The Daily Stoic - 18 Things You Didn’t Know About Marcus Aurelius

Episode Date: December 18, 2022

It is amazing that Meditations, year after year and read after read, feels both incredibly timely and incredibly timeless (there’s a reason the book has endured now for almost twenty centuries). It’s amazing that a person so famous—known to millions in his own lifetime and subject to countless books and articles and movies—could still be giving off new secrets, but indeed that’s what he’s doing.Today, we examine 18 things you didn’t know that shaped the life of that person, Marcus Aurelius.📕 We created a premium leather-bound edition of Meditations. To learn more and to pick up your own copy of this beautiful new edition of Meditations, visit dailystoic.com/meditations✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, from the Stoic texts, audio books that you like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. of life. Thank you for listening. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wanderer's Podcast Business Wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion-forward. Listen to Business Wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday.

Welcome to another episode of the daily Stoic podcast. We talk a lot about Marcus Aurelius here on this podcast. And maybe you think you know him because you read meditations. Maybe you think you know him because you read my biography of him in Liza the Stoics. But I'm pretty sure there's some things you don't know about him. Certainly, he continues to surprise me, you know, this idea of never stepping the same river twice. I think every time you look at Marcus, because he was just specific enough, just general enough, every time you look at him,

you discover something new, you learn something new. As things is especially true in meditations each time you pick it up you see something you find something different that's what I wanted to talk about in today's episode some things that this very famous man one of the most famous men in the world then and you know to a certain degree now known to millions in his own lifetime subject account list books and articles and movies that he could still have secrets that might seem unbelievable, but it's true. And I wanted to reveal some of those in today's episode. It's going to be 18 things you probably didn't know about one of the

greatest thinkers and philosophers and leaders who ever lived. And even if you did know them, well, it can't hurt to review them. And we're putting this out because we've got this new addition of meditations out, which I've been talking about. I first read my Gregory Hayes translations of Marx, really, almost 15 years ago, and it changed my life, opened me up to so many things. It's what taught me some of the things we're going to talk about in today's episode. But I went out and I bought the rights, and we produced this really cool leather bound addition that can withstand the test of time, hopefully, become some sort of family heirloom that can be there for you as you revisit it over and over and over again.

We've got those on sale for the holidays. You can check that out at dailystoke.com slash meditations. You can pick them up at the pay to porch and go to store.dailystoke.com. But I wanted to give you some thoughts on Marcus Aurelius, some secrets, some lessons, some things that you didn't know, but I deeply, but I really think you should know. And I'll leave it there. Who is Marcus Aurelius? What made him tick?

And what do you need to know about him? Here we go. The first thing to understand about Marcus is that he lived through a plague. You know, people sort of vaguely understood that the Antonin plague happens in Marcus Aurelius' time, that's why it's called the Antonin plague. But I think it's only going through

the COVID-19 pandemic over the last couple of years that helps one understand the way that an event like that would have shaped Marcus. One of my favorite quotes from Marcus, he says, there are two types of plates. There's the one that destroys your life and the one that destroys your character. Quote holds true.

There are people who, maybe they didn't get COVID, but it caught something much worse, conspiratorial thinking, cruelty, indifference to other people. But Marcus' life is shaped by the plague. It's also an opportunity, a crisis for him to respond to as a leader. Actually, one of the things he learns from his stepfather Antoninus was to listen to experts. And this is why Marcus puts Gailin, the great medical mind of his time in charge of the pandemic response. But also the exercise of momentum,

and for this joke, the idea that life is short, that you could go at any moment. This is something Marcus would have experienced firsthand. He witnessed death all around him. Constantly millions of Romans died in this horrendous plague. And ultimately we think even Marcus really has died of it. And his last words are a reminder to his friends who were crying over his deathbed,

not to think of him this singular individual, but all of the people who died of the plague and all of the people who would eventually die, including potentially his friends themselves. We have this image, of course, of the stoke as the emotionless robot. So you might be surprised to learn that Marcus Aurelius was a little bit of a cryer.

