Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis

Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis (95–46 BCE), known as Cato the Younger, was a Roman statesman, senator, and Stoic philosopher who became the supreme martyr of the dying Roman Republic. Great-grandson of Cato the Elder, he was renowned throughout Rome for rigid moral integrity, refusing bribes, prosecuting embezzlement while serving as quaestor, and walking barefoot through Rome in an unadorned black toga.

As leader of the conservative optimates faction in the Senate, Cato fiercely opposed the First Triumvirate of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. During the Catilinarian conspiracy (63 BCE), his uncompromising speech persuaded the Senate to execute the aristocratic conspirators. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon and sparked civil war, Cato fought alongside republican forces; after their defeat at Thapsus, he read Plato's Phaedo on the immortality of the soul at Utica and stabbed himself to death rather than accept Caesar's pardon.