The Daily Stoic - Classics Scholar Robin Waterfield on Translating Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations - Pt.1 | There’s Only One Path To Greatness

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Ryan reads today’s Daily Stoic meditation and talks to Robin Waterfield about his new annotated translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, the historical accuracy of the critical moments that shaped Marcus’s life, the difference between high and low philosophy, and more.Robin Waterfield is a British classical scholar, translator, and editor, specializing in Ancient Greek philosophy. He studied Classics at Manchester University and went on to research ancient Greek philosophy at King's College, Cambridge. He lives in Greece.This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout.This episode is also brought to you by KiwiCo. KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com. This episode is also brought to you by Talkspace, the online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show.This episode is also brought to you by Box of Awesome from Bespoke Post.  They have a huge number of collections no matter what you’re into: the great outdoors, style, cooking, mixology, and more. To get started, you just take a quiz at boxofawesome.com your answers help them pick the right Box of Awesome for you.Get 20% off your first monthly box when you sign up at boxofawesome.com and enter the code STOIC at checkout.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic Follow Robin Waterfield:Homepage: http://robinwaterfield.com/See 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 Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery'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. You are what you give your energy toward. There is an infinite amount of things you could do today. There is an infinite amount of information you could consume. There is an infinite amount of thoughts you could think. So as you weigh those limitless options this morning, it's worth considering this declaration for Marcus Aurelius. Our worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.

Will you pursue selflessness or will you work for the common good, will you turn to smart books or sensational news, will you be jealous or happy for other people, will you be kind, will you worry about petty things, we are what we think about, we are what we put our energy towards. If we direct ourselves well today and every day we will be well. If we don't, we won't. It's that simple. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stove Podcast. As you know, my life changed in 2006, I believe, when I read Mark's

releases, meditations. I don't know how I ended up with the translation I ended up with. You know, I bought a random one on Amazon and here we are. All these years later, having had my life changed by this wonderful, wonderful experience. I've read meditations on hundreds of occasions. Literally, I have a copy of it by my nightstand. I can recite large passages of it from memory. It's formed so much of what we do here at Daily Stoic. And I had a wonderful experience over the last week or so, reading Marcus Aurelius again, but from a new perspective,

a new translation. I'm talking about Robin Waterfield's new translation for basic books. In fact, an annotated edition for markets are really, so with a wonderful intro, and then every passage or almost every passage, Robin takes the time to sort of explain what they mean, what markets was referencing the necessary context. It's a wonderful translation. Usually, I introduce people to markets through the modern library translation by Gregory Hayes, which I think is sort of lyrical and beautiful, but this translation is right up there. It's for a first time or with markets, this may be

the right translation for you. And you'll hear in my two-hour interview with Robin, just how profound a thinker and philosopher Marcus really was. I was familiar with Robin's work because I've read his translation of Xenophon, I've read and referenced one of his translations of Plutarch, as far as classical scholars go, Robin is one of the best. And so I reached out to him having read this new translation to see if he might want to come on the podcast. And we talked not for one hour, but for two. So you're gonna be listening first to our one hour

conversation and then on Saturday, I'm gonna come out with our second hour. For the first hour, we talk about who Marcus was, who was the man who sat down and wrote these notes to himself. What was he thinking about? What was informing him? What made him tick?

You can tell that Robin is someone who spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think we really get into a fascinating discussion that you will like. So look, here's my interview with Robin. I cannot recommend this translation of Mark Cerelius enough. If you've already read Markus, then I definitely suggest you read this. You know, Markus talks about how we never step in the same river twice, which he gets from Heraclitus, but the idea that work changes as we change. And reading, you know, Markus from the fresh angle was really beneficial. I'm serious.

I think I folded, this book's about 300 pages. I probably folded 280, 290 pages. I mean, and most of the ones I folded, I drew an arrow saying I had to turn to the next page. I have the now unenviable task of going back through this edition and translating all the things that I got onto my note cards, but it's an incredible translation, a great conversation with the pureless Robyn Waterfield. You can check out his new edition, Mark Sirrely's Meditations, the annotated edition from Basic Books. Do check it out and enjoy this interview and then follow up with us on Saturday

for the rest. So what is your introduction to Marcus then? When does he first come into your life? Oh well, I mean, you know, from one point of view, I've known about him forever. I mean, just the same way everybody does. But in publishing terms, I didn't do very much actually, something like, I can't remember now, 25 years ago, Penguin produced a little series of books called Penguin Sixthes or something like that. And they were, they were, you know, small 99-pents books or something. And they asked me to abridge their current translation of meditations for that. So I did that

reluctantly because I thought the translation was crap but still I did it and then that was it and then what would it be like guess 2017 2018 basic books approach me and said you want to do this? They had the scheme, they had the plan. They already knew they didn't just want another translation. They wanted an annotated, they wanted this, they wanted to make a standout from all the other translations by putting more apparatus in it. So that's what they asked me to do and that's what I did.