Several of the stories that we have about Marcus and we don't have many involve him crying. He cried when he lost one of his favorite tutors. He even cried. It was said openly in court one day when a pleading attorney mentions the immense death toll of those lost in the Antenine play. But Marcus was a cryer and life demanded, I think, tears from him. In some cases, he lost multiple children. He locked him out. He lived his wife.

He was betrayed by a close friend. A still doesn't have to stuff their emotions down. The idea is that you don't let those emotions overwhelm your life or override your ability to make rational decisions. But you have to be kind yourself and you have to let yourself feel things. You might not know that Marcus had a little nickname.

His nickname was Verismus. And this comes from the Emperor Hadrian, who notices the potential in this young boy and decides to set him up and train him to be his eventual successor. Because in this nickname, it's a play on the word truth, or truthfulness. Marcus was the most truthful, even as a young boy,

he was surprisingly and refreshingly honest. And perhaps that's what made Hadrian select him to one day be king. Marcus was a bit of a cryer, but he was not a good sleeper. And in fact, if you read meditation multiple times, he talks about struggling to get out of bed in the morning. This isn't just because he's like us and getting out of bed in the morning is difficult. It's because he had trouble sleeping. He was not a good sleeper.

He was a chronic insomnia. And I think that actually makes his tribe to get up early in the morning to meet the day, to do his job. You know, it makes it more impressive. He didn't have an easy time of it, but ultimately this insomnia is a thread running through Marcus's life. One chronicler of

Meditations notes that it was in the midnight dimness that Marcus made his great contribution to philosophy that he wrote his medications. Marcus had a sense of humor. Again, this stereotype of the stoic being joyless, emotionless, it's wrong. In one of his letters to his tutor, Fronto, he talks about this prank he played on a shepherd. But one of my favorite examples of Marcus Realis' humor is he jokes and meditations about a man so rich he had nowhere to shit in his house. His house was so filled with stuff that he didn't have any room and Marcus was mocking him.

But I like the idea that this dower and serious stoic still had room in his life for literal toilet humor. I mentioned earlier that Marcus had things to be upset about in life, and he did, and one of those was the betrayal of him by his best friend, his most trusted general and videos Cassius, who declared himself emperor. And this put Marcus in a serious spot.

Obviously you can't allow as king someone else to declare themselves king. And Marcus had to find a way to respond. And he did it in typical stoic fashion. He said, it's an opportunity to treat someone well who has not treated me well. And he says, ultimately, to teach Rome how to respond to civil strife. And that's what he does to the best of his ability. Ultimately, Cassius himself is betrayed, which is what happens when you do terrible things. He himself is betrayed and assassinated, and we're told that Marcus wept, again, having lost the opportunity to forgive

and be merciful to his friend. In Meditations, Marcus really says life is warfare in a journey far from home. And again, it's important to understand that parts of Meditations are literal. And in this case, Marcus is referring to the decade plus that he spends on the road. His predecessor, Antoninus, almost never leaves Rome.

Marcus has to spend 12 years touring the empire, not for sightseeing, but touring the empire because he was at war. There's a famous story of Marcus returning one day to Rome and a cheering crowd greets him and they remind him that he's been gone almost eight years. Marcus has to put up with a lot with his life but he would have loved to spend time

with his philosophy books with his family, with his friends and his beautiful palace. The life had other plans. I think the most remarkable thing about Marcus, that people don't know, first off, that his father was not Emperor. Marcus is chosen to be Emperor. Hadrian, selects Marcus, but realizes

that Marcus is too young, so he chooses a placeholder to train Marcus for the throne, Antoninus Pius. And so Marcus is groomed for power. He trains for it. It's not this thing he gets by birth, right? But there is a complication, which is that one of Hadrian's earlier potential predecessors had a son. And this son potentially thought that he was entitled to the throne. Or other people thought he was entitled to the throne. So Marcus ascends to the throne. He's clearly the most qualified, the most trained, the most desired, and he has this potential rival.

