The Responsibility of Translating Marcus Aurelius | David Hernández de la Fuente

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0:54I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine, which is I take them over to Whole Foods. and we get all our groceries for the week. Then we have dinner. It's one of their favorite things to do. It's one of my favorite things to do. And then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it. This holiday season, whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner Whole Foods Market has what you need to delight everyone at your table. They even have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department. You can make Whole Foods your one-stop shop. Everything follows Whole Foods Market's strict ingredients standards so you know it'll be delicious and good for you.

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1:41Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:34Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I was reading this article a couple months ago. It was in a Spanish newspaper, so I don't tend to read a lot of Spanish newspapers. I did take Spanish in school, but I am quite, quite bad at it. It was in English, thankfully. And this is the headline. It says, Stoicism is back. This is the slave doctrine to understand today's bosses and employees. So let's just say I was not optimistic about how the article would go. I thought it might be negative, let's say, as I've seen plenty. But there was this guy in the article, his name is David Hernandez de la Fuente, who is a philosopher and translator at the University of Madrid.

3:17I'll read you this passage. La Fuente describes Marx's meditations as the intellectual memoirs of a model ruler, as well as a book that was not conceived for us to read, but rather as the vehicle that this cultured man who had a contemplative attitude found to question himself. It's as if Marcus had two voices coexisting in his head, one that doubted and suffered, while the other acted as a teacher, offering comfort and certainties. And so they end up asking this professor what he thinks about the popularization of Stoicism, like what people like you and I are doing here listening to this podcast, you know, are we positive, negative?

3:58And typically, when I see academics respond to this, they have a negative response. I don't understand it, but they do. So I was very excited when I saw him describe it as not just legitimate. He says, after all, philosophy has always been vulgarized to adapt it to all types of audiences. Ultimately, it doesn't matter too much if you come into contact with stoicism through an informative book, a podcast, a website, a television program, or a tweet. If it captures your interest, you will take it upon yourself to delve deeper into it. You will end up exploring at your own pace, a very ancient doctrine that continues to offer crucial lessons for the present.

4:37So anyways, I read all this and I said, I got to talk to this dude. Because obviously, you know, I'm fascinated with meditations. We just did this leather edition, the Gregory Hayes translation, I'll link to that. And we just did this daily stoic course on how to read meditations and what we should take out of it. So I thought it would be so interesting to talk to someone. And I don't know why I really hadn't thought about this. Maybe it's because with my own books, like when they get translated, it's like, it's just this black box, like someone will just send me the Spanish translation of one of my books or the Korean translation of one of my books or the Mongolian edition of one of my books.

5:09I've never really got to interact with any of these translators. So I hadn't thought much about the fact that somebody's translating meditations from ancient Greek or Latin into the language of their time. And that just as there's many generations of English translations and many available right now. Not all of them are good. Some are great. They're always doing new ones. Well, how does that look in Spanish? And so I was just really fascinated by what a Spanish translator might think of Marcus Aurelius and what his perspective on Marcus Aurelius might be. And so I reached out and it was a lovely conversation.

5:46I'm so glad I got to have it. I'll link to his edition of Marcus Aurelius. He said he's also working on Epictetus. So I'm excited maybe to have him back on. But if you read Spanish, maybe check out this edition. If you go to the University of Madrid, well, he sounds like an awesome person to take classes from. I really enjoyed this conversation. And one of the things we nerded out in the end is that Seneca was Spanish. She was born in a Spanish province of the Roman Empire. So there was just a lot to talk about. It was a great conversation. Thank you to Professor David Hernandez de la Fuente. And thanks to the University of Madrid for supporting his wonderful work.

6:26And I hope you enjoy this conversation. If you want to learn more about meditations, of course, we carry the Gregory Hayes translation at The Painted Porch. We have the leather edition that we sell at Daily Stoic. And then we just did this awesome course on meditations as I was talking about. So if you want to do a deep dive into meditations, I will link to that in today's show notes.

6:51I'm really excited to talk. We were both in an article together. I think that's how I heard about your stuff. I have noticed in my experience that amongst academics with the Stoics, there can be kind of a snobbery is the wrong word, but there is like almost a resentment about the popularity of this school of philosophy. And I noticed in your answers, you seemed to, one, genuinely be a fan of Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics and then excited that he was reaching a new audience. You're definitely right. There are some academics who are not especially happy about the renaissance of Stoicism, but that's not my case.

7:33I think it's very good news, actually, for all of us working on ancient philosophy that there is such a revival, a renaissance of our studies. So I'm happy about that. Walk me through your introduction to the Stelics and to Marcus Aurelius specifically. I studied classics and I did my PhD on late antiquity on an author of the 5th century. Nonus of Panopolis, a poet who has a very rich philosophical vocabulary. I got into philosophy from poetry. That was my introduction to philosophy. So I went into Neoplatonism first, and then into other philosophical trends of the Roman Empire, especially from the second century onwards.

