The Daily Stoic - Cicero On The Paradox Of The Rich Man

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

In today's audiobook reading, Ryan presents the sixth and final reading of Cicero's Stoic Paradoxes. Cicero was considered Rome’s greatest politician, and he has survived as one of history���s most enduring chroniclers of Stoic philosophy and of the Stoics themselves. As Ryan explains in Lives of the Stoics, these paradoxes are designed to question commonly held beliefs in order to promote reflection and discussion. With his last paradox, Cicero examines the idea that “only the wise man is rich.”💵 Visit dailystoic.com/wealth to sign up for The Wealthy Stoic wealth management course today.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://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 we 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. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Bringing you today, one of the most interesting paradoxes in Stoic philosophy, if it really is a paradox, it comes to us from Cicero and actually ties into

what we're talking about in the new challenge, the wealthy Stoic, a Stoic guy to be rich, free and happy. Basically, the paradox from Cicero is that only a wise person is rich. What does that mean? Well, we're going to get into it in the challenge, which you should check out. It's a whole bunch of Stoic advice on being better with money, being better with wants and desires, being better at investing in yourself, investing for the future, saving, also knowing what to let go of. Awesome stoic strategies on that. How stoicism has guided me as an entrepreneur and as a successful writer.

Anyways, you can check that out at dailystoke.com slash wealth. But without further ado, I will get you into this excerpt from Cicero. Cicero was what they would have called then a new man. He came from a wealthy family of merchants, not sort of one of Rome's established aristocratic families. And then he makes a fortune for himself as a lawyer. He's sort of seen as having new money, so people look down on him and he's sort of wrestling with that.

He's ambitious. He's too ambitious. Lots of really interesting things that he digs into in this little excerpt from his work on the stoic paradoxes. This excerpt was read, was created here at Daily Stoke, is read by Michael Reed. And I think you'll really like it, so check it out. Life can get you down, I'm no stranger to that. When I find things are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something. Obviously, I use my journal, obviously, I turn to stochism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff. And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote, so I don't have to drive somewhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in.

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off your first month and show your support for the daily stoic, that's Talkspace.com slash stoic. Paradox 6 That the wise man alone is rich. Translators note, this paradox is addressed to Marcus Crasseus. What means this unbecoming ostentation and making mention of your memory? You are the only rich man. Immortal gods ought to not rejoice that I have heard and learned something. You, the only rich man, what if you are not rich at all? What if you even are a beggar?

For whom are we to understand to be a rich man? To what kind of a man do we apply the term? To the man as I suppose whose possessions are such that he may be well-contented to live liberally, who has no desire, no hankering after, no wish for more. It is your own mind and not the talk of others, nor your possessions that must pronounce you to be rich, for it ought to think that nothing is wanting to it and care for nothing beyond. Is it satiated or even contented with your money? I admit that you are rich, but if you are the greed of money, you think no source of profit disgraceful, though your order cannot make any honest profits. If you every day

are cheating, deceiving, craving, jobbing, poaching, and pilfering. If you rob the allies and plunder the treasury, if you are forever longing for the bequests of friends, or not even waiting for them, but forging them yourself, are such practices the indications of a rich or a needy man. It is the mind and not the coffers of a man that is to be accounted rich. For though the latter be full, when I see yourself empty, I shall not thank you rich. Because men measure the amount of riches by that which is sufficient for each individual. Has a man a daughter? then he has need of money. But he has too, then he ought to have a greater fortune.

He has more, then he ought to have more fortune still. And if, as we are told of denounce, he has 50 daughters, so many fortunes require a great estate. For, as I said before, the degree of wealth is dependent on how much each individual has need of. He, therefore, who has not a great many daughters, but innumerable passions, which are enough to consume a very great estate in a very short time. How can I call such a man rich when he himself is conscious that he is poor? Many have heard you say that no man is rich who cannot with his income maintain an army, a thing which people of Rome sometime ago with their so great revenues, could scarcely do. Therefore, according to your maxim, you never can be rich until so much is brought into

you from your estates, that out of it you can maintain six legions and large auxiliaries of home and foot. You therefore, in fact, confess yourself not to be rich, who are so far short of fulfilling what you desire, you therefore have never concealed your poverty, your neediness, and your bakery. For as we see that they who make an honest livelihood by commerce, by industry, by forming the public revenue, have occasion for their earnings. So whoever sees at your house the crowds of accusers and judges together, whoever sees rich and guilty criminals plotting the corruption of trials with you as their advisor. In your bargaining for pay for the distribution of patronage, your pecuniary interventions

