Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life.

On Tuesdays we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our

actual lives. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy. Don't let it change you.

Kato was too good for his own good, some Romans thought.

He didn't take bribes, he didn't cook the books he wasn't motivated

by ego and worse he seemed to expect others should follow this same moral code.

They didn't want to we can't all be, went the expression, usually said with a shrug before someone did the wrong thing.

So eventually a group of corrupt Romans contrived to have Cato assigned to a posting in Cyprus, a veritable hotbed of misdeeds and sin. It was a place where

politicians got rich, where they had fun, where they lived the high colonial life.

You will come back from there, a far more agreeable man and more tame, one of them predicted

the Cato. They weren't trying to bribe him, they just wanted to expose him to how things were

supposed to be done. They wanted him to get a taste. This is what Marcus Aurelius was

warning about in meditations where she talked about imperialization, being

stained purple, about being Caesarified. The status quo isn't like people who bucket. No, the status

quote contrives to apply pressure and persuasion on us to get us to go along.

It tries to change us, tries to lead us away from these pesky virtues of courage and

temperance and justice and wisdom. We have to be strong like Cato, we have to

resist, we have to come back as he did the same person we were when we left.

We have to keep fighting to be the person that philosophy wants us to be.

And by the way, we have a really good video and a really good podcast episode all about Cato if you want to learn more about him.

You can check out five Stoic secrets from the man of principal. I'll link to that and of course I have a chapter all about

dear Cato in lives of the Sto. So check that out also.

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