And we know historically what kings do to these rivals, they killed them. But Marcus is the exact opposite. The first thing that Marcus does with absolute power is name his stepbrother. Someone he has no relation to whatsoever. He names him Co-Embrugh. Can you believe that? The first thing he does with absolute powers, give half of it away. And they rule effectively together as a team. I imagine Marcus going, look, it is a tough job. There's more than enough responsibility to go

around. I'm going to shake. Marcus really has lost eight children before they reached adulthood. No parent should have to bury a child, as they say. Marcus really is buried eight. And somehow this didn't break him. Somehow this didn't destroy him. How is that? But I do think there's one interesting stoke exercise that Marcus really has learned from Epictetus that perhaps helped with this. Epictetus said that as you tuck your child in at night, you should save yourself. They might not make it until the morning. And the idea wasn't, oh, my children are gonna die. I should detach myself. I shouldn't write it off. I think the idea is that while you have your children,

be present for them. Don't rush through bedtime. Be there for them. Soak them in. Don't hit them for granted. And so we can imagine it being some solace, not enough, but some solace that has marked his felt with that horrible loss.

He could at least comfort himself that while he had them, he was there and present for them as best to click. Hey there listeners. While we take a little break here, that while he had them, he was there and present for them as best to click. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out

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He said famously to the Senate that all of this is yours. I don't even own this house, but the truth is even from an early age, Marcus slept on a hard mattress. He preferred the country life. He was a humble man. He lived this simple life when his mother died and left him a lot of money. He gave it to his sister. He was tried to be generous. He preferred the country life. He was a humble man. He lived the simple life. When his mother died and left him a lot of money, he gave it to

his sister. He was tried to be generous. He didn't need much and that made him a greater man. Marcus is of course famously associate with Stoke Philosophy. He's considered the Stoke emperor, but Gregory Hayes, one of his great biographers and translators, my favorite addition. Hayes points out that no where does Marcus explicitly identify with the stoke. He of course quotes the stoke, so he of course says things that the stoke's said, but he suspects that Marcus would have been more of a generalist,

that Marcus would have actually identified as a philosopher. What Marcus loved was philosophy and wisdom, and anything that could help him get closer to the good life, to truth, justice, to wisdom, to courage, but Marcus identified instead at more as a philosopher than a specific school. I mentioned Marcus as kids. I think his wife, Faustina, is worth pointing out

as maybe something you didn't know about her. He was married for decades, but he seems to have actually loved his wife. I think this is partly illustrated by all the children they had together, that he was a man, a human, with human urges. But that he seems to have genuinely loved and supported his wife.

Even when people claim she was unfaithful or tried to spread rumors about her, he accepted her and loved her and put it all out of his mind. Most marriages for professional politicians are not good ones. The Marcus' seems to have been great. You might not think of Marcus as a guy who doubted himself, who had what we now call impostor syndrome,

but in fact, he did. We're told that when Marcus was informed, he would one day be the emperor. He broke down. Again, in tears. He doubted whether he had what it took. He thought of all the bad kings in history, all the terrible things that they'd done.

And he wondered if he could escape that, if he could still be a good person and be a king. So this is him doubting himself, he questioned whether he could do it, which I think is good. If you think, of course I can do it, I'm great, everything I do turns to good. I don't think that's the right attitude.

It's good to question yourself, it's good to have doubts. But then the day before he ascends to the purple, as they say, Marcus has a dream, and in this dream, he has shoulders to the purple, as they said, Marcus has a dream. And in this dream, he has shoulders of ivory. And this reminds him, he's stronger than he thought. He's strong enough to bear this. His shoulders can bear the load. I love this image, the image of the ivory shoulders.

