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Josiah Osgood on Caesar and Cato's Epic Rivalry (Episode 82)
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Have you thought about the Roman Republic today?
In this conversation, Caleb speaks with Josiah Osgood, a professor of classics and author of Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato’s Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic. They discuss Cato the Younger, Julius Caesar, and the lessons we can take from both men.
(02:21) Cato's Rome
(07:30) The Young Caesar and Cato
(14:21) Populist vs Aristocrat
(16:05) When Did He Become Stoic?
(18:30) Cato vs Caesar
(25:11) Caesar's Life Philosophy
(29:49) Did Cato Do the Right Thing?
(37:03) What Can We Learn From Caesar
(41:49) Was the Republic Worth Saving?
(44:56) Should Stoics Always Resist a Tyrant?
(50:59) Fabius Maximus – a Roman Model
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Transcript
Cato's Choice: Life vs. Tyranny
00:00:00
Speaker
Look at what Cato did. He took his life rather than work with Caesar. And Cato would say that you're sort of contributing more to the human spirit by doing that. So I think it's something people need to be aware of, kind of the temptations of justifying things as if they would be for the public good. But really you're working for a tyrant. Is that where you want to be in life?
Introduction to Stowe Conversations
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome to Stowe Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week, we'll share two conversations. One between the two of us, and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert. In this conversation, I speak with Professor Josiah Osgood.
Cato vs. Caesar: Stoicism in Conflict
00:00:50
Speaker
He is a professor of Classics and the author of Uncommon Wrath, a book on the rivalry between Caesar and Cato the Younger. So, this is an episode for all of you who love Roman history, especially the history of the late Republic. We talk about the stoic role model, Cato, his rival, Julius Caesar, how Cato exemplified his stoicism in his actions, and various political questions about the
00:01:19
Speaker
Roman Republic. The Roman Republic is a useful era to think about because it has these epic stories, epic characters on one hand, and also these recurring questions of ethics. And since it's one we are separated from, our judgments may not be as clouded by the political or ethical allegiances of the day.
00:01:43
Speaker
So with those thoughts, I hope you find this conversation useful, enjoyable, and if you want to learn more about Kato, do check out the book. Here is our conversation.
Rome's Political Landscape
00:01:56
Speaker
Today, I am here with Professor Josiah Osgood. Josiah is a chair and professor of Classics at Georgetown University, and he is the author of Uncommon Wrath, How Caesar and Cato's Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic, which is what we'll be talking about today. Thanks for joining. Thanks so much, Caleb, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
00:02:22
Speaker
So let's set the stage. Just what does Rome look like when Cato and Caesar are entering the world? What's the Rome they grew up in? Yeah, so the Roman Republic had been around for hundreds of years. It is really still the longest living Republic in history. The US may catch up, we'll see. So they both were born in the city of Rome itself.
00:02:50
Speaker
in Italy, which is kind of where it all started. And by this point, Rome was a vast place, the city of Rome, sort of teeming metropolis. And you had these sort of old noble families who were very powerful. They lived in mansions in Rome. And then, of course, you had the ordinary people living in very crowded tenement departments.
00:03:18
Speaker
So we have the city of Rome as Edea, obviously. So it's in the forum, the sort of big square in the heart of Rome where everything will be thrashed out. But then at the same time, it's an empire. And this is really one of the key issues that the Romans were dealing with. They had these traditions that went back to the small city state like Athens or Sparta and Greece. But then in the century or so preceding the birth of these two
00:03:47
Speaker
Romans I write about, they'd acquired a vast overseas empire, which brought wealth, but also brought controversies.
Philosophical Divide in Civil War
00:03:56
Speaker
So where does the rivalry between Cato and Caesar begin? Yes. So they're both born into these political families. And it was about five years younger, but they're roughly co-evils.
00:04:12
Speaker
And what happened was they both grew up during a very turbulent time. There was a civil war. They were teenagers during that, basically. And I think this affected both of them profoundly. You know, it was a terrible time in Rome, right?
00:04:30
Speaker
of prominent Roman politicians were being lopped off and displayed in the public square of Rome. So really kind of unimaginable violence almost. And I think they responded to it a little bit differently.
00:04:47
Speaker
Caesar was sort of, his family was one of those targeted during the violence. And he sort of left the episode feeling a little bit scared and nervous and sort of eager to help the underdogs in society as a result of his own near victimization. Whereas Cato really left it sort of more with a fear of tyrants.
00:05:11
Speaker
And so I think they have this kind of big divide in the way they see the world. And that's sort of, we can talk more about it, but that I think is philosophically kind of fundamentally where the rivalry came from. Right. Yeah, that's really interesting. I suppose you have this figure Sulla, who's one of the characters responsible for much of the violence of the Civil War, of course, and he is
00:05:38
Speaker
both Caesar and Cato's enemy, Caesar narrowly misses being killed by Sulla. There's this famous story about Cato where Cato's like, why are all these people putting up with Sulla this tyrant? Just give me a sword and I'll end it.
