Cato the Younger
A brief look at the life of Stoicism’s poster boy
I will begin to speak when I have that to say which had not better be unsaid. — Cato the Younger
Who was Cato the Younger?
Cato the Younger was born Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis in 95 BC in Utica, Africa (modern-day Tunisia). He was the great-grandson of Cato the Elder, a trusted Roman soldier and famed historian. Orphaned at a very young age, Cato and his siblings were raised by his uncle, Marcus Livius Drusus, an important Roman politician at the time.
From there, Cato the Younger embarked on a career in the military and Roman politics, he saw success as an unwavering official and a beacon of the old Roman ethics, something his peers were beginning to waver from.
In his personal life he was married twice, firstly to Antila and secondly, Marcia, he had two children from his first marriage, a son Marcus Porcius Cato and a daughter, Porcia who would later follow in her father’s footsteps as a keen Philosopher, and one of the first female Stoics of note.
Almost all the biographical details that exist about Cato the Younger were recorded and written by Plutarch in 76AD, some 120 years after his death.
