We Owe It All To Them | What Marcus Aurelius Learned From His Mother

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, into the real world.

0:14Ryan Holiday: We owe it all to them. What put it in motion? What created it? How did it happen that a man found himself holding absolute power and not only wasn't corrupted by it, but stayed actively working on himself, trying to get better, always. Marcus Aurelius, the man we experience in meditations, was a remarkable person, a historical unicorn, an exception that proves the rule. Sure, we can credit stoicism and philosophy for this, but the true source, the most essential influence in his life, was something much earlier, something he was exposed to in literally his earliest days. Donald Robertson, Marcus Aurelius' greatest biographer, explained that the whole concept of writing the meditations is about following through on this thing Marcus remembers his mother saying when he was younger, which is to work on his character to improve his mind and not just his external behavior.

1:22Ryan Holiday: Something his mother said to him when he was younger, One of the greatest men to ever live. The most enduring work of philosophy that history has ever seen, and it was his mother that inspired it. In his own words and meditations, Marcus thanks his mother for her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong, he said, but even to conceive of doing it in the simple way she lived. What a beautiful sentiment that is to think about today. on Mother's Day. May we all be blessed with a mother like that, someone who loved us, who taught us, who modeled for us what the good life was.

2:05Ryan Holiday: And if you didn't get that from your biological mother, then it's worth remembering Seneca's line about the fact that while we cannot choose our parents, we do get to choose whose children we are. Today, you can think about and celebrate and thank the other maternal influences in your life, grandmothers, stepmothers, and aunts, teachers, neighbors, older sisters, mother-in-laws, our first caregivers, the ones who helped us grow and taught us what we needed to know about life, taught us about the potential always there inside us, showed us what unconditional support and belief looked like. We can also celebrate the mother of our own children, the one we did get to choose.

2:51Ryan Holiday: Today, we celebrate mothers for all the innumerable gifts they have given us, the wisdom they have bestowed on us, and the greatness they will always inspire in us. And we can give an extra nod to the great Domitia Lucilla, one of history's unsung heroes for the gift she gave Marcus Aurelius and that he passed on to us.

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6:21Ryan Holiday: Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a special episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You just heard a little Mother's Day message we sent out. We don't usually do a Daily Stoic email on the weekends, but I don't know. I was sort of inspired to write that, and I thought I'd share it. And then as I was thinking about what we do for today's episode, I thought I'd take that piece. The Donald Robertson quote that I said in that email is actually from his episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Donald Robertson is one of my favorite thinkers and writers about Stoic philosophy. He has a great book, a biography of Marcus Rullus that I like, and another book called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.

6:58Ryan Holiday: He came out to the Painter Porch bookstore, I think twice now, but one of the times he was there, I wanted to ask him about Marcus Aurelius' mother. I'm so fascinated by that sort of maternal influence on someone who is obviously so well-known as a sort of a masculine philosopher, I guess. But I think you can sense a sensitivity and a thoughtfulness. And Donald's point is that comes from Marcus Aurelius' mother. So that's what we're going to get into in today's episode. As I said, check out Donald's lovely books, How to Think Like Socrates, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, and Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Emperor.

7:32Ryan Holiday: And you can follow him on Instagram at Donald J. Robertson and on Twitter at Don J. Robertson. Have a happy Mother's Day, everyone. Enjoy this conversation. Stoicism is this thing that feels very masculine, very male-centric. but the primary influence on Marcus's life, you could argue, isn't Antoninus, it's his mother. She's this sort of quiet model of stoicism that historians and subsequent philosophers don't give enough credit to. But what does Marcus Aurelius learn from his mother? Well, you could, you know, at a stretch, you could view her as his first tutor. and you know he she's the only woman he mentions his sister fleetingly but other than that his mother is the only woman that he acknowledges in in book one of the meditations i think the most revealing thing about her is that fronto writes to marcus at one point and says i'm going to write a letter to your mum in greek right fronto is an expert on latin marcus's mother was not just fluent in Greek, like most Roman, most educated Romans would be bilingual and Latin and Greek, but she seems to be completely fluent in it.

