This Is Where True Power Comes From

0:00Ryan Holiday: We just got back from an amazing vacation in Italy. I'll bring you some clips from it over the next couple weeks. I recorded a bunch of stuff while we were there. Although it was as hot as it has literally ever been. It's one of the best family trips we've ever had. And we stayed in this amazing palazzo that we booked on Airbnb. It was like 500 years old. It had all these Roman funerary headstones in it, which is this crazy memento mori thing. It was like staying in a museum. The hosts were incredible. They lovingly restored this place. They took amazing care of it. And by listing their place on Airbnb, they get to share this amazing experience with people from all over the world and get funds to put towards upkeeping and restoring their place.

0:43Ryan Holiday: If you're planning a trip this summer, it's worth considering listing your place on Airbnb. It can be a great way to help offset the cost of your vacation and earn a little extra money to put towards your next adventure. Your place might be worth more than you think. And all you got to do is go to airbnb.com slash host to find out more. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:14This is where true power comes from. The triumphal arches and victory columns, the forum and the coliseum, the Temple of Hadrian, the Arch of Titus, Marcus Aurelius' victory column. Rome is a monument to greatness and power, to fame and ambition. For all of Rome's monumental architecture, much of it commissioned and directed by the wealthy and the worldly, the important and the triumphant, it's easy to forget that one of the greatest people who ever lived walked the streets of ancient Rome almost entirely anonymously. Epictetus, whose name literally means acquired one, was a slave. He spent three decades of his life owned by another human being, toiling anonymously in Nero's court.

2:08Yet slowly, as he earned his freedom, literally and figuratively, through philosophy, he was becoming one of Rome's greatest thinkers. He was, as we've said, not just your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher. He was the favorite philosopher of two different emperors. He was read by those very emperors whose temples and arches and buildings he walked among. Hadrian went to Greece to hear Epictetus teach. A generation later, through one of his other students, a copy of his lectures made their way to Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher king. How did this happen? Epictetus was an embodiment of the Stoic idea that real power lay in command of yourself.

2:52You could command armies, you could live in a huge estate, but if you were a slave to your desires, if you were a slave to your fears, if you were a slave to things that were outside your control, then you were not powerful at all. To the question, who is your master? That was the most important question there was in his view. After years of studying Stoicism, them Epictetus could say, I am my own master. Freedom, true power to the Stoics is being in command of yourself. And that's what we've been talking about. That's what inspired Epictetus month here at Daily Stoic. Through all of August, we've been doing a deep dive into Epictetus, his life, his philosophy, how we can apply his lessons about anxiety and resilience and toughness and adaptability and ultimately freedom.

3:43We also learn how to be in command of ourselves. And so we've been reading Epictetus' discourses together as a community, and we've been walking people through it with our guide. As we've said, it's hard to read Epictetus without a guide. And it's been awesome. Whether you're new to Stoicism, whether you've read Meditations a Dozen Times, whether you've read Epictetus, we think this will all help you in a big way, and we think it'll challenge you to live it. and that's why this month you can get Epictetus's Discourses and his writings plus our How to Read Epictetus Guide for 30 % off and you can join us in this live Epictetus call we're doing today.

4:20I think you'll really like it. I would love to see you in there and remember if you join Daily Stoic Life you get this and all the courses we do for free. We've got another great one coming up here really shortly as well. All that at dailystoic.com slash Epictetus course or dailystoiclife.com.