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

Panaetius knew that none of this philosophizing existed in a silo; it is interconnected with other important things. It is in the balance, the integrating of competing obligations and interests and talents that the good life is found and lived.

In 129 BC, Scipio would die, a dear loss to both the Republic and to his friends. We can imagine Panaetius grieving this loss, but also relying on an exercise he had taught his students. Suppose your son dies, he said. You must remind yourself that you knew he was mortal when you brought him into the world. The same is true for friends, he would have had to reassure himself. The same is true for careers.

All things end. Philosophy is there to remind us of that fact and to prepare us for the blows of life.

After the death of Scipio, Panaetius understood that a chapter of his life had ended—all that was left was for him to write the next (and possibly the final) one. He returned to Athens that same year after another great loss—this time the death of Antipater—to take over as head of the school. There he served the Stoa another twenty years, continuing to teach and write. Perhaps, like retired political figures today, he returned occasionally to Rome to lecture, consult with magistrates, or promote his books.

And then he too, in 109 BC, passed from the earth.

PUBLIUS RUTILIUS RUFUSTHE LAST HONEST MAN (POOB-lee-us Roo-TILL-ee-us ROOF-us)

Origin: Rome

B. 158 BC

D. 78 BC

Politics is a dirty business. It is now and it was then. In Rome, as in the modern world, power attracts ego. It corrupts. It rewards vanity. It disincentivizes responsibility. It is filled, and always will be filled, with liars, cheats, demagogues, and cowards.

Which is why Mark Twain was quite right when he said that “an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.” It’s a matter of contrast. Of all the political Stoics, perhaps none shone brighter or stood out more than Publius Rutilius Rufus, who stared down Rome’s corruption with a fierce but quiet honesty that was as rare among his peers as it is today.

His career began as illustriously as one could imagine. He studied philosophy under Panaetius, who had returned to Rome in 138 BC when Rutilius was about twenty. A roving and beloved member of the Scipionic Circle, Rutilius served on Scipio Aemilianus’s staff as a military tribune in the brutal Numantine War in north-central Spain. He was a promising young man in a rapidly growing empire that offered nearly limitless advancement to promising men of his ilk.

While others may have had more glittering personalities, come from better families, or displayed greater ambitions than the somber and severe Rutilius, his presence and conviction were obvious to anyone who saw him. He was well read, well trained, and, as a speaker, according to one witness, “acute and systematic,” though Cicero would disparage his eloquence. His Stoicism was without dispute, with Cicero observing in the same book about Rutilius that the self-sufficiency of his philosophy “was exemplified in him in its firmest and most unswerving form.”

The first hint that Rutilius operated by a different code came in 115 BC when he was defeated for consul by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, who, like many others before him, had bribed his way into office. It would have been easy, perhaps expected, for Rutilius to have done the same, but he conspicuously declined even though it ensured his defeat. Instead he brought Scaurus up on charges of ambitus—political corruption. Scaurus himself—the corrupt one—would bring the same charges against Rutilius.

Neither trial was conclusive, but it presaged the fight to come.

It was during the Jugurthine War in 109 BC that Rutilius would find himself caught in the crossfire of even more ambitious and unscrupulous political types who had begun to emerge in the struggle for control of Rome’s enormous Republic. One of these was Sulla, a conservative strongman who would come to power through raw force and cruelty. Another was Gaius Marius, who began his military service under Scipio Aemilianus at the same time as Rutilius Rufus. Marius, a novus homo (new man) of equestrian rank, had a brilliant military career that would lead to his holding a record seven consulships, a feat Marius claimed had been foretold by an omen in which an eagle’s nest containing seven young eagles fell into his lap. It was a sign, the seers had said, that he was destined for greatness and to hold power seven times.

For a time, Rutilius and Marius were allies. During this time of army expansion and overhaul, Rufus came to head Rome’s training and deployment strategy for these newly diverse troops. It was said that Marius preferred to fight only with troops trained by Rutilius, because they were the best trained, the most disciplined, and the bravest.