00:05:56
Speaker
Yeah, I know of his 13 at the time, right? So, so some people say this is ridiculous. This is just, you know, imagined later in life. But of course, and, you know, there's something to be said for that. But but at the same time, of course, a 13 year old boy, that is just kind of a thing a 13 year old boy might say.
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, it is a sort of thing, one might say, especially if you imagine someone like Cato, I suppose, as a 13 year boy. It's not, wouldn't be that surprising if he, in fact, said something like that. Certainly. One question I have, do you think Cato was a better Quay store than Caesar? Yeah.
Cato as Quaestor: Stoicism in Action
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah. So just, just to finish up on the sellout and, and, and this is part of what makes the late Republic such a fascinating
00:06:45
Speaker
period is that last generation, right? I mean, they really were scarred by the Civil War and sort of very fearful about ever having Civil War again. And yet that's
00:06:59
Speaker
that's precisely what the politicians ended up doing. So I think the fear of it sometimes led to sort of extreme actions undertaken for the salvation of the Republic, as they would say, and yet the clash ended up.
00:07:18
Speaker
Becoming so fierce that it only could be settled by arms. So yeah, so questership. Let's talk a little bit about politicians and political careers. So there's a ladder of offices and you have to go up the ladder to get to the console, which is the top office. But the first one is the quester. And this was a pretty lowly position. There were 20 of them a year.
00:07:48
Speaker
And it's basically a financial job. And most young Roman men who are doing it, they just viewed it as a necessary step on the path to bigger and better things.
00:08:03
Speaker
So let's talk about Caesar for a moment and then Cato. So sometimes the Quaestors were sent to provinces overseas. As we said, Rome has an empire, has to be administered to these governors.
00:08:18
Speaker
who rule sort of like potentates if they want to in the provinces, but then you have the quaestor who does the finances. And Caesar was sent to part of the Iberian Peninsula, the province of further Spain, and apparently he was quite bored by it all, and Puthus has really ensued into his talents.
00:08:42
Speaker
So he, we are told by his biographers, this is another one of these stories where perhaps we should be a little skeptical. We're told he saw a statue of Alexander the Great while he was there and in a temple of Hercules in Spain and sort of moaned
00:09:04
Speaker
He said, to think Alexander conquered the whole world at this age, and I'm stuck here listening to the complaints of provincials and doing the taxes. So Caesar did his job there. Now Cato is quite interesting, if we can talk about Cato for a minute here. So he held the same position. Everyone had to. It brought you membership in the Senate, by the way, so it was important.
00:09:34
Speaker
So Cato we're told by his biographer Plutarch who really supplies us with so much of Cato's life. Cato got the job and we're told actually before he even ran for it he sort of learned all about it.
00:09:49
Speaker
And he pestered people with questions, you know, how does the quester do this? How does this work? How do you read the account book for the Treasury of Rome? So he mastered the whole position. Then for his year in office, he was actually delegated to work in the main Treasury in Rome. And he showed up the first day and said to all the permanent civil servants there, show me the books.
00:10:17
Speaker
and they turn over the ledgers, the public accounts, and Cato runs his finger down them and starts spotting errors.
00:10:26
Speaker
This was completely wrong metaphor for Rome, but completely out of left field, right? Formerly the Quaestors, they didn't bother with this. You know, they were just trying to get through this job so they could move up the ladder. But, but Cato really wanted to do it well. And I think this, we can talk more about some of the things he did, but basically the treasury never ran better than the year Jan Cato was in charge.
00:10:53
Speaker
He's about 30 years old at this point, by the way. So I think this shows us actually two big things about Keir. And it's sort of the interesting thing about Keito's life, right? One is that he really was a good politician. And this was a very interesting way for him to take this relatively unimportant office and sort of achieve a public profile, right? Because no queester normally was this thorough.
00:11:23
Speaker
And he could sort of go to these citizens of Rome and say, look at all the money I found for you, right? We had these corrupt officials who were lazy officials or both.
00:11:35
Speaker
They weren't handling the Treasury well with all this money. We can do more things for you guys. So that's kind of Cato the politician. And he takes on this unique profile. He develops this unique profile as sort of the guardian of the public's money.
00:11:59
Speaker
maybe some kind of a budget hawk, we might say nowadays. Somebody who's really going to know where every penny is going in the public accounts. But then the other thing is I think it does tie into his stoicism and sort of his philosophical values more generally. The stoic idea is that we live for each other and not just for ourselves alone.
