Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

STOICISM AT ROME UNDER THE REPUBLIC. 73nation and heroic courage.Even Atticus, Epicureanas he was, wrote to his friend to tell him that he felta new fire and energy ashe turned over those pages.Indifference to death was in part the burden of itsteaching ;and the counsel fell in those days on willingears, for they received it often, not as a theme formystic meditation, but as an encouragement to withdrawfrom the scene without delay. At each crisisof the civil wars we read of a longlist of suicidesamong the champions of the fallen cause ;the factsof history thus form a melancholy comment on thepages of the moralist, and throw a lurid light uponthe words that else might seem to Christian eyes likethe mere idle sophistry of morbid rhetoric.There was one contemporary figure, the mostfamous Stoic of the age, the younger Cato, whoshows us in a striking form the strength and weaknessof the standard by which he ruled his life. Noone had more than he the courageto avow hisprinciples and act up to his convictions ;in an ageof political corruption there was no stain upon hishonour ;and his moral influence, when once exerted /to check the bribery of candidates for office, didmore, we are told, than all the laws and penal sanctionswhich enforced them. In the worst crisis ofthe revolution, when the spirits of other men weresoured, and the party cries grew fiercer, his temperseemed to become gentler, and to forbode the miseriesof civil war. Inflexible before, he pleaded for concessionsto avert the storm ;and when they wererefused, he raised his voice still for moderate counsels,