8:20That's how I was involved in Stoicism and in the translation of Marcus Aurelius. Now I'm working on Epictetus, which is very exciting also because there are like two phases of one metadon. Very, very, very exciting also. There's something amazing about the most powerful man in the world and a totally powerless man in essentially the same world, falling in love with the same philosophy and thinking and talking about the same ideas. That's right. A former slave, master to so many Romans from the elite, even Marcus Aurelius acknowledged, seemed as a master. And on the other hand, the most powerful man of the world in his epoch.

9:07That's no paradox. I think there is a common ground to both thinkers in the search for inner freedom, stability. well, it's a turbulent world late antiquity from the second century onwards and no wonder that all Romans from different social classes and worlds like a philosopher and a politician are looking for the same answers as many Romans in that time as nowadays we look for answers in our troubled world and it's very interesting because we also edited a collective book about the three main heads of Roman Stoicism, including also Seneca, of course, from Hispania, no, from a Spanish ascent, which is also very appealing for us Spaniards.

10:00He was from a consular family, very well established, so it's a very interesting world. All these Roman elites were very attracted to Stoicism, and it's a way of joining Greece and Rome also together, because, Of course, Stoicism has a long history before Ra, which is also very interesting to research. Yeah, I was thinking about that recently, the idea that Stoicism was ancient philosophy to Marcus Aurelius also, because it's 400 some years old by the time he comes to it. he would have seen it as a very old and timeless tradition that, you know, had lasted through the centuries. Just as we now look back to ancient Rome, he was looking back to ancient Greece and going, oh, these people a long time ago, you know, they figured it out.

10:53Yeah, they were also looking for references in a time of trouble, which is what we do now. After the pandemics, one of my books about looking for answers in the ancient world was very successful. I was dealing with modern politics, society, pandemics, our response to the pandemics. And I think we are all looking for models in Antipode. That's why the prestige of Roman and Greek and Roman authors is so huge nowadays. And of course, for the Romans, the Greeks were the classics. They were looking to Pericles' era, Plato's dialogues, Aristotle. They wanted to look up to those models of prestation and education, Greek paideia.

11:41So it's also very interesting that being a Roman, Marcus Aurelius chose Greek as his language for philosophy, which is no novelty, of course. Many, many other Romans wrote in Greek, including Emperor Hadrian, his patron. That's how I got into it, because I'm a professor for Greek philology, so I'm not a philosopher myself. And that's why maybe I look with a more open mind this phenomenon of neo-stoicism, which is very, very appealing to me also. Well, I was thinking about the language barrier, and it's interesting. So you would have read and been introduced to the Stoics and philosophy in Greek and in Latin, not in Spanish, right?

12:27You would have read them in their more or less original tongues. And then it's funny for me to think we've read, obviously, this same book. We share this love of Marcus Aurelius. But I can't read your translation of Meditations despite having taken, I think, cumulatively like six years of Spanish in high school and college. But we never got to anything good. We only talked about how to find the library or what we wanted to have for lunch. But the idea that you are reading and thinking in multiple languages is really interesting to me. Actually, there is a long tradition of Stoic studies in Spain.

13:05Before the first edition, first modern edition in the 16th century of the text of Marcus Aurelius in Greek with the Latin translation, there was a very interesting guy, Antonio de Guevara, who was working at the court of Emperor Charles I of Spain and fifth of Germany. So the most powerful man of his era also. He had a huge empire. And this guy, Antonio Guevara, was a bishop from northern Spain. He was writing a book for the education of the John Prince Philip II based on Marcus Aurelius. He didn't know the text quite well because he was making up a lot of things. He had an incredible imagination.

13:44But it was the most popular book at his time. It's called The Golden Book by Marcus Aurelius. But as I said, he was making things happen. So he didn't really know the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. But it's very interesting because in Spain, and we were really fascinated at the time of the empire, Charles I was looking for also for a model in Philip the Tecum in Marcus Aurelius as a good emperor, which is a long history of admiration for this emperor. So when you sit down to translate it into Spanish, I guess Marcus Aurelius is writing meditations in Greek, and then you're translating it into Spanish, right?

14:23My favorite translation, this is the translation I read when I was in college, this is the Gregory Hayes translation, which I think is the most beautiful and lyrical of the English editions. And I find such a big difference between the different English translators. As you sat down to do it in Spanish, what do you think the Spanish language captures in Marcus that maybe these other languages can't quite get? Nowadays, available in the market, like 10 translations, very different. In Spanish? In Spanish, because there is a fashion about Marcus Aurelius, of course. I would say that my translation attempts to update the language of Marcus Hercules in current modern Spanish and make it accessible to everyone.

15:07I think the question of diminutives is very interesting because he uses in Greek a lot of diminutives, which many other translators translate in Spanish as diminutives, like little soul, little body. He says somatium or something like that in Greek. I think that's wrong, because it's like an intimate way of addressing himself and dealing with vocabulary, which is not exactly normal, not everyday Greek. Secret diary, in a way. So he's speaking with himself in a very peculiar language. We shouldn't translate it with a very strict grammar, I would say. That I noticed in many other translations. There are, of course, translations from the Golden Age.