00:12:27
Speaker
And the self-serving politician will just do the bare minimum, right? But Cato, though he's building his own profile, he also was really trying to take the effort, take the time to actually help his fellow citizens. So I think it's an embodiment of his
00:12:47
Speaker
his sort of stoic desire for a leader to be serving the public good and a leader requiring himself to sort of master all the details.
Stoicism vs. Aristocracy
00:12:58
Speaker
That's part of it. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's very well put. I think this aspect of Cato's life shown here, shown in later episodes is
00:13:09
Speaker
One of the best expressions of his took, philosophy, this focus on ordinary values like fairness, taking a stand against corruption, but doing so in a way that was personally demanding, not just in the sense of making many enemies, but also taking the time to master relatively boring logistical details.
00:13:32
Speaker
And of course, for listeners of the podcast, many of whom I'm sure read Marcus Aurelius, it is kind of the same.
00:13:41
Speaker
impulse we see with Marcus Aurelius, right, who, you know, will spend 10 days on a trial if he thinks that's how long it will take to achieve justice, right, and sort of has to remind himself and urge himself on to attend to all the little parts of the job, the tedious parts of being Roman Emperor. What's so interesting, right, so we see how the kind of
00:14:08
Speaker
practically a politician in a republican context rather than the imperial context is sort of trying to use stoicism as a way to think about good governance.
00:14:22
Speaker
It's also interesting because sometimes you get the contrast between Cato and Caesar as Cato's effectively the aristocrat and Caesar's the populist and Cato's out of touch is ignoring the populace while pursuing these lofty aristocratic ideals, what have you.
00:14:44
Speaker
And there's certainly something to that cut, but I think it's a little bit too broad, I would say, as this sort of story illustrates. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And this goes back really to the fact that we are in a republic.
00:15:07
Speaker
You know, every politician, at least in the Roman public, sort of has to pay lip service to the idea that everything should be done for the benefit of the people. But Cato certainly really did try to live up to that ideal. And so to say that, you know, he scorns the people is completely wrong. Now, that being said, I think he's a bit more keen on sort of having kind of the Senate
00:15:36
Speaker
and experienced members of the Senate who do tend to come from the same families generation after generation. He is keen to see them running things. But I think that sort of ties into questions about how they then should conduct themselves, right? And that's part of why he's pushing stoicism, too, is that leaders have a duty to behave well.
00:16:07
Speaker
How much do we know about how Stoicism entered Cato's life? When did he become Stoic? When did he hear about it? I want to mention one book here, not my own book, but a book by a colleague of mine. Her name is Kit Morell. She teaches at the University of Queensland in Australia. She wrote a book a few years ago about Pompey,
00:16:35
Speaker
Cato and the governance of the Roman Empire, especially the provinces. And she really makes a powerful case for Cato as a stoic. And a lot of earlier scholarship sort of wrote this off and sort of thought, well, you know, these later stoics in the Roman Empire, they kind of looked back to Cato and turned him into a sort of
00:17:04
Speaker
martyr for their cause and played up his stoicism. But I think Kip Morrell has really made a good case that the evidence is pretty strong. So I'll give you one or two indications of it.
00:17:19
Speaker
This may be known to some of your listeners, right? Cicero, late in life, when he was writing philosophical dialogues, he assigned the stoic part. So that's one indication. But if you read Plutarch, Plutarch says it too, right, that Cato,
00:17:36
Speaker
Very early on in life, got interested in Stoic philosophy. He went to the east on military service as a young man, and he sort of got a vacation leave of absence, and he went to Pergamum, the great city in Asia Minor in modern Turkey, and he befriended there a Stoic philosopher, a guy named Athena Doris.
00:17:59
Speaker
and then invited him back to Rome, sort of charmed him into coming back to Rome and becoming his mentor. Other Romans did this sort of thing. Cicero lived with a stoic as well. So it was definitely in the air. I think scholars are increasingly realizing that these Romans were looking to
00:18:18
Speaker
philosophy and often to stoicism in particular as a way of thinking about sort of the problems that we're living through and the problems of empire, which is really what Kip Morrell's book is about. Yeah, very good. Yeah, that's very interesting. So how did Cato and Caesar's rivalry then progress? Where did it come to ahead? So it sort of started with these differences in sort of
00:18:45
Speaker
Cato is seeing that the Senate should be more in charge of sort of guiding the Republic. And Caesar really looking to the people, the Roman people and their assemblies, right? And sort of the whole problem with the Roman Republic, one way of thinking about it is that there was just this ongoing debate about where power lay.
00:19:08
Speaker
you know, contrast it with the United States, the founders, the writers of the Constitution. I mean, United States really fundamentally does give more power to the people.
