Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

Epictetus, whose worldview gave Toussaint Louverture and James Stockdale the strength they needed in their dank prison cells . . .

In some cases, their influence came directly through writing, but more often than not, their influence came by action. How they lived. What they did.

The Stoics had learned this from Socrates. Plutarch, who was the source for so much of the material in this book, observed that “Socrates did not set up desks for his students, sit in a teacher’s chair, or reserve a prearranged time for lecturing and walking with his pupils.” On the contrary. “He practiced philosophy while joking around,” Plutarch said, “and drinking and serving on military campaigns and hanging around the marketplace with some of his students, and finally, even while under arrest and drinking the hemlock. He was the first to demonstrate that our lives are open to philosophy at all times and in every aspect, while experiencing every emotion, and in each and every activity.”

Beautiful.

But more beautiful is the impact that example had on Marcus Aurelius, on Zeno, on Musonius Rufus, on Thrasea, and on Rutilius.

The Stoics too served on military campaigns. They hung out in the marketplace. They too, fairly or unfairly, faced arrest and were forced to commit suicide. In this, they proved they were philosophers. In those actions, those choices, they wrote their best work—sometimes in their own blood.

“There is no role so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now,” Marcus Aurelius would write. He probably meant the role of emperor, but the meaning can easily be extended: The role of parent. The role of spouse. The role of a person waiting in line. The role of a person who has just been given bad news. The role of a person who is rich. The role of a person sent into exile or delivered into bankruptcy. The role of a person who finds themselves enslaved, literally or otherwise.

All of this was philosophy. All of this was what made someone a Stoic.

How we do those jobs, how we play those roles, that’s what matters. Epictetus, who actually was a slave before he was a philosopher, would tell his students to go out in the world and “eat like a human being, drink like a human being, dress up, marry, have children, get politically active—suffer abuse, bear with a headstrong brother, father, son, neighbor, or companion. Show us these things so we can see that you truly have learned from the philosophers.”

By and large, the Stoics showed what they learned from the insights of Zeno, from the five hundred lines that Chrysippus wrote each day, from the some fifty books written by Cleanthes, from the lectures of Epictetus, and from the meditations that Marcus Aurelius penned. They showed what they learned from the example of Cato, from the effortless courage of Agrippinus, and from the cautionary tales of Seneca and Cicero and Diotimus.

Did many of the Stoics fall short? Absolutely. They were tempted by wealth and made embarrassing compromises as they groped for fame. They lost their temper. They lied. They eliminated rivals . . . or looked the other way while someone else did. They were silent when they should have spoken up. They enforced laws that they ought to have questioned. They were not always happy; they did not always bear adversity with the dignity one would expect.

The history of Rome is a story of outsized ambition and drive, a tale of power and excess and often brutality. Most of Rome’s leaders were monsters, memorable only because of their misdeeds. Even for all the Stoics’ flaws, their restraint and goodness stand in stark relief to most of their contemporaries. “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been,” the great C. S. Lewis once observed, “how gloriously different the saints.”

No one in this book managed, in every minute of their life, to live up to those lofty virtues of courage and justice and moderation and wisdom. Yet in their unique struggles and triumphs, they each managed to teach us something, proving, intentionally or not, why the principles they purported to believe were superior to the choices they actually made.

Most of all, the Stoics taught us by the fact that they tried. What matters is what we can learn from their successes and their failures in this lifelong pursuit.

“Show me someone sick and happy,” Epictetus said, “in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I’d like to see a Stoic. But since you can’t show me someone that perfectly formed, at least show me someone actively forming themselves so, inclined in this way. . . . Show me!”

Ultimately, that is the message of this book and what has defined the stories we have told and the figures we have profiled.