15:47There is a very famous 18th century translation into Spanish. Another time of our history where Marcus Aurelius' work was highly esteemed was the Enlightenment, like Charles III. Because, of course, also Friedrich the Great from Prussia, they loved Marcus Aurelius as a model of intellectual ruler. And that's a very old-fashioned translation. So we have like 10, as I said, available translations. but I think young readers, my transition is addressed to, especially to young readers, who never had an acquaintance with ancient Greek or Latin, and they want to get into the philosophy of this wonderful thinker.

16:31And I'm trying to make it accessible. This is an important thing, no? Be it for Latin Americans or for Spaniards, I mean, the language is very, I tried to make it simple and put not so many notes, footnotes, or like there's an introduction. And in conversion to other translation, I would say that I'm trying to let Marcus speak to everyone. This was my idea. So still, the translator's role is very ungrateful, I would say. Sometimes I feel I'm betraying in a way Marcus. We all betraying him in a way. He didn't want us to read his book. Yes. Yeah, no, I totally agree. There's something remarkable about a man writing something totally to himself for private purposes, so specific.

17:20And somehow, as a result of that specificity, it becomes universal and timeless. But yeah, I suspect he would be mortified, if not upset, that we are talking about this. because he seems, I just suspect he would have done it differently had he known that he would have an audience, which is what makes it so pure and authentic and real, is that he wasn't performing. That's right. I agree. I definitely agree. And the comparison with Epictetus is very remarkable because it's the opposite completely. There are notes from a student, from Arian, taking notes and summarizing his thought, which give us another view of stoicism, which is complementary and very interesting also.

18:08I was just thinking about the first book of Meditations recently, Debts and Lessons, is how it's translated in the Gregory Hayes translation. That's the title that he gives it. But most of the other editions don't give any of the books titles at all, except for two and three have a little location demarcation to them. But we don't really know how it was organized when Marcus wrote it. What is your view? Is your view that this is like somebody found this text, you know, just on Marcus Aurelius' desk when he died? Or as you're translating and working with it, did you get the sense that there had been another editor between you and Marcus moving things around or organizing them around themes?

18:50Great question. I think it's one of the most fascinating stories in the history of philology, the transmission of Marcus's book, because it's a mystery. We simply don't know. It simply pops out in a moment of history in the 8th century, 9th century, with a bit from Caesarea, a Byzantine bishop. Suddenly he finds this manuscript. He borrows the book from another guy. We simply don't know. No, I mean, my thing is that there was some kind of arrangement, editorial arrangement. First book is devoted to his family, masters, etc. And the last book, 12th book, is devoted mostly to death, how to depart.

19:33But the rest is like a symphony with different movements, with leitmotifs. It's very personal. I simply think that the editor didn't dare to rearrange things because it was too personal. He divided things in books because it was a way of doing it in antiquity. We know that, well, books were written before in, forgive me, my English is very poor, but tablets, you say, or tablets. And then passed to papayri or to other, to pergamum in different roles or codices. But we simply don't know anything about this transmission. It's quite a mystery. We have some references in the 4th century. Some authors might have known and read Marcus, but it's fascinating, really.

20:22It's like a detective story for popularists. It's kind of crazy to think we could wake up one day and they could discover something at some excavation site or some lost library and we could get an original edition of Marcus Aurelius or we could get additional books or additional letters. I'm thinking about the excavations they're doing at Pompeii where they're discovering these old scrolls that they can now x-ray and look inside and find what's in there. I mean, we could find more Epictetus. We could find the lost works of Chrysippus. We could find Zeno's Republic. I think it's important to realize, although we have so many texts from the Stoics, we really just have a random smattering of these surviving works.

21:09And it's by no means a complete picture. We're just kind of deducing what Marcus Aurelius thought and felt based on what he was writing to himself, which is why I often point out to people who think that Marcus Aurelius is maybe a little dark or depressing or that he doesn't talk about joy or love or certain themes enough. I try to remind them, hey, look, this is what he needed the most help on, not what he thought was the most important. The stuff that came naturally to him or that was going well, he just didn't write about. Yeah, that's right. We were lucky with Platonism and Aristotelianism because we have a lot we have whole books the whole picture but with Stoicism or Epicureanism we just have fragments as you said of course they have a logic, metaphysics they have a philosophy poetics aesthetics, everything but we just have the excerpts here and there which we dream with these new findings in Herculaneum and Pompeii.

22:19I'm particularly excited about Herculaneum, the papyri of this Epicurean library. We can find wonderful books there. And the most exciting thing is that they're only excavating the first part, one side of the library, which is in Greek, but in ancient libraries normally, the Latin side was in the other area. So that's completely unexcavated. So what can we find there? There may be some more things by Cicero, Lucrezius, other Roman philosophers, because the poets are very important for the Epicurean world. But you're right. We have only these particular views on Marcus, what he needed most in that moment of pain, of remembrance, suffering in the borders of the empire, fighting with the Germanic tribes.

23:06It's a wonder we have this book, really.

