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

by Donald J. Robertson

Six consolation letters written by Seneca exist today. For instance, he wrote to a woman called Marcia who had recently lost her son. Seneca’s consolations to her include the argument that death is a release from all the pain of life, a barrier beyond which our suffering cannot extend, which returns us to the same restful state we were in before we were born. Moreover, Epictetus told his students that one of the Stoics he held in particularly hi...

When faced with fever, slander, or exile, he would compose Stoic “eulogies” praising these events as occasions to...

Agrippinus was truly a master decatastrophizer. He would reframe every hardship as an opportunity to cope by exercising...

You can start training yourself in this Stoic practice of objective representation right now by writing down a description of an upsetting or problematic event in plain language. Phrase things as accurately as possible and view them from a more philosophical perspective, with studied indifference.

Exercise

Once you’ve mastered this art, take it a step further by following the example of Paconius Agrippinus and look for positive opportunities. Write how you could exercise strength of character and cope wisely with the situation. Ask yourself how someone you admire might cope with the same situation or what that person might advise you to do.

Treat the event like a sparring partner in the gym, giving you an opportunity to strengthen your emotional resilience and coping skills. You might want to read your script aloud and review it several times or compose several versions until y...

Epictetus: “It’s not things that upset us but our judgments about things,”

Later generations of clinicians and researchers discovered that rigorous training in cognitive distancing, by itself, was sufficient in many cases to bring about therapeutic improvement. Greater emphasis on this cognitive skill is an integral part of what became known as the mindfulness and acceptance approach to CBT.

there are also many other cognitive distancing techniques used in modern CBT, such as these: • Writing down your thoughts concisely when they occur and viewing them on paper • Writing them on a whiteboard and looking at them “over there”—literally from a distance • Prefixing them with a phrase like “Right now, I notice that I am thinking…” • Referring to them in the third person, for example, “Donald is thinking…,” as if you’re studying the thoughts and beliefs of someone else • Evaluating in a detached manner the pros and cons of holding a certain opinion • Using a counter or a tally to monitor with detached curiosity the frequency of certain thoughts • Shifting perspective and imagining a range of alternative ways of looking at the same situation so that your initial viewpoint becomes less fixed and rigid.

For example, “How might I feel about crashing my car if I were like Marcus Aurelius?” “If this happened to my daughter, how would I advise her to cope?” “How will I think about this, looking back on events, ten or twenty years from now?”

“You are just a feeling and not really the thing you claim to represent,” as Epictetus in the Handbook advised his students to do.

When we judge external things to be good or bad, it’s as though we forget what’s under our control and try to overextend our sphere of responsibility. The Stoics view only their own actions as good or bad, virtuous or vicious, and therefore classify all external things as indifferent, because they’re not entirely “up to us” in this sense. As we’ve seen, of course, the Stoics still believe it’s reasonable to prefer health to disease, wealth to poverty, and so on. They argue, however, that we deceive ourselves when we invest too much value in external things. They also trained themselves to gain cognitive distance by understanding that events don’t seem the same to everyone: our own perspective is just one of many. For instance, the majority of people are terrified of dying, but, as Epictetus points out, Socrates wasn’t afraid of death. Although he may have preferred to live, he was relatively indifferent to dying as long as he met his death with wisdom and virtue.

CONTEMPLATING THE SAGE As a young man, Marcus Aurelius frequently became very angry, often struggling to avoid losing his temper. Later in life he would thank the gods that he had been able to restrain himself from doing something in those moments that he might otherwise have regretted. He’d seen the damage caused by Hadrian’s temper.

During one infamous tantrum, the emperor had poked out the eye of some poor slave with the point of an iron stylus, presumably to the horror of onlookers. Once he’d come back to his senses, Hadrian apologetically asked the man if there was anything he could do to make it up to him. “All I want is my eye back,” came the reply.1

The Stoics taught Marcus that anger is nothing but temporary madness and that its consequences are often irreparable, as in the case of the slave’s eye.

They also provided him with the psychological concepts and set of tools he needed to master his own feelings of aggression. Marcus clearly wanted to be more like the humble, peaceful Antoninus than the arrogant and volatile Hadrian. He needed help achieving this, though.

Ironically, he credits the man who most frequently provoked his anger with teachi...

Marcus’s Stoic mentor Junius Rusticus often infuriated him, but also showed him how to recover his normal frame of mind. As we’ll see, the Stoics had man...

One of them is to wait until our feelings have naturally abated and then calmly consider what someone wise w...

As Marcus said elsewhere, philosophy was his mother, the court merely his stepmother.2 There’s no doubt that Rusticus was the central figure in Marcus’s development as a philosopher.

