| It would be wonderful if it were otherwise, but it isn't. Sometimes the good guys lose. Sometimes they lose a lot. Sometimes they lose for a very, very long time. Thrasea and Paetus and Rubellius Plaetus and Baroa Soranus and Musonius Rufus—members of the so-called Stoic Opposition—did not beat tyranny, not at the time anyway. Mostly they got executed or exiled. And what of Cato, the most famous and steadfast of the Stoics? He bled out in his bedroom alongside the Roman Republic he sought to preserve. In more modern times, we are wrong to remember the Civil Rights Movement as an endless series of successes; no, it was for generations mostly one heartbreaking failure after another. That's life. It's not fair. It's not all parades and triumphs. It's often setbacks and narrow defeats. It's sacrifice and pain that comes up empty. There is line from the poet Lucan—grandson to Seneca—that goes: Each side claims a high authority—the conquering cause pleased the Gods, but the conquered pleased Cato. Does that mean all lost causes are good ones? Hardly (in fact, that line adorns many Confederate monuments—a cause that deserved to lose). But it is a reminder: It's not always going to go your way. Still, we must stay at it. In the end, Nero did fall. So did Caesar—and ultimately Cato's example inspired Washington and the rest of the Founding Fathers. Eventually, the Civil Rights Act did pass and things have gotten better. We have to stay at it. We have to accept the losses that come…without accepting the status quo. We should not give up. We can't give in to despair. We must keep going. *** | 
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