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26:19you mentioned stoic physics there and it struck me that it probably says something though that uh you have the private thoughts of marcus rio so what he was really thinking about and really working on and he effectively says nothing about stoic physics whatsoever you really see the superfluous parts of the philosophy fall away and he really just focuses on here's what you could use in your actual life. And so sometimes today, academics sort of point out, oh, you know, we're only talking about one part of Stoic philosophy. But I think even in ancient Greece and Rome, it's pretty clear what they were actually focused on.

26:58Yeah, I agree. Especially in Roman times, they were very keen on ethics, which was the most useful or practical part of philosophy. There is a long history of Stoicism. We have Zeno, Precebus. There was a book on poetics, even. Many, we have some fragments of, some knowledge of what they thought about all these topics, but since the Romans were so interested in ethics, that's why we have Seneca and Epictetus writing always about that. But they found it more useful, in a way, in that time. You know, that's why we don't have the rest. But still, we can expect some surprises, I hope. I wanted to go back to translations for a second, because what I've always loved about this Gregory Hayes translation is just how poetic and beautiful Marcus is as a writer.

27:53And sometimes when I read other translations, that falls away. He comes off as a little wooden or a little dark. But he really was, in my view, an incredible writer who had this, not just a way with words, but a way with images. and it is all the more remarkable when you realize he was doing this just for himself. It's like walking into a room and a musician doesn't know you're there and you're just hearing them play beautifully and effortlessly, but solely for their own edification and their own exploration of the instrument. You know, they're not showing off because they don't know that you're behind them.

28:30As you sat down to render Marcus, were you struck by his ability to just play with words? I feel like he really makes his rhetoric teacher, Franto, so proud in the pages of Meditations. Yeah, definitely. This is a very good comparison, very beautiful. Because it's like we are buying on a musician and we hear him improvising. And it's beautiful. He's a great writer. I cannot imagine how much work by Marcus would have been. It would have been perfect. I'm very in love with his metaphors, for example, of comparisons and images. Metaphors from the natural world, the animal world, nature in general, sports, fighting, boxing, or metaphors of light and self-awareness.

29:22Well, he quotes also, he has read a lot of strategy. He has read a lot of comedy, philosophy. he quotes by heart. I don't think he had a lot of books with himself in the borders of Pannonia. He has a huge culture. And he's definitely a Greek writer. Sensibility with words, with attitudination, verbs. Still, his Greek is very difficult to me. In comparison with Epictetus, his Greek is very simple. Maybe because they are like the handbook and the dientries are school work in a way, you know, for his students. But it's very personal, very hard to translate in some points. One of my favorite passages is the one where he talks about stalks of grain bending low under its own weight, or that he talks about, you know, the flex of foam on a boar's mouth or the furrowed brow of a lion.

30:19I love where he talks about, he says, the way bread opens in the oven and how we don't know why, but it's sort of, he calls it nature's inadvertence. I kind of feel like meditations is an example of that also, because it's this thing for private purposes, but as a byproduct, an accident, it's also a beautiful and profound work of literature. Very much so. I agree. The metaphor of the bread is together with a comparison with the lion's mouth or jaws. And it's an expected treasure we found. It's a jewel. It's a pearl in the middle of the ocean. I agree. It's a mystery how we have this book and we have to enjoy it.

31:06So it was a privilege to translate it and to be the voice of Marcus in Spanish. I'm very proud of it. And it's a challenge, of course, because I want to be faithful to this world. And, well, when When I started reading Marcus and trying to translate it into Spanish, I realized the wonderful writer he is. I myself write novels, apart from essays and academic work. We know some other Roman emperors wrote literature. Adriana, as I said, or Augustus, they wrote history, poetry. Nilo, purportedly, also wrote poetry. But Marcus is so original, so authentic, because there is no imposter. I mean, it's a real thing.

31:48The very fact that he writes from himself is a guarantee for the authenticity of his views and his language also. There is no fake Marcus. Do you feel like translating Marcus Durelius has made you a better writer? I feel like having these words go through me over and over again and getting to riff, just like a musician, you're a product of all the songs that you've ever learned. And I think having typed and retyped all these beautiful sentences from 1800 years ago, it's made me a better writer. Put aside better thinker that the ideas have helped me in stressful or difficult moments. I feel like as a writer, he has shaped me a great deal.

32:32Yeah, me too. I mean, I think translation is the best school of writing. You can learn from the masters. It's the best possible practice. And it makes you, no doubt, a better writer. And in the case of Marcus, translating Plato, for example, is wonderful also. Makes you a better person, no doubt. It's like Mozart, if you're a musician of Schubert. I'm very amazed because some of my colleagues in the faculty, they're bored of translating over and over, always the same texts. Yes. I think a professor of the music school of the conservatorium, bored of playing Mozart. I mean, this is the best we have from the history of music.

33:12From the history of thought, the best we have is Marcus, Plato. So, of course, we have to translate it over and over. That's why when people ask me, why another translation of Marcus? We have 10 already. Why yours is so special? Why do you think you can make something different? Well, I just enjoy teaching him and teaching his views, translating in the class. That's why we have to do. Well, Marcus was fond of Heraclitus, and Heraclitus said that we never step in the same river twice. And I think, you know, it doesn't matter how many times it's been translated. Something new gets discovered each time.

