How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

by Donald J. Robertson

THE STORY OF STOICISM Marcus Aurelius was the last famous Stoic of the ancient world. However, the story of Stoicism began almost five hundred years prior to his death, with a shipwreck. A wealthy young Phoenician merchant from the island of Cyprus named Zeno of Citium was transporting his cargo of purple dye across the Mediterranean. Many thousands of fermented shellfish had to be painstakingly dissected by hand to extract just a few grams of this priceless commodity, known as imperial or royal purple because it was used to dye the robes of emperors and kings. The ship was caught in a violent storm. Zeno narrowly escaped with his life and washed ashore at the Greek port of Piraeus. He watched helplessly from the beach as his precious cargo sank beneath the waves and dissolved back into the ocean from which it came. According to one story, Zeno lost everything in this shipwreck. Devastated, he found himself living as a beggar after making his way to nearby Athens: a penniless immigrant in a foreign city. Searching for guidance about the best way to live, he trudged for miles to the Oracle of Delphi, where the god Apollo, speaking through his priestess, announced that Zeno should take on the color not of dead shellfish but of dead men. He must have been fairly bemused by this cryptic advice. Feeling completely at a loss, Zeno made his way back to Athens and collapsed in a heap at a bookseller’s stall. There he started reading what, by chance, turned out to be a series of an...

Socrates, however, argued that classical virtues like justice, courage, and temperance were all just forms of moral wisdom, which could potentially be learned by anyone. He taught Xenophon that people should train themselves to acquire wisdom and virtue through self-discipline.

After Socrates was executed, Xenophon faithfully wrote down many recollections of Socrates’s conversations about philosophy. Perhaps it was at this moment that Zeno suddenly realized what the Oracle meant: he was to “take on the color of dead men” by thoroughly absorbing the teachings of wise men from previous generations, teachings such as ...

When we speak of “cynicism” (lowercase c) today, we mean something like an attitude of negativity and distrust, but that’s only very tenuously related to the meaning of capital-C “Cynicism.”

The ancient philosophy of Cynicism focused on cultivating virtue and strength of character through rigorous training that consisted of enduring various forms of “voluntary hardship.”

It was an austere and self-discipline...

All of these schools focused on different aspects of philosophy: the Cynics on virtue and self-discipline, the Megarians on logic, and the Academics on metaphysical theories about the underlying nature of reality.

Zeno appears to have been trying to synthesize the best aspects of different Athenian philosophical traditions.

His followers believed that studying philosophical theory, or subjects like logic and cosmology, can be good insofar as it makes us more virtuous and improves our character. However, it can also be a bad thing if it becomes so pedantic or overly “academic” that it diverts us from the pursuit of virtue.

Marcus learned the same attitude from his Stoic teachers. He repeatedly warned himself not to become distracted by reading too many books—thus wasting time on trifling issues in logic and metaphysics—but instead to remain focused on the practical goal of living wisely.

After studying philosophy in Athens for about two decades, Zeno founded his own school in a public building overlooking the agora known as the Stoa Poikile, or “Painted Porch,” where he used to vigorously pace up and down as he discoursed on philosophy. The students who gathered there were originally ...

Zeno told his students that he had come to value wisdom more than wealth or reputation.

He used to say, “My most profitable journey began on the day I was shipwrecked and lost my entire fortune.”6 Even today it’s not unusual for a client in therapy to arrive at the paradoxical revelation that losing their job may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them.

Zeno learned to embrace the Cynic teaching that wealth and other external things are completely indifferent and that...

In plain English, what the Cynics meant was that our character is the only thing that ultimately matters and that wisdom consists in learning to view everything els...

They believed that mastering this attitude required lifelong moral and psychological training in the voluntary endurance of hardship...

However, in contrast to the Cynics, other philosophers argued that “external goods”—such as health, wealth, and reputation—were also required for a good life, in addition to virtue. The problem is that these external things are partly in the hands of Fate, which seems to make a good life unattainable for many individuals. Socrates, for instance, was notoriously ugly by Athenian standards, lived in relative poverty, and died persecuted by powerful enemies. Would his life have been better, though, if he’d been handsome, wealthy, and praised by everyone? Didn’t his greatness consist precisely in the wisdom and strength of character with which he handled these obstacles in life? As we’ll see, Zeno’s innovation was to argue that external advantages do have some value but of a completely different sort than virtue. They’re not always completely indifferent. For Stoics, virtue is still the only true good—the Cynics were right about that—but it’s also natural to prefer heal...

Although he was a follower of the Platonic Academy, Cicero nevertheless knew a great deal about Stoic philosophy and wrote extensively on the subject. On the other hand, his friend and political rival Cato of Utica was a “complete Stoic,” as Cicero puts it, a living example of Stoicism, but didn’t leave any writings about philosophy. After his death, making a stand against the tyrant Julius Caesar during the great Roman civil war, Cato became a hero and an inspiration to later generations of Stoics. Following Caesar’s assassination, his great-nephew Octavian became Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire. Augustus had a famous Stoic tutor called Arius Didymus, which perhaps set a precedent for the Roman emperors who followed, most notably Marcus, to associate themselves with the philosophy.

A few generations after Augustus, the Stoic philosopher Seneca was appointed rhetoric tutor to the young Emperor Nero, later becoming his speechwriter and political advisor—a position that clearly placed a strain on Seneca’s Stoic moral values as Nero degenerated into a cruel despot.

At the same time, a political faction called the Stoic Opposition, led by a senator called Thrasea, was attempting to take a principled stand against Nero and those subsequent emperors whom they considered tyrants. Marcus would later mention his admiration for Cato, Thrasea, and others associated with them, which is intriguing because these Stoics had been famous opponents, or at least critics, of imperial rule. Emperor Nero,...

However, Nero’s secretary owned a slave called Epictetus, who became perhaps the most famous philosophy teacher in Roman ...

Epictetus himself wrote nothing down, but his discussions with students were recorded by one of them, Arrian, in several books of Discourses and a short Handbook summarizing the practical aspect of his teachings. The Stoics that Marcus knew personally were probably influenced by Epictetus, and some had likely attended his lectures. Indeed, we’re told that Marcus was given copies of notes from these lectures by his main Stoic tutor, Junius Rusticus, so it’s no surprise to find that Epictetus is the most quoted author in The ...

Nearly five centuries after Zeno the dye merchant founded the Stoic school, Marcus Aurelius was still talk...

He warns himself to avoid dyeing his character with the royal purple and turning into a Caesar, instead aspiring to remain true to his philosophical principles. He (twice) reminds himself that his purple imperial robes are mere sheep’s wool dyed in fermented shellfish mucus. He tells himself to dye his mind with the wisdom of philosophical precepts handed down from hi...

WHAT DID THE STOICS BELIEVE? The Stoics were prolific writers, but probably less than 1 percent of their writings survive today. The most influential texts we have today come from the three famous Roman Stoics of the Imperial era: Seneca’s various letters and essays, Epictetus’s Discourses and Handbook, and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. We also have some earlier Roman writings on Stoicism by Cicero and about a book’s worth of fragments from the early Greek Stoics, as well as vario...

Stoics argued that humans are first and foremost thinking creatures, capable of exercising reason. Although we share many instincts with other animals, our ability to think rationally is what makes us human.

Reason governs our decisions, in a sense—the Stoics call it our “ruling faculty.” It allows us to evaluate our thoughts, feelings, and urges and to decide if they’re good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. We therefore have an innate duty to protect our ability to reason and to use it properly. When we reason well about life and live rationally, we exhibit the virtue of wisdom.

The Stoics therefore took the name of philosophy, meaning “love of wisdom,” quite literally. They loved wisdom, or loved virtue, above everything else. If “virtue” sounds a bit pompous, the Greek word for it, arete, is arguably better translated as “excellence of character.”

Something excels, in this sense, if it performs its function well. Humans excel when they think clearly and reason well about their lives, which amounts to living wisely. The Stoics adopted the Socratic division of cardinal virtues into wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. The other three virtues can be understood as wisdom applied to our actions in different areas of life. Justice is largely wisdom applied to the social sphere, our relationships with other people. Displaying courage and moderation involves mastering our fears and desires, respectively, overcoming what the Stoics called the unhealthy “passions” that otherwise interfere with our ability to live in accord with wisdom and justice.

Wisdom, in all these forms, mainly requires understanding the difference between good, bad, and indifferent things. Virtue is good and vice is ...

Put crudely, external things do have some value, but they’re not worth getting upset over—it’s a different kind of value.

One way Stoics explained this was by saying that if we could put virtue on one side of a set of scales, it wouldn’t matter how many gold coins or other indifferent things piled up on the opposing side—it should never tip the balance. Nevertheless, some external things are preferable to others, and wisdom consists precisely in our ability to make these sorts of value judgments. Life is preferable to death, wealth is preferable to poverty, health is preferable to sickness, friends are preferable to enemies, and so on. As Socrates had put it earlier, such external advantages in life are good only if we use them wisely. However, if something can be used for either good or evil, it cannot truly be good in itself, so it should be classed as “indifferent” or neutral.

The Stoics would say that things like health, wealth, and reputation are, at most, advantages or opportunities rather than being good in themselves. Social, material, and physical advantages actually give foolish indivi...

The Stoics would go further: the wise and good man may flourish even when faced with sickness, poverty, and enemies. The true goal of life for Stoics isn’t to acquire as many external advantages as possible but to use whatever befalls us wisely, whether it be sickness or health, wealth or poverty, friends or enemies. The Stoic Sage, or wise man, needs nothing but uses everything well; the fool believes himself to “need” countless things, but he uses them all badly.

Most important of all, the pursuit of these preferred indifferent things must never be done at the expense of virtue.

It’s human nature to desire certain things in life, such as sex and food. Reason allows us to step back and question whether what we desire is actually going to be good for us or not. Wisdom itself is uniquely valuable because it allows us to judge the value of external things—it’s the source of everything else’s value. How therefore does it profit a man, the Stoics might say, if he gains the whole world but loses his wisdom and virtue? In addition to believing that humans are essentially thinking creatures capable of reason, the Stoics also believed that human nature is inherently social. They started from the premise that under normal conditions we typically have a bond of “natural affection” toward our children. (If we didn’t, as we now know, our offspring would be less likely to survive and pass on our genes.) This bond of natural affection also tends to extend to other loved ones, such as spouses, parents, siblings, and close friends. The Stoics believed that as we mature in wisdom we increasingly identify with our own capacity for reason, but we also begin to identify with others insofar as they’re capable of reason. In other words, the wise man extends moral consideration to all rational creatures and views them, in a sense, as his brothers and sisters.

That’s why the Stoics described their ideal as cosmopolitanism, or being “citizens of the universe”

Stoic ethics involves cultivating this natural affection toward other people in accord with virtues like j...

Although this social dimension of Stoicism is often overlooked today, it’s one of the main themes of The Meditations. Marcus touches on topics such as the virtues of justice and kindness, natural affection, the brotherhood ...

Another popular misconception today is that Stoics are unemotional. The ancient Stoics themselves consistently denied this, saying that their ideal was not to be like a man of iron or to have a heart of stone. In fact, they distinguished between three types of emotion: good, bad, and indifferent. They had names for many different types of good passion (eupatheiai...

1. A profound sense of joy or gladness and peace of mind, which comes from living with wisdom and virtue 2. A healthy feeling of aversion to vice, like a sense of conscience, honor, dignity, or integrity 3. The desire to help both ourselves and others, through friendship, kindness, and goodwill They also believed that we have many irrational desires and emotions, like fear, anger, craving, and certain forms of pleasure that are bad for us. Stoics did not believe that unhealthy emotions should be suppressed; rather, they should be replaced by healthy ones. However, these healthy emotions aren’t entirely under our control, and we’re not always guaranteed to experience them, so we shouldn’t confuse them with virtue, the goal of life. For Stoics, they’re like an added bonus.

They also taught that our initial automatic feelings are to be viewed as natural and indifferent. These include things like being startled or irritated, blushing, turning pale, tensing up, shaking, sweating, or stammering. They are natural reflex reactions, our first reactions before we escalate them into full-blown passions.

We share these primitive precursors to emotion with some non-human animals, and so the Stoics view them with indifference, as neither good nor bad. Indeed, Seneca, as we’ll see, noted the paradox that before we can exhibit the virtues of courage and moderation...

Even the Stoic wise man, therefore, may tremble in the face of danger. What matters is what he does next. He exhibits courage and self-control precisely by accepting these feelings, rising...

He’s not entranced by the siren song of pleasure or afraid of the sting of pain. Some pains have the potential to make us stronger, and some pleasures to harm us. What matters is the use we mak...

The wise man will endure pain and discomfort, such as undergoing surgery or engaging in strenuous physical exercise, if it’s healthy for his body and, more important, if it’s healthy for his character. He’ll likewise forgo pleasures like eating junk food, indulging in drugs or alcohol, or oversleeping if they are unhealthy for his body or bad for h...

By now you’ll appreciate how much confusion is caused by people mixing up “Stoicism” (capital S) with “stoicism” (lowercase s). Lowercase stoicism is just a personality trait: it’s mental toughness or the ability to endure pain and adversity without complaining. Uppercase Stoicism is a whole school of Greek philosophy. Being emotionally tough or resilient is just one small part of that philosophy, and lowercase stoicism neglects the entire social dimension of Stoic virtue, which has to do with justice, fairness, and kindness to others. Also, when people talk about being stoic or having a stiff upper lip, they often mean just suppressing their feelings, which is actually known to be quite unhealthy. So it’s important to be very clear that’s not what Marcus Aurelius and other Stoics recommended. Stoic philosophy teaches us instead to transform unhealthy emotions ...

In the following chapters you’ll learn about the different ways in which Stoicism can be applied to life in order to overcome specific types of psychological prob...

Stories about the life of Marcus Aurelius provide a human face for the philosophy and will furnish us with practical examples of Stoic strategies and techniques. We’ll start by looking at Marcus’s early life and education because that gets right to...

THE MOST TRUTHFUL CHILD IN ROME Marcus was born on April 26, 121 AD, and was “reared under the eye of Hadrian.”1 He took the name Aurelius later; throughout his childhood, he was known as Marcus Annius Verus, after his father and his grandfathers. The family lived in the small town of Ucubi in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in modern-day Spain) before moving to Rome. When he was about three years old, his father died—we don’t know the circumstances. Marcus barely knew him but later wrote about his manliness and humility, drawing from what he learned of his father by reputation and what little he remembered. Marcus was brought up by his mother and paternal grandfather, a highly distinguished senator who had served three times as consul. He was a close friend of the Emperor Hadrian and was the brother-in-law of Hadrian’s wife, the Empress Sabina, Marcus’s great-aunt. As a member of a wealthy patrician family with ties to the emperor, Marcus was naturally part of his grandfather’s social circle, and though we’re told he was loved by all, something about Marcus especially caught Hadrian’s eye.