00:19:21
Speaker
And you can throw out politicians in the American system, right? In the Roman system, senators tend to be there for life. So there's this real debate. So they're taking different sides in that. But then there's a particular moment when the rivalry really began.
Senate Debate: Rival Philosophies
00:19:38
Speaker
And it was in the year 63 BC, there was a conspiracy by a disgruntled politician
00:19:47
Speaker
named Catiline from one of the oldest families in Rome. And he sort of felt the consulship should be his by birthright. And he kept losing elections and grew very embittered and actually ultimately decided to try to march on Rome to usurp office.
00:20:06
Speaker
So the two of them, Cesar and Cato, they're not at the most senior ranks, but they're getting there. And there was a big debate about what to do with some of Catiline's followers who were caught back in Rome. The question was, but they were conspiring against the Republic. So the sort of normal criminal procedures maybe didn't work here, right? Because the threat was so imminent.
00:20:33
Speaker
So basically, some people want these guys treated like traitors, enemies of the state, and in the Roman system, that could mean, probably did mean execution. Sounds very, very harsh, but there was a Roman tradition for that. So Caesar gets up in the Senate and gives this very interesting speech after everyone's been saying execute them. And he says, hold on, this is going to harm the Senate's reputation. Let's
00:21:03
Speaker
create a new penalty of life imprisonment. And people started to go for that. And then Cato, who's really just entered the Senate, still up and coming, he gets up and gives what apparently was the speech of his life. And he said, our ancestors would be disgusted. These people are enemies. They need to be treated like that. If we don't take serious action now, we're endangering the Republic.
00:21:34
Speaker
and Cato's view prevailed. The five men who had been caught were executed. And this was sort of a great triumph, at least in the moment for Cato, and Caesar was sort of left for the moment, looking a little bit humiliated. Now, during the debate, Cato also kind of hinted that Caesar himself might have sympathized with the conspiracy. So from this point on, they were enemies.
00:22:01
Speaker
And one thing to know about Roman politics, I argue that their rivalry was epic. And, you know, it actually became the stuff of epic poetry later. So literally it was epic. But the thing to know is these rivalries weren't unheard of in Roman politics, right? Because there weren't, well, organized political parties. You often would sort of surround one champion or another.
00:22:30
Speaker
So from this point on, they both kind of accumulated more and more followers and became the standard bearer of one view or another. Yeah, that's right. I suppose another thought on these rivalries is that because of Roman culture, they're these ideas of honor, of course, they can. I'm not sure if we want to say, at least it seems very plausible to me that
00:22:57
Speaker
people would take slights much more seriously than the typical American would today. And of course you have these kind of personal animosity that can brew over years. You also get the animosity between Clodius and Cicero, I think from that, the sort of thing that will just span over for years. I'm not sure if you agree with that assessment, but I think that is another relevant, relevant thing to keep in mind. Oh yeah. I completely agree with it. This is an honor culture and
00:23:26
Speaker
And reputation is another word to throw into the mix here, right, which, you know, goes back to Homer, right, because you're not going to have any kind of great afterlife unless you live on in memory, and you're, you know,
00:23:41
Speaker
sort of have the glory of that. So reputation matters hugely and honor. And then it ties into the way politics is conducted. You can't fall back on your party, right? Because there aren't really parties. So each
00:24:00
Speaker
man, it's all men in politics, is sort of constantly, and everyone is constantly calibrating how much power each person has, right? How big is your crowd today? How many people are cheering for you? Do lots of people sit by you in the Senate? That must mean you have lots of friends and power, and ooh, nobody is sitting by you today. Your stock is plummeting, right? So, yeah, this very much is the way Roman politics
00:24:26
Speaker
And of course, it's true to some degree now. It's very true in the first years of the United States Republic in the 1790s, right, before you get well-organized political parties and anyone who's seen the musical Hamilton, right? I mean, think about how honor
00:24:47
Speaker
looms so large in the life of Alexander Hamilton and Jefferson, right? So that's another period I think Americans can kind of think about that's sort of where you see that honor dynamic generating these rivalries and politics that are both personal, but also as the politicians claim anyway about what's good for the people, what's good for the Republic. Right, right.
00:25:13
Speaker
What would you say is Caesar's life philosophy if he had one? So I think if you look at Cato, his life philosophy was influenced by Stoicism. He has also some of these ideas that many Romans would have at the time about what it is to be a good politician, a good member of his family, a good man, and so on. But what would you say about Caesar for that question?
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah, so Caesar is sometimes thought to be Epicurean in sympathies, right? We don't have the same evidence there that we do for Cato and his stoicism, right? But they're certainly in public, and this may tie in a little bit with his skill at crafting a persona.