8:50And Fronto, who's the most acclaimed Latin rhetorician in the world, writes this kind of slightly pathetic letter to Marcus saying, could you just check it for mistakes before I send it to your mum? Because I'd be embarrassed, you know, for her to read it and think I've, you know, like got the grammar slightly wrong or something right so and in roman society to look to a woman like that as a as your superior uh intellectually is unusual like frontal and also frontal mentions that his wife is like a student to marcus's mother he actually refers to her as marcus's mother's client meaning her kind of subordinate like her student so a bit of a strip but the picture kind of emerges of a woman who is like a multi-millionaire billionaire a construction industry magnate we have bricks with her name stamped on them that survive today right she owned clay fields and brick and tile factories that she inherited from her family she never remarried after marcus's father died she would have been in her early 20s or late teens when her husband died she remained single she marcus and her went to stay with marcus's paternal grandfather for a while but then they leave and they go back into her house which again shows unusual independence yeah in roman society and she seems to have surrounded herself with a kind of intellectual circle a kind of salon of which she is the centre.

10:30And so Marcus grew up in a sense in a school or among a circle of leading intellectuals. Herodes Atticus is another crazy guy, colourful figure. He's the most famous sophist of the period. He lived for a while in the same household as Marcus's mother. So he's a close family friend. He later becomes Marcus's Greek rhetoric tutor. So Marcus's mother is mingling, you know, as maybe family friends with or grew up alongside the most famous Greek orator and sophist of the period. She seems to be familiar with Rusticus. Marcus mentions that Rusticus wrote a letter. Maybe she chose Rusticus to be Marcus's tutor.

11:17There's another really obscure clue in the meditations that I didn't notice until I was working on this another biography mentions that the Marcus in passing mentions a guy called Domitius who we don't know anything about who he said heaped praise on his he was very generous and heaping praise on his philosophy tutor and the tutor that he mentions is a guy called Athenadotus who is known to be a stoic teacher so there's a guy who really loves stoic teachers and his name is the masculine version of domitia which is marcus's mother's family name so he may have been an uncle or some other relative of marcus's mother so there's a tiny you know when you're quite a scene when you're really digging you know there's a hint there that marcus's mom's family already have links to stoicism and connections with leading intellectuals she seems more into literature yeah she's an expert on language and rhetoric she must be reading plays then and other literature there's not much indication directly linking her with philosophy her family have a long history of being associated with the region of italy that traditionally was colonized by greece and speaks Greek.

12:44So Marcus grew up in this household where he would have studied Greek literature and where his mom may have been steering him towards Stoic philosophy. We're also told she lived quite an astere. She's another one of these billionaires, you know, who supposedly lives very simply.

13:03Ryan Holiday: It says, my mother, her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability, not only to do wrong, but even to conceive of doing it and the simple way she lived, not in the least like the rich. And she's also said to be unlike the Roman elite in another way. Frontal kind of notoriously says there's no word in Latin for philistorgia or natural affection. And he says, because it's a quality, I think he says this moment once, it's a quality completely lacking among the Roman elite. But he clearly thinks that Marcus is the exception and his mum. But they're not typical Romans because they're kind of Gratianized to some extent.

13:46And so I think Fronto's kind of implying this is a quality that's more common in the Greek world.

13:52Ryan Holiday: And he's not a mama's boy, but isn't one of the stories we have of Marcus Aurelius crying that he doesn't want to have to move out of his mother's house and into the... She creates such a good home. such a place of love and affection and comfort and security, the things that supposedly a Stoic is not interested in, that he doesn't want to leave. He's definitely closer. So in the letters with Fronto, she gets mentioned quite a lot. And Fronto is like always saying, oh, say hi to your mom and things like that. But Marcus, even after he's married, I don't think he ever, or Faustina only gets mentioned very fleetingly.

14:30So it's interesting, you think, they always mention his mom, but they don't really mention his wife. right and they clear the way that fronto talks about her is with reverence like you know it really it really comes through not just as a powerful and wealthy roman woman but as an his intellectual superior yeah in some ways so she i wish we knew more about her right and this what she says it's just one fleeting little remark there you know not to uh only to avoid wrongdoing in your actions, but also in your thoughts. In a way that sets up the entire agenda for writing the meditations. The whole concept - That's the ideal that Marcus is aspiring to all his life.

15:13Yeah. The whole concept of writing the meditations is about following through on this thing that he remembers his mother saying at the beginning, which is to work on his character, to improve his mind, not just his external behavior.

15:26Ryan Holiday: And so I think it's really important that we don't just, when we run down the lists of famous Stoics, it's not just the people who wrote about Stoicism. It's this whole other half of society that embodied the Stoic ideals within the confines of a society that was inherently misogynistic and patriarchal, although there were exceptions to that rule. But ultimately, it's like we focus too much on the Stoic generals and the Stoic philosophers and thinkers, and we don't forget who they were actually aspiring to be like. Like in Marcus's case, it's like his mother is the philosophical model for what he's trying to, she's kind of naturally effortlessly this thing that he's very deliberately and methodically having to cultivate inside of himself.

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