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

How did this upstart country boy find his way into a book of Stoic lives? His inspiration was not the reluctant politics of Diogenes, the ethical bent of Antipater, the behind-the-scenes influence of Panaetius, or even his own Stoic teacher Posidonius. His first inspiration was instead the meteoric rise of Marius, the one whose last breaths had been observed by Posidonius, who had achieved—through raw ambition—immense power and fame even while lacking an illustrious bloodline. Marius too was an upstart from Arpinum. When friends suggested that Cicero change his name to hide his nouveau riche origins, he vowed instead to achieve fame so great that no one would ever say such a thing again. Indeed, he and Marius would both become novi homines, “new men,” the first of their families to rise to senatorial power from outside the patrician ranks of Rome.

Cicero’s life in Rome began in 90 BC, when at the age of sixteen he was sent there by his father to study public speaking and the law. He entered the capital with the benefit of his father’s business connections, and immediately fell in love with what we might now call the life of the “elites.” As biographer Anthony Everitt notes, “It was during these years that Cicero’s ambition to become a famous advocate crystallized. . . . He was swept along by the almost unbearable excitement of the trials in the Forum and the glamour of the lawyer’s job, very much like that of a leading actor.”

While other young men in his position partied and enjoyed their wealth (and lack of parental supervision), Cicero studied like a man with something to prove. He was said to produce—as a deliberate homage to a philosophical hero, no doubt—as many as five hundred lines per night, just as Chrysippus was famed to do. Cicero wrote and read and observed. Did he love philosophy and literature? Of course. But he also saw it as a way to get ahead. It was the vehicle for realizing his potential, just as a natural athlete is drawn to sports and squeezes from the game every advantage they can. Cicero networked too, meeting other young men handpicked for great things, including a boy six years his junior, Gaius Julius Caesar.

Cicero’s early years were almost like a training montage for the cinematic and pivotal events he would face in the prime of his life. And perhaps we see it like that because Cicero—himself the source of so much of what we know about him—was a conspicuous crafter of the narrative of his own rise.

The story goes like this: At eighteen, he attached himself to Philo of Larissa, head of the Platonic Academy who had fled Athens for Rome. He took on his first legal cases during the tumultuous reforms of Sulla, winning several impressive victories against the powers that be. He finished his first book on rhetoric—becoming a respected author at just twenty years old. Then he decamped to Athens for more studying under teachers of every school. Then he hit the road again to study Stoicism with Posidonius in Rhodes, where genius quickly recognized genius.

By the time Cicero returned to Rome at age twenty-nine, he was a man transformed by the crucible of many years of hard work and relentless drive. “And so I came home after two years,” he wrote, “not only more experienced but almost another man; the excessive strain of voice had gone, my style had so to speak simmered down, my lungs were stronger and I was not so thin.”

Notice he lists only attributes, not convictions.

That is the critical question of nearly everything Cicero did, as it is for so many talented, ambitious people: Were the motivations sincere? Or was it all part of some plan? Are they training or résumé building?

It was said that an oracle had warned Cicero early to let his conscience guide his life, not the opinions of the crowd, but for someone as driven as Cicero, such a warning was impossible to heed. Seneca would later write of the importance of choosing oneself “a Cato”—someone to use as a ruler to measure and guide oneself against. Cicero, who lived alongside a real Stoic like Cato, chose, for the most part, to look elsewhere for inspiration. Instead of Cato, Cicero had, in early life, chosen Marius, which is a little like choosing Richard Nixon or Vladimir Putin as one’s lodestar.

It was a strange, revealing choice. As the Stoics were fond of saying, this character trait proved to be destiny.