00:26:02
Speaker
But Caesar could be sort of almost serene in some ways in public, which I know sounds like an odd thing to say about somebody who's the conqueror of Gaul and has thousands of deaths at his hands, right? But he often would sort of laugh things off, I think, or at least make the pose of doing that.
00:26:25
Speaker
So he would smile. We're told he's charming, very different from Cato, who apparently went around frowning all the time, although Cato could laugh occasionally, fortunately. So in terms of his politics, Caesar cared about two things. He cared about his own reputation, his own
00:26:49
Speaker
honor, as others did. But he did also, I think we have to say, care about the honor of the Roman people. He just thought that should be pursued in a different way. So one thing Caesar became very interested in was war. Now, of course, this was traditional in Rome, right? Go fight wars. But the wars of the late Republic, there were these sort of great wars of conquest.
00:27:15
Speaker
that were on a scale in some ways unprecedented. Pompey did this a little bit, Caesar's friend and then enemy Pompey. And then Caesar did it in Gaul and what is modern France, right? He went there and sort of conquered this past territory. Now, you know, by modern 21st century standards, this looks like the most
00:27:40
Speaker
naked imperialism possible, and it was, it was of course, but it didn't mean benefits for the Roman people, wealth and land that Caesar would give his soldiers who fought with him. So I think he sort of has a vision of Rome's future that is kind of tied into empowering the Roman people more and sharing the good life with them.
00:28:08
Speaker
A phrase I use in the book is kind of lavishness. Caesar has this sort of idea of lavishness. He likes to live lavishly himself and thinks that those who follow him can enjoy that kind of a life too. So maybe that goes back to the point about Epicureanism a little bit, right?
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. I guess one of the famous Epicurean lines is that you stay in the garden and you try to keep your hands clean of politics. But I think it was Machiavelli who has this idea that modernity is Epicurean, but it's a pursuit of pleasure, a pursuit of pleasure for glory. And perhaps there's some of that in Caesar, a specific kind of
00:28:53
Speaker
good that one might be after, you know, these ideas, of course, of honor, but also pleasure and high fashion. Lavishness is an excellent word for this too. Yeah, I mean, clearly, you know, maybe listeners of this podcast would choose to go have dinner with Cato over Caesar, but I think most people would probably rather have had dinner at Caesar's house, you know, you would have had a
00:29:19
Speaker
a more lavish spread, probably nicer art to look at and very witty conversation pouring out of Caesar himself. So, you know, Cato, you'd be quizzed about Stoicism and given some terrible wine to drink. There would be plenty of the wine. Cato did like to... Yeah, he did have, at least he did have drinking parties, I suppose we can say. Yeah, like Socrates, right?
00:29:49
Speaker
Right. Well, I suppose now.
00:29:55
Speaker
We can pivot to a different question if you like, but I feel on some intermediary steps if you like. But one question I wanted to ask is, of course, Cato, he's seen as a stoic model. Yeah, at the same time, many of the decisions he makes in order to save the Republic do not, in fact, have seen, at least in hindsight, to have the desired effect for him. His moral uprightness pushes away potential allies and
00:30:24
Speaker
that brings up the question, was Cato ultimately a good steward of the late Republic?
Cato's Political Rigidness: Effective?
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah, this is the question about Cato. And I think about it constantly. And I'll just say at the start, I don't think, at least my personal view is there's not sort of a straightforward answer to that.
00:30:54
Speaker
question. So it's something just to keep to keep sort of thinking about, I think there are many facets to the problem. And it sort of depends about also what timeframe you look at to maybe, maybe Cato kept a Republican ideal alive for the very long run societies have benefited from even if Rome did. So so it is a fascinating question. The same question about Marcus Brutus.
00:31:24
Speaker
I think Cato's kinsmen of Cato a couple of years later and his assassination of Caesar, right? So, yeah, how would I answer it? Kind of in the political realm, I think what you've got, Cato's rigidity, right, really is not how to make politics work. And if you want political outcomes, outcomes where people are going to negotiate
00:31:53
Speaker
and talk with each other, try to find some kind of consensus that makes nobody happy, but can keep the peace. Then those qualities that Cato excelled in that were so good for publicity, for raising attention, probably were bad ones. So that kind of is my verdict on him in his own immediate situation. And he did
00:32:19
Speaker
the way potential allies and with this sort of conspiratorial rhetoric that he favored, right? He kind of made Caesar worried about what would happen and that drove Caesar to more extreme, extreme steps too. So it's kind of the furies of partisanship, right? Each side thinks they're doing the right thing, but goes further and further apart and then compromises impossible.
00:32:48
Speaker
Now, of course, sometimes you might think in life compromise shouldn't be possible, right? I mean, there are areas where people will refuse to compromise, but I think in this case, it really was the Civil War that broke out, really could have been prevented and probably should have, but Cato and his allies made it likelier and really caused it.
