Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

While these conflicts for legislative supremacy were real, certainly Helvidius’s Stoic disdain—which some might call impudence—for sovereigns undoubtedly heightened the tension. We are told that Helvidius, who had learned from Thrasea that nothing unearned is worth respect, took to calling the new emperor by his private and not his imperial name. Indeed, at the height of Vespasian’s fame, following his triumphal return from Syria, Helvidius was the only senator who chose to address the man as if he was a commoner. In all his edicts as praetor, Helvidius refused to recognize Vespasian by his royal titles.

Was it recklessness or a sincere refusal to bow before someone he believed was not his superior? Or was it simply exhaustion with the endless parade of two-bit leaders that the Senate had been forced to put up with?

We know that in time this disrespect became more pronounced. Suetonius tells us that Helvidius began to speak out directly against Vespasian. Epictetus provides us an exchange that portrays the man as utterly fearless:

When Vespasian sent for Helvidius Priscus and commanded him not to go into the senate, he replied, “It is in your power not to allow me to be a member of the senate, but so long as I am, I must go in.” “Well, go in then,” says the emperor, “but say nothing.” “Do not ask my opinion, and I will be silent.” “But I must ask your opinion.” “And I must say what I think right.” “But if you do, I shall put you to death.” “When then did I tell you that I am immortal? You will do your part, and I will do mine: it is your part to kill; it is mine to die, but not in fear: yours to banish me; mine to depart without sorrow.”

You do your job, I’ll do mine, the Stoic says. You be evil, I’ll be good. Let everything else come what may.

Helvidius must have known that this approach was not long for this world, or at least for Rome. He hung on long enough to oversee the construction of the new Capitol building and the dedication of the new temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. In Tacitus, we see Helvidius Priscus standing as a kind of lonely but hopeful figure, trying to reach backward or forward to more peaceful times, where the common good was served by the state and a functioning republic would eclipse imperial excesses and the bloody succession of the Flavians.

It was not to be.

Vespasian, tired of being toyed with and undermined, decided to banish Helvidius once again. It likely says something about the power Helvidius still held that Vespasian kept the exile close so that he could keep an eye on him. In truth, it was more like a death row holding cell.

Not long after, Vespasian ordered Helvidius’s execution.

Helvidius’s wife would later commission a celebration of her husband’s life, but as with the best of the Stoics, it was not words that defined his legacy but his actions. Epictetus was inspired by him. Marcus Aurelius held him up as an example. And then, 1,927 years later, another man who had also grown up poor and had been adopted, but came to fall in love with the legislative body of his country—the senator Robert Byrd*—would take to the floor of the Senate at eighty-five years old to protest the overreaches in the name of “security” of his own president:

Helvidius Priscus spoke his mind; the emperor Vespasian killed him. In this effeminate age it is instructive to read of courage. There are members of the U.S. Senate and House who are terrified apparently if the president of the United States tells them, urges them, to vote a certain way that may be against their belief. So in this day of few men with great courage—relatively few—let us take a leaf out of Roman history and remember Helvidius Priscus.

When asked why he gave this speech, Byrd managed to unintentionally provide the perfect lesson from Helvidius Priscus’s life and those of the brave Stoics who had died opposing the reigns of Nero and his successors:

To me, that question misses the point, with all due respect to you for asking it. To me, the matter is there for a thousand years in the record. I stood for the Constitution. I stood for the institution. If it isn’t heard today, there’ll be some future member who will come through and will comb these tomes.

MUSONIUS RUFUSTHE UNBREAKABLE (Mu-SOWN-ee-us ROOF-us)

Origin: Volsinii, Etruria

B. 20–30 AD

D. c. 101 AD

Cato may have been Rome’s Iron Man, but in the end he was challenged by only one emperor. Thrasea was utterly fearless, but his friend Gaius Musonius Rufus was also unafraid, and, as it happens, endured a life so challenging as to make Thrasea’s ordeal under Nero seem fun.