The Daily Stoic - Who Will You Emulate?
Episode Date: March 26, 2025Cicero vs. Cato: Who is the greater example?📚 Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday | https://store.dailystoic.com/🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram....com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to The Daily Stoic early and ad free right now.
Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Welcome to The Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation
designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.
Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000 year old philosophy that has guided
some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their
example and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline
and justice and wisdom.
For more, visit DailyStoic.com. Who will you emulate?
No one did it better, no one did more for the historical record.
Without Cicero, much of the Stoic canon would have been lost.
We are lucky that this great and articulate mind of antiquity spent so much time with
the Stoic texts, it is through him that some
of the best Stoic wisdom was preserved.
Cato, on the other hand, hardly wrote anything down.
He didn't provide us with any dialogues or essays.
He hardly talked about Stoicism at all.
Yet we are far luckier for his contributions to the philosophy, because he showed us what a Stoic was supposed
to do.
In Lives of the Stoics, I am fascinated by this contrast, the two biggest contemporary
Stoic philosophers.
They were friends and rivals, colleagues and opponents, but their biggest divergence came
not in terms of policy, but in how they
lived. Cicero was a fantastic writer, but he was also preposterously ambitious and vain.
He was enormously wealthy through rather dubious means. And during the vexing political dilemmas
of his time, he often chose self-preservation over principle. Cato, on the other hand, was not a particularly good writer and few, if any, of his speeches
survive.
But his character?
It spoke loud enough to make up for it.
He was brave.
He was unbending.
He was unwavering in his commitment to justice and virtue.
And so which, in the end, is the greater contribution?
Which is the greater example?
Neither man was perfect, but they do present us with distinct paths.
Which will we choose? Words or deeds? Preserving this philosophy on the page or embodying it in practice?
The world needs both, of course.
But if we had to choose, we take the latter over the former any day.
If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad-free
right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple
podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music and before you
go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on
Wondery.com slash survey.