and the contests of candidates, you're dispatching your freedom to fleece and plunder the provinces. Whoever calls to mind you're dispossessing your neighbors, your depopulating the country by your oppressions, your confederacies with slaves, with freedmen, and with clients, the vacating of estates, the prescriptions of the wealthy, the corporations massacred, and the harvest of the times of Silla. The wills you have forged and the many men you have made away with. In short, that all things were venal with you and your levees, your decrees, your own votes, and the votes of others. The forum, your house, your speaking, and your silence. Who must not think that such a man confesses he has occasion for all he has acquired? But who can truly designate him as a rich man who needs all his earnings?

For the advantage of riches consists in plenty. In this plenty declares the overflow and abundance of the means of life, which, as you can never attain, you can never be rich. It's funny, I talked to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading, they're reading more than ever, and I go, let me guess, you listen audio books, don't you? And it's true, and almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible. And that's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs. And of course, ancient philosophy,

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or text daily stoke to 500-500. I shall say nothing of myself, because as you and that with reason despise my fortune. For it is in the opinion of the generality middling, in yours next to nothing, and in mine sufficient. I shall speak to the subject. Now, if fact, I shall speak to the subject, and I shall speak to the subject, and I shall speak to the subject, and I shall speak and in mine sufficient. I shall speak to the subject." Now, if facts are to be weighed and estimated by us, whether are we more to esteem the money of Pyrrhus, which he sent to Fabricius, or the Contanencia Fabricius for refusing

that money? The gold of the Samnites, or the answer of Manias Curius, the inheritance of Lucius Paulus or the generosity of Africanus who gave to his brother Quintus his own part of that inheritance. Surely the latter, evidences of consummate virtue are more to be esteemed than the former, which are the evidences of wealth. If therefore we are to rate every man rich only in proportion to the valuable things he possesses, who can doubt that riches consist in virtue? Since no possession, no amount of gold and silver, is more to be valued than virtue. Since no possession, no amount of gold and silver is more to be valued than virtue. Immortal gods, men are not aware how great a revenue is parsimony. For I now proceed to speak

of extravagant men, I take my leave of the money hunter. The revenue one man receives from his estate is 600 Cestersia. I receive 100 from mine. To that man who has gilded roofs and marble pavements in his villas, and who unboundedly covet statues, pictures, vestments, and furniture, His income is insufficient, not only for his expenditure, but even for the payment of his interest, while there will be some surplus even from my slender income through cutting off the expenses of voluptuousness. Which then is the richer? He who has a deficit, Which then is the richer? He who has a deficit, or he who has a surplus, he who is in need, or he who abounds. The man who's estate, the greater it is, requires the more to sustain it, or whose estate maintains itself by its own resources. But why do I talk of myself, who threw the contagion of fashion and of

the times, and perhaps a little infected with the fault of the age? In the memory of our fathers, Manias Manilius, non-to-mention continually the Curie and the Lucenia, at length became poor, for he had only a little house at Karini in a farm near Labicum. Now are we, because we have greater possessions, richer men. I wish we were. But the amount of wealth is not defined by the valuation of the census, but by habit and mode of life. Not to be greedy is wealth, not to be extravagant is revenue. Above all things, to be content with what we possess

is the greatest and most secure of riches. If therefore they are the most skillful, valuers of property, highly estimate fields in certain sites, because such a state are the least liable to injury. How much more valuable is virtue, which never can be rested, never can be filched from us, which cannot be lost by fire or by shipwreck, and which is not alienated by the convulsions of tempest or of time, with which those who are endowed alone are rich, for they alone possess resources which are profitable and eternal, and they are the only men who, being contented with what they possess, think it's sufficient, which is the criterion of riches. They hanker after nothing, they are in need of nothing, they

feel the want of nothing, and they require nothing. As to the unsatiable and avericious part of mankind, as they have possessions liable to uncertainty and at the mercy of chance. They who are forever thirsting after more, and of whom there never was a man for whom what he had sufficed. They are so far from being wealthy and rich that they are to be regarded as an assessor and beggard. 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 obstacle is the way. You go as the enemy, still in this is the key. The leather bound edition of the Daily Stoke, we have them all in the Daily Stoke store,

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