Ryan Holiday

His brother was more stoic than Lucius Verus, but he also loved luxury, at least compared to his brother.

Did it bother Cato that his brother wear perfume?

Would he have judged other men harshly for doing the same thing?

Probably.

But as Bruce Springsteen put it in one of his greatest songs, when it's your brother, sometimes you look the other way.

Is this stoic?

To hold people you love to different standards?

To let them get away with things you wouldn't do yourself?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

It's also life.

In Epictetus' famous metaphor that everything has two handles, one which will hold weight and the other which will not, he actually references this exact kind of situation.

You can choose to grab hold of the fact that something wrong has been done to you, or you can choose to grab hold of the fact that it was done by your brother, someone you were raised with, someone who loves you and has a good heart.

Which of those is a better handle?

Marcus, Aurelius, and Cato could have looked down on their brothers.

Instead, they loved them.

When Cato's brother died, he told a friend he'd rather part with his life than his brother's ashes.

And they were willing to look the other way, not just for brothers, but with all the people they lived with,

and were related to, Marcus Aurelius did this well with his wife, who's rumored to be unfaithful, and of course, too well or not well enough with his son, who clearly went astray.

Cato did this with his sister, who had a torrid affair with Julius Caesar, his worst enemy.