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

Being chosen to be king—having enormous power thrust upon him at so early an age—somehow seems to have made Marcus Aurelius a better person. This utterly anomalous event in human history—how one man did not go the way of all kings—can only be explained by one thing: Stoicism.*

But it would be an injustice to Marcus Aurelius not to give him the full credit due for the work he had to put in. And we know it was conscious, deliberate work. He recognized, quite openly, the “malice, cunning and hypocrisy that power produces,” as well as the “peculiar ruthlessness often shown by people from ‘good families,’” and decided he would be an exception to that rule. “Take care not be Caesarified, or dyed in purple,” he was still writing to himself as an old man, “it happens. So keep yourself simple, good, pure, serious, unpretentious, a friend of justice, god-fearing, kind, full of affection, strong for your proper work. Strive hard to remain the same man that philosophy wished to make you.”

It wasn’t just the headwind of power that Marcus faced in life. From his letters, we know he had recurring, painful health problems. He became a father at age twenty-six—a transformative and trying experience for any man. In Marcus’s case, though, fate was almost unbelievably cruel. He and his wife, Faustina, would have thirteen children. Only five would survive into adulthood.

His reign, from 161 to 180, was marked by the Antonine Plague—a global pandemic that originated in the Far East, spread mercilessly across borders, and claimed the lives of at least five million people over fifteen years—and some nineteen years of wars at the borders. As the historian Dio Cassius would write, Marcus Aurelius “did not meet with the good fortune that he deserved, for he was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles throughout practically his entire reign.”

But these external things don’t deter a Stoic. Marcus believed that plagues and war could only threaten our life. What we need to protect is our character—how we act within these wars and plagues and life’s other setbacks. And to abandon character? That’s real evil.

Perhaps the copy of Epictetus that Junius Rusticus had given him had so landed with Marcus Aurelius because they both were dealt hard blows by fate. It is a striking contrast, an emperor and a slave sharing and loving the same philosophy, the latter figure greatly influencing the former, but it is not a contradiction—nor would it have seemed odd to the ancients. It’s only in our modern reactionary, divisive focus on “privilege” that we have forgotten how much we all have in common as human beings, how we all stand equally naked and defenseless against fate whether we possess worldly power or not.

Both Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus were, to borrow Epictetus’s metaphor, assigned difficult roles by the author of the universe. What defined them was how they managed to play these roles, which neither of them, Marcus especially, would ever have chosen.

Consider the first action that Marcus Aurelius took in 161 AD when his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, died. When Octavian had become emperor, Arius Didymus, his Stoic advisor, had suggested that he get rid of young Caesarion, the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. “It’s not good to have too many Caesars,” the Stoic had told his boss, joking as he suggested murder. Nero had eliminated so many rivals that Seneca had to remind him that no king had it in his power to get rid of every successor. Marcus Aurelius found himself in an even more complex situation. He had an adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, who had even closer ties to Hadrian’s legacy.* What ought he do? What would you do?

Marcus Aurelius cut this Gordian knot with effortlessness and grace: He named his adoptive brother co-emperor.

The first thing Marcus Aurelius did with absolute power was voluntarily share half of it. This alone would make him worthy of the kind of awe that King George III felt upon hearing that George Washington would return to private life—“If he does that, sir, he will be the greatest man in the world”—but it was just one of several such gestures that defined Marcus Aurelius’s reign.

When the Antonine Plague hit Rome, and the streets were littered with bodies and danger hung in the air, no one would have faulted him for fleeing the city. In fact, it might have been the more prudent course of action. Instead, Marcus stayed, braving it like the British royal family during the Blitz, never showing fear, reassuring the people by his very presence that he did not value his safety more than the responsibilities of his office.