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

by Donald J. Robertson

People say “I can’t believe this!” when they’re upset, but usually they’re describing things that are very common in life, such as betrayal, deceit, or insults. The Stoics realized that in this sense surprise is not entirely authentic and needlessly exaggerates our emotional reaction. By contrast, someone with a more philosophical attitude might say, “That’s no surprise, these things are bound to happen—c’est la vie.”

It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong. And this happens, if when they do wrong it occurs to you that they are kinsmen, and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that soon both of you will die; and above all, that the wrongdoer has done you no harm, for he has not made [the character of your mind] worse than it was before.

Marcus also reminds himself to have this precept at hand when he senses he might lose his temper: “To be angry is not manly but rather a mild and gentle disposition is more manly because it is more human.”

Later, gentle Apollonius would remind me of a saying from Epictetus: “Only a madman seeks figs in winter.” Such is one who pines for his child when his loan has been returned to Nature. I loved them, by all means, but learned also to accept that they were mortal.

Every era of history teaches us the same lesson: nothing lasts forever.

If I consider death for what it is, analyzing it rationally, stripping away all the assumptions encrusted round it, it’s revealed to be nothing but a process of Nature. Look at what is behind the mask, study it, and you will see it does not bite. Yet this childish fear of death is perhaps our greatest bane in life. Fear of death does us more harm than death itself because it turns us into cowards, whereas death merely returns us to Nature.

I learned to set each particular thing in life against the whole substance of the universe in my mind’s eye and see it as far less than a fig seed, and measure it against the whole of time as nothing more than the turn of a screw.

Indeed, the mind of the wise man is itself like a heavenly sphere radiating the purest sunlight. It falls gracefully upon things, illuminating them without becoming entangled or degraded by them. For what does not welcome the light condemns itself to darkness.

I take one last step forward to meet Death, not as an enemy but as an old friend and sparring partner.

Life is warfare and a sojourn in a foreign land. Our reputation after life is nothing but oblivion. What is it then that will guide man? One thing alone: philosophy, the love of wisdom. And philosophy consists in this: for a man to preserve that inner genius or divine spark within him from violence and injuries, and above all from harmful pains or pleasures; never to do anything either without purpose, or falsely, or hypocritically, regardless of the actions or inaction of others; to contentedly embrace all things that happen to him, as coming from the same source from whom he came himself, and above all things, with humility and calm cheerfulness, to anticipate death as being nothing else but the dissolution of those elements of which every living being is composed.