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

It was not all emotions he worked on domesticating, but the harmful ones, the ones that would make him betray what he believed. “Start praying like this and you’ll see,” he wrote to himself. “Not ‘some way to sleep with her’—but a way to stop wanting to. Not ‘some way to get rid of him’—but a way to stop trying. Not ‘some way to save my child’—but a way to lose your fear.”*

The wife of George Marshall, another great man of equal stature, in describing her husband would capture what made Marcus Aurelius so truly impressive:

In many of the articles and interviews I have read about General Marshall the writers speak of his retiring nature and his modesty. . . . No, I do not think I would call my husband retiring or overly modest. I think he is well aware of his powers, but I also think this knowledge is tempered by a sense of humility and selflessness such as I have seen in few strong men.

If Marcus had naturally been perfect, there would be little to admire. That he wasn’t is the whole point. He worked his way there, as we all can.

It should be noted that Marcus himself would not want us to be shamed by his example but be reminded of our own capacities. “Recognize that if it’s humanly possible,” he said both to us and to himself, “you can do it too.”

Marcus Aurelius managed to not be corrupted by power, managed to not be afraid as he faced a terrible epidemic, managed to not be too angered by betrayal, nor utterly broken by unfathomable personal tragedy. What does that mean? It means you can do the same.

At the core of Marcus Aurelius’s power as a philosopher and a philosopher king seems to be a pretty simple exercise that he must have read about in Seneca’s writings and then in Epictetus’s: the morning or evening review. “Every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand,” Epictetus had said. “Write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them.”

So much of what we know about Marcus Aurelius’s philosophical thinking comes from the fact that for years he did that. He was constantly jotting down reminders and aphorisms of Stoic thinking to himself. Indeed, his only known work, Meditations, is filled with quotes from Chrysippus, allusions to themes from the writings of Panaetius and Zeno, stories about Socrates, poems from Aristophanes, exercises from Epictetus as well as all sorts of original interpretations of Stoic wisdom. The title of Meditations, which dates to 167 AD, translates from ta eis heauton, “to himself.” This captures the essence of the book perfectly, for Marcus truly was writing for himself, as anyone who has read Meditations can easily feel.

How else can we understand notes that reference, without explanation, “the way [Antoninus Pius] accepted the customs agent’s apology at Tusculum,” or even more obliquely, speaking of moments of divine intervention, when he writes only, “the one at Caiteta.” These were moments far too insignificant to have made the historical record but that influenced the author, the man, enough that he remembered them decades later and was still mulling them over.

Meditations is not a book for the reader, it was a book for the author. Yet this is what makes it such an impressive piece of writing, one of the great literary feats of all time. Somehow in writing exclusively to and for himself, Marcus Aurelius managed to produce a book that has not only survived through the centuries, but is still teaching and helping people today. As the philosopher Brand Blanshard would observe in 1984:

Few care now about the marches and countermarches of the Roman commanders. What the centuries have clung to is a notebook of thoughts by a man whose real life was largely unknown who put down in the midnight dimness not the events of the day or the plans of the morrow, but something of far more permanent interest, the ideals and aspirations that a rare spirit lived by.

The opening pages of Meditations reveal that spirit quite well, for the book begins with a section entitled “Debts and Lessons.” Across seventeen entries and some twenty-one hundred words (a full ten percent of the book), Marcus takes the time to acknowledge and codify the lessons he had learned from the important people in his life. In the privacy of these pages, he recognized his grandfather for his courtesy and serenity of temper; his father for manliness without ostentation; his mother for piety and generosity; his tutor for instilling a positive work ethic; the gods for surrounding him with good people. He even thanks—not to put too fine a point on it—Rusticus for teaching him “not to write treatises on abstract questions, or deliver moralizing little sermons, or compose imaginary descriptions of The Simple Life or The Man Who Lives Only for Others.”

Why was he writing this if it would never be seen? If the people would never fully know what they meant to him? Marcus explains: