How Marcus Aurelius Became Marcus Aurelius

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2:27Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

3:06This should awe you. There's a lot from the Stoics about the beauty and majesty of nature. Marcus Rios was clearly in awe of the natural world, both in matters big and small, from lions to stalks of grain. Seneca wrote a whole multi-volume series of books on nature and spoke of the world as a temple of the gods. But it wasn't rock formations or the vast expanse of the sea that awed the Stoics the most. What they were clearly impressed by, what they worshipped the most, was the awe-inspiring deeds of their ancestors and their heroes. The way that Regulus, who we talked about recently, was willing to keep his word even though it meant marching back to his own death in Carthage.

3:46The effortlessness, as Marcus noted, with which his mother was so generous and decent. The way that Agrippinus defied Nero, the way that Rutilius Rufus resisted corruption and didn't even complain when he was framed on false charges. The way Cato chose death over subservience to Caesar. how the first thing Marcus Aurelius did with absolute power was share it with his stepbrother. It was these feats of courage and justice that the Stoics stood in awe of. And so should we, because even centuries later, they somehow still seem unreal, nearly superhuman. The selflessness of it, the certainty of it, where did it come from?

4:23How did they do it? It's truly awesome. As we said earlier this month, and this is what Right Thing Right Now is all about, We have to study these examples. We have to try to answer those questions. We have to let these examples make us better because they are truly awe-inspiring. They are as impressive as any feat of nature or evolution. And yet, because they were done by humans, we should understand that we are capable of such deeds too. The Stoic idea of human nature and living in accordance to it, as one Stoic scholar described, refers to the condition of a human who is expressing the very best in his or her development.

4:58That is their ultimate best self. They are growing and changing in an effort to reach the ultimate goal for a human being. And that's the aim of the new book, to hopefully give us a roadmap so we can become our ultimate best self to positively impact the people and the world around us. I tried to write a book that would show you, to show me, how the mighty examples of people like Gandhi and Sojourner Truth and Marcus Aurelius and many more, just how we can do great things. To remind you that, as Mark Scurrilous writes, not to assume it's impossible because you find it hard, but to recognize that if it's humanly possible, you can do it also.

5:37Anyways, look, I've been beating this drum quite a bit, but it means a lot to authors. If you could pre-order the new book, Right Thing, right now, you could do that right now. That would be amazing. DailyStoke.com slash justice. We have a bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses. We're running out of the numbered, signed first editions. Not too many of them left. It would be awesome if you could grab them. We're coming up on the launch here shortly. Of course, if you want to grab the ebook or the audio book, whatever is best for you, you can grab all the bonuses still at dailystoic.com slash justice is the instructions.

6:05And I can't wait to hear what you think. Only a couple more days. And I'm really proud of this one. And I hope it makes you better. It made me better to write it. And I can't wait to hear what you think.

6:20Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I think I've talked about this before. But when I read Meditations for the first time, my first thought was, where is a biography of this person? I want to read an amazing biography of Marx Reyes. I want to know everything about him. Basically, for hundreds of years, the answer to that question has been, no, there's not a good biography of Marcus. I don't know why that is. There's been little essays that were fantastic, even from antiquity. Cassius Dio's sort of biographical sketch of Marcus is quite good. But there wasn't a full-length biography of Marcus.

6:55And I thought about writing one. I did one in Lives of the Stoics. I did my best, but he's a hard guy to get a full book out of because we, unfortunately, even though he was very, very famous, we don't know that much about him. And so I was very excited when my agent, Steve Hanselman, who I also wrote The Daily Stoic with, told me that one of his other clients, the great Donald Robertson, was working on a full-length biography of Marcus. It's called Marcus Rebilius, the Stoic Emperor. I've been raving about it since it came out. I took a ton of notes on it. It's one of my favorite books that I read this year.

7:26And I liked it so much that I asked Donald if we could run an excerpt of it. And he and his publisher said yes. So I want to bring you chapter three. And it's about Marcus's Greek training, how Marcus trained to become Marcus realist, what his philosophical influences were. And I think you'll really like it. Definitely grab the book. The audio is good. We have the physical copy here at The Painted Porch. So I'll link to that in today's show notes. And if you want an in-depth conversation about the ideas in the book, about Marcus and me and Donald kicking things around, we've got a two-parter on the Daily Stoic Podcast.

8:01Donald was nice enough to come out a couple months ago. So I'll link to that in today's show notes too. We really did a deep dive into Marcus and what made him great. I think they are great companions to this book. So listen to this episode, grab a signed copy of Marcus Aurelius, The Stoic Emperor, and How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. You can grab both of those from The Painted Porch. You can follow Donald's substack, which I'll link to. You can follow him on Twitter, at Don J. Robertson, and on Instagram, at Donald J. Robertson. Great writer, great dude.

8:32Enjoy this excerpt from Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Emperor.

8:42Chapter 3. The Greek Training One morning, Marcus Aurelius' favourite tutor took him to join a group of older boys as they crammed into a busy school hall, writing tablets dangling from their necks. Marcus was the only one still wearing the golden bulla or protective amlet that marked him as a child. He must have been thrilled to witness something normally reserved for those who had donned the toga virilis and legally achieved manhood. The boys were crowded around a foreign lecturer who was dressed in a simple grey shawl with long white hair and a well-kempt beard that added to his sage-like appearance.

9:29He spoke eloquently in Greek, the language of philosophy, often stopping to answer questions from excited students. Originally from Asia Minor, Apollonius of Chalcedon, had recently been teaching Stoicism in Athens, but now he was the talk of Rome. Apollonius would have given speeches exhorting Roman youths to study philosophy. He doubtless told them the fable known today as the choice of Hercules. Nearly five centuries earlier, this tale had inspired Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, to dedicate his life to philosophy. We can imagine Marcus listening transfixed to the story of how the young Heracles, as Hercules was known to the Greeks, lost his way and was forced to choose between two diverging paths, a decision that would shape his character for the rest of his life.

10:29On one side lay pleasure and vice, on the other, discipline and virtue. The goddess of virtue, Arate, appeared to Heracles giving a compelling argument for choosing the harder of the two paths. The moral was clear. Although a life of pleasure might seem appealing, true fulfilment comes only by following the path of virtue. In his early teens, Marcus would have heard other such exhortations which inspired young men to dream of becoming philosophers. Philosophy was, nevertheless, an advanced academic subject, one that only a fraction of Marcus's childhood companions studied in any depth. They would usually begin the course after reaching the age of 15, so long as they made good initial progress in their study of rhetoric.

11:28Greek-speaking tutors in particular, who travelled to Rome from Athens, Egypt or Asia Minor, could command high fees. The salaries quoted, for instance, by Philostratus in his Lifes of the Sophists vary from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Greek drachmas. It would take the average skilled worker many decades to earn what a leading sophist might charge for a single speech. Although we might expect the Stoics to have charged less than the Sophists, as they typically condemned love of wealth as a vice, Apollonius had a reputation for expecting to be paid very generously. Marcus's mother had invested in a programme of education for her son that was not only unusually costly, but covered topics far ahead of his years.

12:27Few Roman 12-year-olds received home tuition from advanced instructors on the finer points of Greek philosophy. At this stage of his secondary education, it fell to Marcus's grammarians to give him a head start on topics usually reserved for older boys doing their tertiary studies. Remarkably, it was the painting master appointed by Lysilla, a Greek named Diognetus, who first acquainted Marcus with philosophy and accompanied the boy to several public lectures. Diognetus also had young Marcus try his hand at writing dialogues, doubtless of a philosophical nature. Marcus attributes several moral lessons to Diognetus.

13:16The painting master taught him not to preoccupy himself with trifling amusements, such as the popular Roman sport of quail fighting, and perhaps cautioned him against gambling in general. He also convinced Marcus to view with scepticism self-proclaimed miracle workers, sorcerers and exorcists. The latter, incidentally, was apparently a reference to early Christians, still viewed as superstitious fanatics by many Romans. Similar reminders to maintain focus on the true goal of philosophy and not to be distracted by trivial pursuits or lose himself down intellectual rabbit holes would later become a theme of the meditations.

14:01In the midst of this moral education, ironically, we find no mention of the painting master having taught Marcus anything about painting. Presumably they were too busy strolling around Lucilla's gardens, talking and sharing their mutual love of philosophy. Diognetus also taught Marcus to be tolerant of plain speaking, a concept associated with several schools of philosophy. The cynics, however, were especially known for this virtue. Diognetus most likely exhibited similar frankness, a trait highly regarded by Marcus's mother, as we've seen. Now, though, the little boy, whom Hadrian had dubbed Verissimus, for his outspokenness, had to learn to be gracious when he found himself on the receiving end of unvarnished remarks from his tutors.

14:55It was also the painting master who taught Marcus to desire a straw camp bed and animal pelt, and whatever else of the kind belongs to the Greek training, or alenike agogi. Marcus's use of this phrase is striking, because the word agogi is best known as a reference to military cadet training, of the kind young boys were put through in Sparta. For certain philosophers, military traditions such as sleeping on a straw mat, wearing a rough woolen cloak, and undergoing other similar hardships formed part of a larger program of self-improvement training.

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17:17Despite his already wanting to be a philosopher at the age of 12 and attending some lectures, one suspects Marcus was not yet able to fully immerse himself in the scholarly aspects of the subject so he began by copying the outward behaviour of certain philosophers such as their plain speaking, rudimentary attire and aesthetic practices. Even Lucilla, praised by Marcus for her simple way of life at least compared to other wealthy Romans clearly found his behaviour odd at times. He studied philosophy with ardour, even as a youth, for when he was twelve years old he adopted the dress and, a little later, the hardiness of a philosopher, pursuing his studies clad in a rough Greek cloak and sleeping on the ground.