33:47Just like every time you pick meditations up and you can see mine's, I've had to tape it together. I've got, you know, I've put some miles on this book. As I was waiting for you to come on, I was flipping through it and I can see all my old notes, but I'm a different person. Even though the pages are the same, we take something new out of it. And, you know, when you read Marcus Aurelius at 15, you're going to take something very different than if you read him at 50. And hopefully you're still reading him at 80 or 90 or however old you're lucky enough to live. But you get something new out of it each time.

34:22Yeah. There is an Italian writer, Italo Calvino, who has a wonderful book on why reading the classics. He says that a classic is a book that never stops saying what it has to say. all over your life. You cannot say, I'm reading it because you're rereading it because you have it inside already. You cannot say, I'm rereading it because you're reading it for the first time. It's something new. And there is an Argentinian writer, Borges, who I love. He has a poem on the Odyssey. He says that the Odyssey of Homer is new. Every time he opens the book, it's like the sea. He sees different colors, shapes.

35:02It's wonderful if you read that. It happens with all the classics think of Shakespeare or Cervantes? I read The Odyssey in two different translations. I read it in school also. And my son, he's seven. He somehow heard about The Odyssey from a video or something. And he asked me to read it to him. And to reread the book for a child has been a whole other experience. And then as it happens, we found this, there's this musician whose name, I'm forgetting, it's called, but the album is called Epic. And he did sort of like a rock opera, like a musical about the Odyssey, and then to listen to music about the same stories.

35:39I think there's something powerful about approaching a great work, whether it's Meditations or the Odyssey, or even one of the great English novels, The Great Gatsby. Any book that you come to again and again, and you look at from all these different angles, you see from a different perspective each time. And there's something very powerful about that. Yeah, it happens with all these classical books. We're lucky also to watch movies based on the Odysseys, musical, and try to transmit it to the children. It's a feeling as if we knew it from a previous time. There's a very nice page by Plato. He says, of course, Socrates thought we don't learn, we remember.

36:21And he says in the theaters that there is an immortal seed within us. And there are some stories that we call of that ancient wisdom. I mean, the Odyssey. It's universal. The homecoming of a hero after 20 years of battle and all these adventures. And finally, he will get his happy ending with his wife and child. This is universal. This is the magic of Homer. And with Plato, it happens as well. These are the most beautiful works of literature and philosophy also. And we are very lucky to be working on them. It's a privilege. it. And I like what you said there, because one of the things that strikes you when you read meditations is how not new it feels.

37:10There's nothing in meditations that I can remember reading that I thought I've never heard that before. That's totally new. There's something about it that sounds like wisdom from your grandparents, wisdom from history, wisdom from literature and art, it feels like it's always been with us. And in a way it has, because, you know, Marcus Aurelius is himself just riffing on and rewriting all the things that he was taught, you know? So there's thousands of years of wisdom leading up to meditations, and then thousands of years of that wisdom being riffed on and re-explained and re-articulated subsequently.

37:52But there is something, I don't know, it's like you open up meditations and you feel like you're at home. You feel like you're in something you're supposed to be in, and in fact, always have been. And you're not reading it and you go, oh, this is groundbreaking. And yet, it does kind of shake you to your core. It is very eye-opening and earth-shattering, as familiar as it is. It's a really paradoxical thing. If we were a new Platonic or Platonic, we would speak of the golden chain. We're in a chain of this tradition, this wisdom, wise tradition from the ancient to the wisdom from our masters, these old dead writers with whom we still dine of nowadays.

38:44This magical familiarity we have with Marcus, He's like an old grandfather of us speaking to us directly. It's very remarkable. It makes him a classic. Yes. In a way. Well, it was funny. I was just thinking of a translator experience that I had that maybe you might relate to, or maybe it springs up some for you. So I did this book a couple of years ago called The Daily Stoic, which is one page of stoicism every day. And we had that passage in there from Marcus about the wheat bending low under its own weight. The translator I worked with, Steve Hanselman, who's actually my book agent. We go way back.

39:17He translated it. He said the weight of corn bending low under its own weight. And my editor came back and said, hey, I think this is a mistake because, you know, they didn't discover corn until the 1600s when pilgrims and explorers made it to America. And we had to discuss how actually in the English language, corn refers to all the cereal grains, you know, wheat and oats and barley. And that's why in England they had the corn laws, which weren't about corn at all, but about, you know, all the different forms of flour, basically. But it was so funny to have this discussion about, you know, well, what plant is Marcus referring to here?

40:02Of course, to me, I think wheat because, you know, the haunting image in the movie Gladiator where he's walking through the field and he's dragging his hands along it. But it was just such a funny discussion to be like, no, no, no, he couldn't have been saying this because that didn't exist when he was writing meditations. Sometimes we translate to where I have to deal with this anachronism. But sometimes they are necessary also. think, for example, of the translations of the Bible to many different peoples. How do you translate for people who never saw a lamp? That Christ is a lamp. Yes. They never saw a lamp.