00:33:15
Speaker
So the other thing I'd say, once you're in civil war, right, you kind of have to fight the war to win. If you're going to go that way, you have to militarize. And I think their Cato had a problem too, right, because he was so ethically committed.
00:33:37
Speaker
You know, he didn't want to treat allies badly or harshly during the Civil War. And that's very, you know, the greatest general of the day, one of the greatest in all of Roman history. You've got to be ready to fight if you're going to go down that path. And during the Civil War, we're told, right, Cato kind of sculpt around. He grew a beard and mourning for his country.
00:34:01
Speaker
And we can respect that gesture, but it's not exactly the thing among the troops necessarily. So I think actions are definitely open to question. Yeah. The point about the timeline is always an interesting one because you could have the following view that, look, Cato, he plausibly sped up the fall of the later public.
00:34:24
Speaker
made it more likely that Roman faced yet another civil war. But despite that provided a model that was inspirational to people who lived hundreds of years after him. And it does sort of bring out that question that, you know, given that political actions are so difficult to predict to begin with, why not take this sort of the Cato like strategy of thinking about, you know,
00:34:54
Speaker
what's the best principles I should uphold and let the second order or third order effects be damned. Those are just going to be awash in the great scheme of history. Yeah, I'm sympathetic to that. I think ideally you can sort of have both character and strategy and good leadership, but
00:35:19
Speaker
it's easy for the scholar to sit in this study and say that, looking back on the record hundreds of years later. And think of Abraham Lincoln. I mean, he won the Civil War and he abolished slavery, but he had no idea that it would take hundreds of thousands of young American men killed
00:35:49
Speaker
to achieve that, right? And that was a burden that weighed on his mind and was hard for him to live with. Or on a more positive note, let's go back to the 1790s again for a moment, you know, Cato's inspiration living on. During the Winter Valley Forge, we know that George Washington staged the 18th century play about Cato
00:36:18
Speaker
and kind of by Joseph Addison and sort of tried to use Cato as a role model, right? You know, we're trying to create a government where we're going to live for each other, not just for one king and serve each other. You know, there's going to be a lot of sacrifices to make that happen. And, you know, if the French hadn't
00:36:42
Speaker
intervened in the American Revolution, maybe Burton would have won. So yeah, these things, as you say, it's sort of a question, right? That anyone, even in less epic situations is going to face, do you stick to principles and where do you compromise? Oh yeah, I think that's right. That's exactly right.
00:37:06
Speaker
Well, of course, we're a stoic podcast. We're going to be more on team Cato, but we should also ask, you know, what can we learn from a figure like Caesar who perhaps, you know, so it's not virtue as unitary. So maybe they wouldn't call him virtuous, but he at least had hints of admirable qualities for she's exceptionally competent. Wasn't the populace and was I think in one podcast you describe it as almost demonically energetic.
00:37:36
Speaker
But apart from those facts, what can we learn from the man? So, yeah, I mean, in my heart of hearts, I'm team Kato too, I think. So we're in good company. But, I mean, Caesar is kind of a fascinating character. And, you know, one thing that I think could be said about him, again, obviously, by modern standards, we're not going to think much started for his own ambition.
00:38:05
Speaker
But you've got to give him credit. I mean, he really was a superb leader. And out in Gaul, you know, when he was in very dicey situations, the battles weren't going his way. He'd pick up the sword or the shield, you know, go to the front of the line and rally the soldiers. And really had that kind of leadership quality.
00:38:33
Speaker
that I think is very compelling. And there is something we can take from that, right? If you're in a leadership position, really sort of getting in there and achieving solidarity with everyone in your organization.
00:38:50
Speaker
That's the kind of thing where I think Caesar really did excel. He also, maybe this sounds a little bit cynical, right? But he, I mean, he was a wonderful writer and he really sort of knew how to get a story out. And one thing potentially you could fault Cato for was even though he did have these wonderful sort of skills at publicizing himself, right? I mean, it interests me that Cato left behind no writing.
00:39:18
Speaker
nothing, not a word. And we know this isn't really just because we've lost things. This was some, for some reason, kind of a strategy on his part. And you know, Caesar, Caesar kind of did know how to create something that would last beyond him. So I think there's something that that won't
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. I think the only written piece we have from Cato, only aspect was writing, I think is a letter to Cicero, right? Yes. Essentially denying Cicero a honor Cicero had requested, I think.
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's a wonderful letter. Thanks for mentioning it. Yeah, so when I say Cato didn't write, what I mean is he didn't, like, Cicero write philosophical words, sort of trying to explain how can you apply Stoicism to your life? Right, right. And maybe if, you know, circumstances have been different, Cato in old age would have done something like that, like Cato the Elder, his great grandfather, became a writer of history.