18:11At his mother's solicitation, however, he reluctantly consented to sleep on a couch strewn with skins, we're told. What the historian means by rough Greek cloak is the traditional philosopher's shawl or tribon, a cheap garment made from coarse grey wool. The more austere sects wore this without a tunic or chiton underneath, often with one shoulder left bare, a way of dressing dubbed semi-naked by Greeks and Romans. For a precocious young Roman of Marcus's station, to dress and act like an ascetic beggar philosopher must have seemed like an affectation even to cultured individuals such as his mother.

19:02The embrace of voluntary hardship, wearing crude attire, going barefoot, sleeping in a straw mat on the ground, was mostly associated with cynic philosophy from which Stoicism in part derived. Marcus alludes to cynicism several times in the Meditations. He seems, for instance, to have cynics in mind when he writes, The one is a philosopher without a tunic, and the other without a book. Here is another half-naked. Bread I have not, he says, and I abide by reason. And I do not get the means of living out of my learning, and I abide by my reason. In addition to going about half-naked and sneering at bookish learning, cynics also tended to earn no money from their teaching, preferring instead to beg for their daily bread.

19:53Although Marcus always respected the cynics, he eventually came to prefer the more urbane, stoic school. One reason was that the cynics emphasised indifference toward external things, including other people. The Stoics adopted this notion of indifference or apatheia, but in a milder form, placing more emphasis on the value of healthy emotions, particularly love or natural affection. Although love of philosophy replaced sports and other common pursuits, leaving Marcus increasingly serious and dignified, the Augustan history notes that it did not take away from the geniality or natural affection he continued to show towards his household, friends and casual acquaintances.

20:42His character was well balanced, austere though not unreasonable, modest though not inactive and serious without gloom. He was also named and beloved variously as brother, father or son by various men, according to their age. In short, although he was maturing into a grave young man, committed to the study of an austere philosophy, Marcus continued to be known for his warmth, friendship and affection. Today many people assume that the Stoics were cold and unemotional. That is typically because they confuse Stoicism, which is capitalised, the Greek philosophy, with lowercase Stoicism, the stiff upper lip style of coping with adversity.

21:36Although this is a fundamental misinterpretation, the image of Stoicism as a cold and dispassionate philosophy is found even in ancient sources. Marcus's family friend, the sophist Herodes Atticus, was critical of the Stoics for precisely this reason. He compares them to an uneducated man who cuts down all the crops in his field along with the weeds, or as we might say today, like someone who throws the baby out with the bathwater. Thus it is that those disciples of insensibility, wishing to be thought calm, courageous and steadfast because of showing neither desire nor grief, neither wrath nor joy, root out all the more vigorous emotions of the mind, and grow old in the torpor of a sluggish and, as it were, nerveless life.

22:30Marcus was not swayed by criticisms such as these. Whereas Herodes was notorious for his violent temper, Marcus found the Stoics admirable, both for their equanimity and their natural affection. One of his favourite Stoic tutors never showed anger or any other passion, as he puts it, for instance, but was entirely free from passion and yet full of natural affection. Indeed, the Stoic ideal was to be free of irrational and unhealthy passions and yet full of rational and healthy ones. particularly natural affection. Commendable emotions such as friendship and love play an important role in the philosophy.

23:21For the Stoics, to love someone is to wish for that person to flourish, so long as nothing prevents this. To hope, in other words, that the loved one may acquire virtue. We could say then that Stoicism tried to marry love with wisdom. Indeed, the purest form of love is the desire to attain wisdom and share it with others for the common good. The very quality that Fronto had found most lacking among patricians was therefore exemplified by the Stoic teachers whom Marcus was just beginning to encounter. He first witnessed this quality, however, in his mother. The values that Marcus inherited from his family, moral integrity, humility, freedom from anger, kindness, honesty, made him a natural Stoic.

24:16The tutors later appointed to train him in Stoicism would nurture and reinforce precisely these traits. Many individuals have turned to philosophy indeed, not because it promised wisdom, but because it promised freedom from distress. or the ability to foster what we today call emotional resilience. Marcus in the meditations described his childhood as consisting of many losses and changes. Looking back, he asked himself, is this anything to fear? The repeated upending of a young boy's life would inevitably make him feel quite anxious. His mother's presence alone remained constant. Lucilla was always there for him.

25:05At least that is the impression we get especially from the letters of Fronto. As Marcus found himself drawn ever closer to the rarefied atmosphere of the imperial court he looked to the friendship of his tutors and love of his family to keep him grounded and give him a sense of perspective on events. Such an attitude would be much needed as a political climate at Rome grew increasingly unpredictable and fraught with danger once the emperor, Hadrian, finally returned from his travels.

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