40:46So some Spanish priests traveling to the north or to America, how can you make Native Americans understand what's a lamp if they never saw one? And there are interesting experiments about that, no? So you take the animal that for them is a symbol for renewal of life. And you have to be it's a seal, a capybara, whatever. So maybe you have to find a translation, a new way of making this classical work comprehensible. So there are many anecdotes about that. So people think meditations is this dark work. And I was actually the comedian. Do you know who the comedian Jerry Seinfeld is? Yes. So he's been reading meditations lately and been talking about Marcus Aurelius.

41:34And so I connected with him through someone and I sent him this copy. And I wanted to point out that Marcus Aurelius isn't all dark. There's a pretty funny joke in meditations for people who skip over it. Marcus Surillos is talking about. And it's an old joke. So Marcus must have had a sense of humor for him to repeat this off the top of his head. But he talks about a man who's so rich and has so much stuff that he has no place to shit in his house. And I love that because the joke's not that good. But I love the idea of him thinking it was good, him finding humor, because that combats the stereotype of the humorless stoic to me.

42:16Philosophy in general uses humor a lot. Also Socrates, for example, used irony, of course, and many others. It's a very good way to make good points. It's true. Marcus O 'Reilly had a sense of humor as well. He's quoting from comedies also. So he enjoyed comedies. Yeah, he has one too where it's kind of a morbid joke. But he says, are you afraid of death because you won't be able to do this anymore? And I take that to, you know, I think if I'm waiting in line to get my driver's license updated or I'm stuck in traffic or I'm speaking to a really boring person, I think of that joke. I go, I want to live forever so I can do more of this crap.

43:05You know, I think I think of Marcus being funny and morbid there. Just the absurdity of existence. Obviously, it's this sacred, wonderful thing, but it's also so stupid, too. Yeah, it's stupid to want to live forever. That's why he has very, very good points everywhere. So you said it's like so familiar. Everything he says makes a lot of sense for every one of us every day. So I think he makes a bunch of people. So no wonder that he's so beloved nowadays. days. That's why I'm happy about all this renaissance of Stoicism, as I would say. And you said something in that article we were both in about how philosophy has always been vulgarized and popularized, that that's the process that's been going on for thousands of years.

43:58There were probably Greek cynics who didn't like that the Romans were using Stoicism. You know, So the idea of philosophy being popularized and made accessible to the masses, that's not something that's new by any stretch. Not at all. In fact, my academic work is precisely dealing with that, with the way philosophical discourse was popularized through literature, through poetry, which is my field, or theater. so we have we find vocabulary from philosophy everywhere of course writers in general didn't know about the complex theories of physics of the stoics of the plateauis or whatever but this work were in the public discourse in public debate politics also politicians so there was always this kind of popularization of philosophy it's no novelty of course there are some guardians of the orthodoxy, who are not happy that we mortals, common mortals deal with philosophy I'm not a philosopher myself, I'm a philosopher but I find it wonderful because it makes you live more happily better, so why not I mean, let's simply enjoy philosophy, it's the best way I love Epicureanism a lot as well and there is this epistle to many sews by Epicureans thinking that it's never too late to get into philosophy.

45:33It's never too early. Go for philosophy because it's the best. It's salvation. It's the best thing that you can do, no? So let's forget about this Guardians of the Orthodoxy, I think. Yeah, the word the kids use these days is gatekeepers. We call it gatekeeping when you try to keep people out of something that should be accessible to them. And, you know, there's a new movie. There's a new Gladiator movie coming out, and I'm sure there'll be more of this. And then I think, you know, Shakespeare is presenting a caricature of a Stoic when he does Brutus in Julius Caesar. You know, the idea of taking these characters that have lived by these ideas and trying to render them on the stage or on the screen or on the page.

46:17I mean, people have been doing that for as long as we've had those things. I mean, they were making fun of Socrates in plays in ancient Athens. And that's kind of what made him famous to begin with.

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49:27It's very funny to read about philosophers. The jokes about philosophers were a genre in antiquity. You have comedies on Pythagoreans. They are always dirty. They don't wash themselves or they don't eat meat. Of course, they make fun of Pythagoreans because they are vegetarians or they have strange views on sex or strange food habits, not eating beans or all these things. So it's easy to make fun of philosophers. It's a funny way of learning what they say and why it is relevant for us. For example, the lives of philosophers by the Ogenes diartus. It's a compilation of anecdotes. It's very funny to read that, I don't know, an exagoras died because he was always looking at stars and he fell into a hole and he died.

50:15I don't know, Thales of Miletus died because he said everything was humidity, water, and he had a faint water or something like that. He had a disease related to humidity, goats, I think. They make fun of philosophers all the time. When we're supposed to believe one of the Stoics died of laughter, which he almost certainly didn't. But to me, that's again, what that's actually telling us is that in the ancient world, the Stoics weren't seen as humorless. They were much more well-rounded characters than perhaps we see them now. And being well-rounded also includes your flaws and your absurdities.