00:40:21
Speaker
But yeah, but he did write a letter that because we have Cicero's correspondence, we have Cato's letter to Cicero. And we also have letters Cicero wrote to Cato. And those are, by the way, very revealing too, because Cicero was sent to govern a province of the Roman Empire. And he writes all these letters to Cato.
00:40:44
Speaker
defending his records and I've treated the allies, these are basically the subjects of the Roman Empire, but they call them allies. I've treated the allies leniently with justice. So it reveals a lot about Cato's values. But then Cicero, this is a comic moment, Cicero eked out a victory over some peoples living in the mountains.
00:41:09
Speaker
between Asia Minor and Syria. And he wanted a triumph, a big military parade. So he writes Cato begging for help. And, you know, Cato sends a very disappointing note back to Cicero saying, you know, oh, basically, the glory of having run the Roman Empire with moderation should be enough for you, Cicero. Cicero is completely bummed.
00:41:34
Speaker
And then Julius Caesar sends a no, we don't have it at all to Cicero saying Cato is treated you appallingly. So that shows you Caesar's political talent, that he could sort of prey on Cicero in that vulnerable moment. Yeah, that's a great story.
00:41:53
Speaker
Another question that always comes up in this is, what's the Republic worth saving to
Was the Roman Republic Worth Saving?
00:42:00
Speaker
begin with? You have all these structural problems around land ownership, the power of generals. And certainly one view that I find plausible is that the Republic is essentially expiring. And the question is, how fast is it going to last by the time Kato enters the scene?
00:42:22
Speaker
So yeah, I'm curious about that. And we can also contrast that with what happened after the Republic. Perhaps it wasn't so bad, maybe worse in terms of some political liberties, but largely the Roman. Yeah, individual liberty. Right. Yeah, it's another great question and part of why this period is so fascinating. So I think
00:42:51
Speaker
the argument that the Republic had to go, to me, kind of the strongest point for that would sort of just be how much civil war do people have to live through? How much violence? There's a lot of intermittent violence in the city of Rome as well. So from that point of view, arguably, for some,
00:43:19
Speaker
period of years, decades, the Republic was kind of failing. So the question is, what do you do about that? And is an emperor the way you want to go? And how much better was life under Roman emperors? It sort of depended on who you were.
00:43:48
Speaker
You know, is somebody committed to democracy, right? I think in the best of all worlds, the Roman Republic could have reformed itself and continue to stay committed to the idea that we're going to settle things through political debate, through votes.
00:44:07
Speaker
it probably should have gone more, more democratic, right, in my opinion, which really wouldn't be the way somebody like a Cato would have put it. But but to solve these intractable debates, right, you sort of needed an arbiter. And in a democracy, the people become the arbiter. So, you know, I'm not giving you a
00:44:33
Speaker
a firm answer here, but I hope that those are a few things to think about anyway, right, that it doesn't have to be sort of a republic that has to die. But we can see, we can see why it struggled so much, and why, why people were prepared to look for alternatives.
00:44:56
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah. A follow-up question to that, I suppose, is you have some Stoics who, instead of opposing tyranny, decide that instead of they'll advise tyranny and make it as best as it can
Stoics Advising Tyrants: Ethical Dilemma
00:45:09
Speaker
be. So Augustus has Stoic teachers and advisors. I think Arias did a mess. It's the most well-known one, and they
00:45:20
Speaker
appear to have made the choice that it's much better to have someone who can hold up some out of order to prevent all this violence than rescue, you know, what was left of the Republic. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it is, you know, many intellectuals will find tempting to
00:45:47
Speaker
you know, to be to go back to Hamilton to be in the room where it happens, right? So, and I think we can, you know, sort of justify to ourselves a lot of things. And, you know, in the government or in the organization, because I will be able to make it better and be a force for good, right?
00:46:12
Speaker
So I think we need to be aware of that temptation. Did Seneca
00:46:22
Speaker
Well, I mean, maybe for a few years, he did make Nero's government better than it would have been in Nero, of course, was what, just 16 when the center had took over. So there were some opportunities still. But, you know, somebody like a Cato, I think is going to lean more on the side of it's really better just to, well, I mean, look at what Cato did. He took his life rather than work with Caesar. And Cato would say that you're sort of contributing more to
00:46:51
Speaker
to kind of the human spirit by doing that. So I think it's something people need to be aware of kind of the temptations of justifying things as if they would be for the public good. But really, you're working for a tyrant. Is that where you want to be in life? No, yeah, that's right. That's certainly right. And it's likely the case that some people have made that.
00:47:17
Speaker
choice wisely and well, but the vast, I would expect the majority, whether or not they make the decision well, later are faced with pressures that reveal that perhaps they made a mistake. Does the true stoic go to work for retiring?
