Plutarch, a Greek writer of about 100 AD, wrote Parallel Lives: paired Greek and Roman biographies of character. This life is Cato the Younger, matched with Phocion of Athens: two honest men their cities found unusable until too late. The setting is the last Roman Republic — Rome run by a senate and elected officials, not a king — from Italy to the coast of Tunisia.

Marcus Porcius Cato, grandson of the Censor who policed Roman morals, walked barefoot in winter and lived as a Stoic, a philosopher of self-control. He opposed Pompey, Caesar, and anyone who treated the Republic as property. After Caesar's victory at Thapsus in Tunisia, Cato sat in Utica, read Plato's Phaedo twice, stabbed himself, and pushed the doctor away when they tried to sew him up. Caesar was angry to be robbed of a pardon. Later Romans stared at that death and could not match it.