Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

We have to care about the little guy. Kato was powerful. Kato was a traditionalist. Cato was conservative. In many ways,

he was an elitist. But the most important thing about him is that from an early age, he hated

bullies. As we talk about in Lives of the Stoics, at a birthday party for a friend, a group of boys

were playing a Roman version of the game, Cops and Robbers. One of the Stoics at a birthday party for a friend, a group of boys were playing a Roman version of

the game, cops and robbers. One of the younger boys was caught and shut into a dark chamber

by one of the older boys. Scared, the child called for Cato, who threw aside the boy

blocking the door and took the scared child home to his parents. As a teenager, Cato was invited with his tutor to the

house of Sulla, who then ruled Rome as a cruel dictator. As the tutor explained to Cato, everyone feared

Sola, and he watched as Cato's entire countenance changed. Why then don't you give me a sword, Cato said, outraged, so that I could free my country from slavery.

And as he got older, maybe that's why Cato hated the corruption in Rome's provinces,

because it victimized the inhabitants who deserved better.

Cato and many of the Stoics had a North Star that pointed them into opposition to anyone

who tried to intimidate them or take away their rights.

This is the Stoic virtue of justice.

They hated those who abused power and wielded it against the weak.

In fact, the expression,

Sick Semper Tyrannus, thus always to tyrants, traces all the way back to Scipio Amelianus,

one of the great Stoic generals before the turn of the millennium. George Washington modeled

himself on Cato his entire life, but his view on justice on the goal

of good government on a just world was captured in a line that he borrowed from the scriptures.

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