated allies and opponents alike.

He had studied Stoicism seriously and practiced it in the most public arena on earth. When Julius Caesar's ambition tipped the Republic into civil war, Cato — no admirer of Pompey either — chose the side he thought lawful. After the decisive defeat, holed up in the African city of Utica, he arranged safe passage for his companions, spent his last evening reading Plato on the soul, and took his own life rather than let Caesar make a show of pardoning him. Caesar's clemency was real, and it was also power; Cato refused to owe his life to a man he believed had stolen Rome's liberty.

Rome never got over it. Within a generation 'Cato' meant incorruptibility itself. For the Stoic writers he became the great modern example — proof that the sage was not a thought experiment. Seneca, who fills his essays with him, put it flatly: the gods gave us Cato as a pattern of the wise man, surer than any hero of legend.