Marcus clearly loved Rusticus dearly as a friend and looked up to him as a teacher, but he also found him exasperating at times, presumably because he frequently drew the young Caesar’s attention to flaws in his character. We can perhaps infer which aspects of Marcus’s character Rusticus challenged based upon comments in The Meditations. For example, Rusticus taught him not to be pretentious, encouraging him to dress like a normal citizen when possible. He also taught Marcus to be a careful and patient student of philosophy, to read attentively rather than just skimming things, and not to be swayed too easily by speakers who have a silver tongue.

Epictetus likewise told his students repeatedly that they should not speak about philosophy lightly, like the Sophists, but rather show its fruits in their very character and actions.

In typically blunt fashion he told them that sheep don’t vomit up grass to show the shepherds how much they’ve eaten but rather digest their food inwardly...

This is illustrated by one of Aesop’s fables, which says that each of us is born with two sacks suspended from our neck: one filled with the faults of others that hangs within our view and one hidden behind our back filled with our own faults. We see the flaws of others quite clearly, in other words, but we have a blind spot for our own. The New Testament likewise asks why we look at the tiny splinter of wood in our brother’s eye yet pay no attention to the great plank of wood obscuring our own view (Matthew 7:3–5).

Plato explained this well when he said that lovers are typically blind regarding the one they love. As we, in a sense, loves ourselves most of all, we are also most blind with regard to our own faults. The majority of us therefore struggle to attain the self-awareness required to improve our lives.

Galen’s solution to this problem is for us to find a suitable mentor in whose wisdom and experi...

Anyone can tell when a singer is truly dreadful, but it takes an expert to notice very sub...

We should therefore make the effort to acquire an older and wiser friend: one renowned for honesty and plain speaking, who has mastered the same passions with which we need help, who can properly identify our vices and tell us frankly where we’re going astray in life.

That seems like the role Junius Rusticus played for him. We should ask that person if they notice any unhealthy passions in us, says Galen, assuring them that we’re not going to be offended if they speak frankly. Galen also explains that the novice is bound to feel that some of his mentor’s observations are unfair, but he must learn to listen patiently and take criticism on the chin without becoming irritated. From what Marcus says, that was probably quite challenging for him at first, although Rusticus was good at smoothing things over. Marcus had another Stoic tutor, called Cinna Catulus, about whom we know very little. Marcus observed that Catulus was a man who paid attention to his friends when they found fault in his character; even if they did so unjustly, he would always try to address matters and restore their friendship.8

Through their own behavior, therefore, Rusticus and Catulus both showed Marcus that a wise man should welcome criticism from his friends.

Throughout The Meditations, Marcus makes many references to the value he places on speaking the truth, but he also consistently recognizes the importance of communicating it appropriately. For instance, Alexander of Cotiaeum, his childhood grammarian, made a lifelong impression on Marcus by the tactful way he would correct those making a verbal error.9 If someone used a word incorrectly, Alexander would not overtly criticize the speaker. He never interrupted them or challenged them on the spot. Instead, the grammarian had a more artful and indirect way of steering them in the right direction. Marcus noticed that Alexander would subtly drop in the correct expression while replying or discussing some other topic. If the real goal for Stoics is wisdom, then sometimes just blurting out the truth isn’t enough. We have to put more effort into communicating with others effectively.

Diplomacy was, of course, particularly important to Marcus.

His duties as Caesar and later as emperor involved handling highly sensitive discussions, such as negotiations over peace treaties with foreign enemies. We can clearly see from his personal correspondence that he was a charming and tactful man wi...

Throughout Marcus’s reign, he doubtlessly averted many serious problems through his patient diplomacy and sensitive use of language. Indeed, he even reminds himself that he should always be tactful and honest with whoever he’s speaking to, especially in the Senate.10

Correcting someone else’s vices, Marcus says, is like pointing out that they have bad breath—it requires considerable tact. However, he noticed that Sextus won the respect of all sorts of people by skillfully adapting his conversation so that it seemed more charming than any flattery, even while he was speaking frankly or disagreeing with them. Clearly, Stoics like Marcus placed a lot more value on manners and civility than the Cynics did.

The Stoics realized that to communicate wisely, we must phrase things appropriately. Indeed, according to Epictetus, the most striking characteristic of Socrates was that he never became irritated during an argument. He was always polite and refrained from speaking harshly even when others insulted him.

He patiently endured much abuse and yet was able to put an end to most quarrels in a c...

How can we find mentors with such tact, though? Galen admits that you’re not likely to meet many people like Diogenes the Cynic, who was brave enough even to speak plainly to Alexander the Great.

What’s required first is a more general openness to criticism: we should give everyone we meet permission to tell us what our faults are, according to Galen, and resolve not to be angry with any of them.

We’re told this advice goes back to Zeno. Most men are eager to point out their neighbors’ flaws, he said, whether we ask them to or not.

So instead of resenting it, we should welcome criticism from others as one of life’s inevitabilities and turn it to our advantage by making all men into our teachers. Galen therefore says that if we desire to learn wisdom, we must be ready to listen to anyone we encounter and show gratitude “not to those who flatter us but to those who rebuke us.”14