Seneca, Moral Letters 87.4

Marcus Cato the Censor, whose existence helped the state as much as did Scipio’s—for while Scipio fought against our enemies, Cato fought against our bad morals—used to ride a donkey, and a donkey, at that, which carried saddlebags containing the master’s necessaries. 
 
O how I should love to see him meet today on the road one of our coxcombs, with his outriders and Numidians, and a great cloud of dust before him! 
 
Your dandy would no doubt seem refined and well-attended in comparison with Marcus Cato—your dandy, who, in the midst of all his luxurious paraphernalia, is chiefly concerned whether to turn his hand to the sword or to the hunting knife. 
 
O what a glory to the times in which he lived, for a general who had celebrated a triumph, a censor, and what is most noteworthy of all, a Cato, to be content with a single nag, and with less than a whole nag at that! For part of the animal was preempted by the baggage that hung down on either flank. 
 
Would you not therefore prefer Cato’s steed, that single steed, saddle-worn by Cato himself, to the coxcomb’s whole retinue of plump ponies, Spanish cobs, and trotters?
 
 I see that there will be no end in dealing with such a theme unless I make an end myself. So I shall now become silent, at least with reference to superfluous things like these; doubtless the man who first called them “hindrances” had a prophetic inkling that they would be the very sort of thing they now are. 
 
At present I should like to deliver to you the syllogisms, as yet very few, belonging to our school and bearing upon the question of virtue, which, in our opinion, is sufficient for the happy life. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
It’s nice to see a Stoic praising Cato the Elder, and not just his great-grandson, Cato the Younger, who became a bit of a poster child for the school. 
 
While some found the Censor to be severe and self-righteous, there is something to be said for the way he promoted a life of uncompromising integrity and austerity. However stuffy it may sound, I would maintain that the Romans were at their best when they kept things brutally simple. 
 
Nowadays, it is the car, and not the horse, that helps us to distinguish between the codgers and the dandies. You can learn a lot from what a fellow drives. 
 
For the whole decade I knew him, my music teacher drove a dilapidated 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass, in a nauseating shade of green, which was already at 60,000 miles when his roommate gave it to him, in place of back rent. I, for one, found it quite charming, for the very reason that it had none of the usual charms. 
 
“It gets me wherever I need to go—no drama and no fuss. If it breaks down, I kick it and mess around under the hood. If I can’t fix it, my neighbor, who is a decent mechanic, looks it over, and I trade him a few cases of beer for the work.” 
 
Here was a man who had it together. He felt no need to impress anyone, because he knew exactly what he was about. 
 
Years later, our university got itself a new president, who paraded onto campus with a Tesla Model S, one of the first to be built. He immediately reserved a prime parking space for himself, and he had a charging station installed—at the school’s expense. He was fond of polishing it daily, while taking every opportunity to explain how he was now saving the planet. 
 
“You really should get one, you know. Your children will thank you.” He frowned when I reminded him how the price was twice my salary, and that most of our state’s electricity came from burning natural gas and coal. 
 
Here was a man who most certainly did not have it together. His entire identity was based on crafting an image. 
 
What does it say about me if I place my worth in my car, my house, my clothes, or my trendy politics? As Boethius said, by enslaving ourselves to worldly things, we make ourselves inferior to them, below even the status of a wild beast. For all of his surliness, I will take a Cato over a Caesar on any day. 
 
It won’t be enough, of course, to merely complain about the money grubbers and the glory seekers. Seneca rightly moves on to some of the Stoic arguments on why virtue matters more than swag. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014