You two are stronger than you know. We're stronger than we know. And that's what Marcus realized, and that's what helped him get over his impostor center. Marcus has what might be the most magnanimous and impressive garage shell in history. In the depths of the plague, his Rome's treasury is depleted as the economy is falling apart because of the devastation of the Black Death. Marcus holds a garage sale. He walks through the imperial palace and he marks goblets and jewels and robes and couches. He and his wife's most valuable possessions. He walks through the imperial palace and he marks goblets and jewels and robes and couches. He and his wife's most valuable possessions, he sells on the lawn

of the palace. Not to raise money for himself, but to raise money for Rome. He doesn't care about the trappings. Remember we talked about the simple life. Marcus's love of the simple life allowed him in this great moment to demonstrate an example of selfless leadership of eating last and putting others first. And I think it's one of the great moments of his life. We tend to think of philosophers as bookish, but Marcus was a nerd and a job. He fought, he wrestled, he rode horses,

he hunted even with hatred. He was a man's man in that sense, but he was also a lover of wisdom, lover of poetry and plays. We see this in meditations, and I think it's a reminder, you don't have to be one or the other. You can be anything you want to be, just be yourself, follow the interest that you have.

It was a great expression, though, men's sonno, incorporate sonno, basically strong mind and a strong body. And I think that's what Marcus was. Marcus was someone who never stopped learning. There's a great story about Marcus towards the end of his life. He's an old man, one of the rare moments that he's there in Rome. He's leaving the palace carrying some books with him and a man says, Marcus, where are you going? And Marcus says, I'm off to see sex to the philosopher to learn that,

which I do not yet know. And the man marveled how amazing it is that the emperor, the most powerful man in the world, is still taking up his tablets and going to school. And that's how you have to think about education. Marcus' life is changed by a single book. In the same way that my life was changed by someone recommending Marcus really as an epititidist to me. Junius Rousticus, this is Marcus Rialis' philosophy teacher, hands him a copy of Meditations. And he thanks Rousticus in Meditations for introducing him to Epictetus' lecture.

He said, for loaning me his own copy. I just love the idea that all of history is shaped by this Chan's book recommendation. It's not just the recommendation, right? I'm sure lots of people recommend lots of books. Epictetus has been recommended by lots of people. It's that Marcus followed it up. He read the book and then most importantly, he implied it.

Marcus's own book, meditation. He was writing it to himself. He had no idea this would be published that we would be talking about it today. He might well be mortified. Right, this is in a work of published, performative philosophy. It's the private notes,

the most powerful man in the world. All the markets was Roman, and the Roman spoke Latin. He wrote to himself in Greek, because it's a more beautiful language, because Greek was the language of the philosophers. And again, it's just a remarkable achievement that even a single passage in this book

is intelligible, or usable, or universal as it is. Because he wasn't thinking about you at all, when Marcus says, you do this, you should do this, you need to stop doing this. He's not really talking to you, talking to himself, but he's doing it so specifically and earnestly and authentically, that it has impact and resonance with all of us all these years later. The last thing you should know about Marcus is how he departed from this world.

Marcus supposedly spends the last minutes of his life telling his friends, why are you weeping for me? Think about the plague, he said, think about the people it's claimed, think about your own fragility and mortality. That we understand was said in the last moments of his life, but even the last pages of meditations Point at this as well. He says you've lived your life as a great citizen in a great city 500 years or a hundred. What's the difference? The laws make no distinction and he says now you're being sent away Why is that so terrible? He said like the curtain coming down on an actor, but I've only gotten through three acts

He says yes. this is a drama in three acts, a length fixed by the power that created you and now directs your dissolution, neither was yours to determine. And then these are the last words that he publishes, and they're worth remembering and caring with us today. Those are just some things that you probably didn't know about Marcus that I've benefited so much from learning over the years, and I continue my study of him. I've read this book now a hundred times. I've read biographies of Marcus. I've studied him a thousand ways from a thousand angles,

but I wanted to leave you those unexpected facts about Marcus Arrelius, and I hope they leave you something to show. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The app goes the way. You go as the enemy, still in this is the key. The leatherbound edition of the Daily Stoke. We have them all in the Daily Stoke Store, which you can check out at store.dailystoke.com.

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