50:54Yeah, there are so many anecdotes about the serious and the laughing philosophers. For example, in Prado Museums in Madrid, we have these two paintings, Democritus and Heracusus. Laughing philosophers versus the serious one, weeping philosopher, which is untrue because Heracusus has a sense of humor. We don't like him very much because he was anti-democratic and he was a little He had a bad temper, probably. And democracy looks more appealing to us in a modern way. But there is this tradition of jokes about philosophy. For example, I don't know if they have read this modern philosopher Slavo Zizek.

51:35He's from Ljubljana. He's very popular. He makes a lot of jokes. Voltaire, he used a lot of humor. Normally, we see philosophers as a very serious and strange race of people, Heidegger, Nietzsche, or with his mustache, but we can learn a lot about them, about life, about death, about our, you know, how to live a better life with this sense of humor that they transmit. Well, let's talk about the great Spanish Stoic Seneca, because I think when people think of the Roman Empire, they don't think that one of its greatest playwrights and philosophers could have come from as far as Spain. I think it's hard for people, because Italy and Rome still exist, to conceive of just how incredibly big the Roman Empire was.

52:26I mean, you can walk about 20 minutes outside of Budapest and be in a city where Marcus Aurelius wrote some meditations. But to go back to Seneca, how do you see Seneca as someone in Spain? Well, he's very, very popular here, of course. I must say all the Latin authors born in Spain are, and the emperors, of course, Freja, Hadrian. Of course, Marcus Aurelius was also of Spanish, of Hispanic or accent from southern Spain, from Bética. Córdoba, Ocubi, the old names, nowadays Córdoba, Espejo, America, Gustavo, the movie Gladiator, part of it takes place. They were very rich cities and very sophisticated because South Spain was very early Romanized from the 3rd century before Christ.

53:20So the Roman culture was very lively there. There are many writers like Quintilian, Columella, great Latin poets also as Plutentius, Marcia, etc. They are very popular in every town where they were born, of course. especially Seneca, who is the most famous one. And there are two Senecas, also the elder, the rhetorician, who was also stemming from Cordoba. And, well, he's a celebrity here, of course. And also the funny thing is that later on in the Middle Ages, or early Middle Ages, like the Visigotic Kingdom in the 6th century, Isidore of Seville, and a lot of writers and thinkers of the early medieval and later times were, well, vindicating him as the foreman of Spanish philosophy, which is, of course, untrue.

54:13He was a Roman, first of all. You cannot speak about Spain at that time. You can't speak about Hispania, the province. But in a way, he's seen as a president of Ortega y Gasset or Unamuno, the greatest Spanish philosophers of the 20th century. and also in the Renaissance, etc. And his work was very early translated into Spanish already in the golden age, 16th and 17th centuries. And he was also widely, I mean, always widely read in schools, of course. And I don't know if his philosophy has Spanish flavor in a way. I don't know. I wouldn't say, I wouldn't dare to say. But his whole life and work are amazing.

55:01also, to recall. And his writings, especially the letters to the Sillians, are a monument also of practical wisdom and stoicism. And his own life also. It's very remarkable how he stayed, how he died with... Tacitus tells us how, oh, the suicide. All his life is a novel. It's also fascinating. It's an inspiring, cautionary tale, Seneca's life. You know, he's He's probably the most beautiful of the Stoic writers and then in many ways, I think, fails to live up to those Stoic ideas or is forced to compromise them in the reality of living in the time of tyranny. Yeah, of course, there are some contradictions in his life.

55:51For some scholars, he's not so popular or so beloved because of his economic activities, loans, fortune. He had a fortune. He was very enormously rich, one of the richest man we pay. But well, he deals with his contradictions, as we all do. One of my favorite pieces of art, you mentioned the Prado, is that statue of Seneca talking to Nero. Have you seen this one? And you have Seneca, so it's seemingly so inspired to teach. And then you have Nero just kind of sitting there, you know, like, probably like some of your students sometime, just they don't want to be there. And they're not interested at all.

56:32I mean, it's not a very old statue. I thought it was, I was hoping it was from, you know, like, contemporary times, but it's actually like from the 1900s or something. But I love that statue. I think about it so much. Yeah, of course, we have a lot of couples of master and student in the field of philosophy and politics, not only Nero and Seneca, also Plato and Dionysus and many others, Alexander and Aristotle. This is a complicated relation, always, the politician and the philosopher. But speaking of Seneca's portraits, it's very interesting to recall the two main traditions, you know, there are two main traditions about how he looked like.

57:14Yes. For a long time, we thought he was very thin, pale with the art. But eventually, another post appeared, where he's kind of an old man with... He's more of an Epicurean than a Stoic, it seems like. Yeah, yeah. So this is a double tradition of his portraits. Of course, we all prefer the thin and romantic Seneca, no? But that's not the real thing. No, no, you're right though. The idea of the master and the student, you can listen or not listen, that we have an American saying you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. And that's what I've always thought that statue embodies.

57:54And then to go back to where we started, you know, to me, that's one of the most striking passages in book one of Meditations, where he says, you know, what Rusticus taught me to read attentively and not be satisfied with just getting the gist of it. And he says, and to not fall for every smooth talker. And then he says, and then for introducing me to Epictetus's lectures and loaning me his own copy. The fact that Marcus was introduced to the Stoics the same way that Nero was, he's a young boy being primed for leadership. Nero doesn't listen and it goes very poorly and Marcus Aurelius does listen and it goes much differently.

58:37It can change your life, something like that. I think we all can think of a teacher or master who changed our lives. I can think of one female professor in high school. She was amazing. She changed my entire world, but apparently not for other people. So we all have this kind of experiences. we can change people's life with our books, with our lessons with our daily work if we fulfill our mission that's why Marcus seems to tell us just do your thing you can make a great deal of difference if you do your work already things would have been very different if Nero had listened to Seneca or Dionysus to Plato or Alexander there to Aristotle.

59:28Or if Commodus had listened to Marcus Aurelius. We can imagine that statue recreating itself and Marcus Aurelius trying to press some of these books onto his son and his son rejecting them and it going so terribly. That's to me the thing that I've yet to figure out about Marcus Aurelius, and perhaps it's not figure out a bull, but how does it go so poorly with his son? Maybe he was writing meditations and he wanted it to go to Commodus. You know, maybe it was kind of an ethical will, as they call it. But for whatever reason, it didn't work. For some reason, maybe we are sometimes unable of changing our own children, making them understand.

1:00:15And it's very different the role of a father or a mother than the role of a master. That's why maybe he was not succeeded. It was complicated. He paid for the best education that communists could have, but it wasn't working. Not even his model as a ruling philosopher would influence him. So it was a catastrophe. It was, yeah. It's like communists' rebellion. You know, you always do the opposite of what your parents want to. And his dad was a good man and a good ruler. And his petulant rebellion was to be awful in every way that his dad was good. That's why I say that. Sometimes we need a teacher.

1:01:01Our parents think they don't work. I mean, like for that, no? We need an external input or something like that. Someone who can really do different, make a difference for us, no? I guess that's what happened with Commodus. Yes. Well, Professor, this was awesome. As we wrap up, I was going to ask you, what do you feel like your favorite passage in meditations is? Good question. There are so many, so many I love. I couldn't decide. There are so many. I mean, all these metaphors for nature, I would say. No, I would say that when he takes distance from our world and says, look at all that. Yes. running ants, fighting for a piece of bread.

1:01:47Everything's so relative. Don't give importance to what is nonsense. That is maybe my favorite one. Yes. Take things with cumicacalis, we would put it in Latin, with the due importance. In English, we'd say take the 10 ,000-foot view, right? Yeah. That's what he's talking about. And it's remarkable to think How high of a view could he have ever actually gotten? How high did Marcus Aurelius ever get off the ground? I don't know. It's a revolution of philosophy. In general, antiquity, not only Greece and Rome, but also China, India. These are times, the German philosopher Jaspers calls it the axial era, where suddenly a lot of people are taking this 10 ,000-foot view, you said?

1:02:38Yeah. They start looking at things differently, not with the ego, not with the self all the time, but taking distance. This is great. All the Greek masters of antiquity, also in Oriental traditions, do the same. And this is a revolution, I would say, as important as the Neolithic revolution of the culture, the cognitive revolution of the Homo sapiens. It's very important the revolution of wisdom and philosophy and religion also, of course. Buddha, Christ, Socrates, all these great masters of wisdom. And we have the ability to do easily what would have been technologically impossible for Marcus.

1:03:21We can look out the window of an airplane. We can get up in a 50-story building. We've seen the earth from space. We have perspective that he could only imagine. And we don't take advantage of it. True. We don't take advantage of so many things. We have the whole library of Alexandria in our pockets. Yes. And we scroll all the time the screen to watch bullshit. I mean, it's amazing. I mean, we could listen to the whole Schubert sonatas, read the whole Faulkner's work, whatever, and we waste our time. And this is a very good lesson from Marcos. Don't waste time. To me, the self-awareness, meditation, the introspection that he teaches, he's able to, of teaching us in our world, always he's hyper-connected with the cell phones and the social media.

1:04:13We need time for ourselves, for thinking to ourselves, as he did in Greek, to himself. And it's rooted in, you're right, an understanding of the shortness of life, to borrow Seneca's phrase, and the fact that we're all mortal and could go at any minute. Death is the best master. Well, Professor, this was wonderful and enlightening, and I really appreciate it. And if my Spanish ever gets good enough, I'll read your edition of Meditations. I do my Duolingo, but it's still pretty bad. I'm sure it's not so bad. Not worse than my English. Oh, it's so much worse. It's so embarrassing. I've given talks in Mexico and all these different countries.

1:04:59And you get up there and you speak in perfect English and everyone can understand you. And I can't even understand the introduction they're giving me. We Americans are very spoiled. Yeah. So please let me know whenever you come to Spain. I will. Something on Estolism. So it would be great. I would love that. Well, if there's anything I can ever do for you, let me know. Thanks a lot. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it.

1:05:39It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

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