00:47:39
Speaker
I think that, and yeah, that's a good, great question. So it's interesting. I think that Cato advises his son, I believe not to take the same path as he does. And I think what that reveals is.
00:47:55
Speaker
The stoic has some amount of flexibility in choosing what they think the best social role will be in whatever situation they find themselves in. And then maybe once they've chosen that role, that's where you stick to it and you've made a decision. Like Cato, ideally you would be principled. I think that's where I lean at the moment is that
00:48:19
Speaker
you have some amount of flexibility, different circumstances people will find themselves in, which means that people like Arius Didymus could have wisely chosen to advise Augustus. It also means that perhaps the best choice for people like Thorsaea, the stoic opposition, was to oppose Nero, but play that role at that time. So I suppose the short answer is,
00:48:45
Speaker
Sometimes one can be in a position where the best thing to do is advise a tyrant. Of course, there are some questions around the definition of tyrant, but at least in the case of Augustus, it seems justified to me. But there is this, as you say, this large force that should make one suspicious of making that decision. And often, many stoic models, of course, Cato, the stoic opposition later, are going to be people who do the exact opposite.
00:49:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's really helpful. And I think that is a point to take away about Cato, right, is his ideas, you say that, that not everyone actually has to be a Cato, which I think is an interesting point of his stoicism, as best we can reconstruct it, right, that, you know, there are these moments in the Civil War, you know, when, for example, Cicero shows up in Pompey's camp to fight
00:49:39
Speaker
Caesar and Cato says to him, well, why did you bother to come? You would have been better off staying in Italy where you could try to negotiate things. And you know, at first, you first read that passage, it's in Plutarch, it's like, whoa, Cato, that seems very squishy, very uncompromising, right? But
00:49:58
Speaker
But that actually was more suited towards Cicero's nature and his skills. He was a compromiser and interested in compromises politically. That was how he operated. So you see that in Keita and I think that...
00:50:15
Speaker
I think that also comes up in the question of his death, of course. You have the question, would Cato have been better had he accepted Caesar's note of clemency and work to improve things there? Or would he just not have been Cato if he hadn't done what he did? I think the latter option is more plausible to me. Yeah. Can you imagine Cato going into the Senate with Caesar sitting there on his golden chair?
00:50:46
Speaker
and wearing his purple robe and his laurel crown, it's just you can't conceive it, at least I can't. So yeah, I think he had to go.
00:51:00
Speaker
Well, one last question. Are there any figures that people interested in Cato, Caesar, Stoics generally should look at more? Any maybe sort of unknown figures we haven't mentioned or people who are talked less about in Roman history for this period? Yeah, so I do have one answer. It's kind of a stretch, but I'll just put it out there. I actually think a very interesting Roman
00:51:30
Speaker
We go back much earlier in Roman history as Fabius Maximus. He was a Roman politician during the Second Punic War, the fight against Hannibal. And he was sort of a senior politician at the time. And he famously advocated the Fabian strategy, named after him, of course, right, that we'll have to wear Hannibal down.
00:51:57
Speaker
because we can't take him on in battle, we'll lose. And he got a lot of criticism for this, right? Because Mormons like to fight battles. And how can we just sit here and let Hannibal lurk in Italy? And he stuck to that view because he thought it was what was best for the Republic, for the common good. So he's not a stoic.
00:52:24
Speaker
Right? At least I don't think so. I mean, it seems unlikely to me. But he becomes a kind of embodiment of civic virtue, sort of looked back to that generation of Romans too, and especially somebody like Fabius Maximus, sort of for inspiration, right? And sort of philosophical values in general. In public life, it's hard. People are gonna criticize you. You're gonna take a lot of heat.
00:52:53
Speaker
and that kind of steadfastness of Fabius, right? I think Cato did sort of model himself on that. So there's the wonderful Plutarch life of Fabius Maximus, that's a good read on Fabius. And of course, Fabius later was somebody people compared George Washington to for the strategic ability and also the ability not to let
00:53:21
Speaker
criticism sort of stick to him. So I think he's, he's an interest. Probably was an inspiration for, for Cato. I mean, he was kind of a Roman hero. So he had to have been in some ways a hero for all Romans, not just Cato. That's a great example. Well, is there anything else you'd like to add?
Further Exploration of Cato and Caesar
00:53:41
Speaker
Yeah, no, I would just tell, tell listeners. Yeah. If you're interested in, in Caesar and Cato, then check out the book. There's a, an audio version.
00:53:51
Speaker
on, on Audible. And thanks for having me today to talk about Cato and Caesar.
00:53:59
Speaker
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00:54:29
Speaker
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00:54:56
Speaker
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