Cato the Younger

While Cato was still in military service, his brother, who was on his way to Asia, fell sick at Aenus in Thrace, and a letter came at once to Cato advising him of this. A heavy storm was raging at sea and no ship of sufficient size was at hand, but nevertheless, taking only two friends and three servants with him in a small trading-vessel, he put to sea from Thessalonica.

He narrowly escaped drowning, and by some unaccountable good fortune came safe to land, but Caepio had just died. In bearing this affliction Cato was thought to have shown more passion than philosophy, considering not only his lamentations, his embracings of the dead, and the heaviness of his grief, but also his expenditure upon the burial, and the pains that he took to have incense and costly raiment burned with the body, and a monument of polished Thasian marble costing eight talents constructed in the market-place of Aenus.