It is interesting. I feel like the name is very familiar. It's like we just know Marcus Aurelius. Maybe it's from the movie Gladiator, maybe it's from other things, but there is this kind of distance between us and him. For having been one of the only philosopher kings in history and to have written this beautiful book, it does seem like he's not that integrated

into our sort of lives or our scholarly lives either. Well, that was one of the reasons for the annotation is that, yeah, I mean, scholars have produced you know, learned commentaries on Marcus, but everybody else just reads the book. So I wanted to kind of act as a bridge between the two and give a little more depth to the text by writing these notes. Yeah, hopefully it will help people. The feedback I've had so far has been very positive. People have said that the notes are helpful and to understand the book and things like that. I slightly worry about it because I think I should link prime use of the book is just for people. I slightly worry about it because, you know, I think I feel like the prime use of the book is just for people to pick it up and read a bit

and enjoy it and think about it, you know. Well, I think it sort of adds an extra layer of understanding. I think one of the reasons, Marcus is probably one of the few works of ancient philosophy that your average person could just pick up and get a lot out of without the annotations. But I think what the annotations do is it helps you understand all the levels that this, you know, maybe just a short sentence is operating on.

And it turns out there's quite a few levels that he's speaking about a lot of occasions. Yeah. I mean, above all, of course, I wanted to bring out the stares, because I mean, you know, stares isn't quite complex in certain respects, and people don't get into that, or they don't see it straight away when they're just reading the book. So, yeah, that was one of the chief things. And the other, I think, most particularly useful aspects of the notice is the cross-references, so that I'm pointing out where, where a theme resurfaces throughout the book and things like that.

Well, I thought we should start, and I think this is fitting, given that today is Marcus's 1900th birthday. Which is indeed. That maybe we start first with the man and then let's go to the meditations. To me, what's so incredible about Marcus is, we have this surveyed understanding of a king or a queen, you know, the crown is obviously popular. We think of these sort of people who it's like, oh, your father was king, so he prepared you to be king or queen or you were born, even though we no longer agree with the idea of a royal lineage, we at least make some logical sense to us. I think what's so incredible about Marcus is that he really was just a regular person who was selected, not quite from obscurity, but certainly selected with no real pretense other than

somebody spotted potential in him and it sort of sets this incredible story into motion. He was more embedded in the imperial household than you're suggesting. Okay, he wasn't necessarily destined to be emperor from from his boyhood, but but his family was already you know was very close to to Hadrian. So they were they were in that circle. He would have been brought up, as I say not with necessarily with the expectation that he would be emperor, but he would have been brought up with the expectation that he would rise, you know, he would be granted honorary consul ships and pre-tour ships and things like that, it would rise up through the ranks to a certain extent. As it turned out, he rose up all the way.

Yeah, he's not an ordinary person, but at the same time, he's not a third cousin. There's not even the convoluted by marriage. It's really more of this sort of Roman tradition of adopting someone and making them your heir. Yeah, yeah. I, I, I wonder about that. I don't know enough Roman history to sort of really have a view on why successive emperors did that. I suspect it was because they wanted to avoid conflict. If it's supposed to have like, I don't know, two sons, and they want to avoid conflict when they got one of the sons wanted to be emperor and the other one did as well. So they adopted people to make that safe. That might have been the reason.

It's funny. You couldn't develop a worse way to raise a person, by saying, you're destined to be king because you're my son, or queen because you're my daughter. But then again, I'm not sure choosing a random kid from the Imperial household at a relatively early age and saying, in the future in the future you will be king. I'm not sure, more often than not, you know, let's say in a Nero's case, that turns out to be quite terrible, right? I think what's fascinating about Marcus is that,

you know, he's kind of the exception that proves the rule. Like it didn't ruin him as a person to have this path selected for him. No, he had a very strong sense of duty, and I think this is again just a sort of slightly argue against you. I think the advantage of a child being brought up, knowing he's going to be emperor or king, is that he's instilled with a very strong sense of duty. I suspect if there is any truth to the newspaper room is about some kind of rift between Prince his William and Harry, but it might be over exactly this issue. William has obviously taken on

the on board the idea that it's his duty. He is born to be king, he's, whereas Harry is trying his best to shed as much of that as he possibly can. And I suspect William thinks he doesn't have a sense of duty. Yeah, that's really interesting. Right. It's the idea that you're both a person and a personification of the state. Exactly. And you don't get all of the choices and freedoms that a normal person has. Yeah, particularly in case of the Royal British Royal family where the king or the queen is also the head of the church and So was Marcus Marcus was also pontifex Maximus of Rome as well as the emperor So you've got this you know this really powerful combination of

emotive Issues situations, religion, duty, and perotite, all combined in one person. You're talking the book quite a bit about Marcus' theme of eternal recurrence. And there is something, it is kind of lovely, the eternal recurrence of the exact same dilemma the eternal recurrence of the exact same dilemma and stress that's probably on Marcus and Lucius Varis is also 2000 plus years later on Prince Harry and Prince William. Yeah, it could be. Yeah. So what shapes Marcus in his early life then? He seems to have this sort of tension where he's on the one hand being instructed in rhetoric and in all the things needed to be king, but he really falls in love with philosophy at some point. And there's kind of a tension between those things it feels like.

Yeah, it's a traditional tension. I mean, dating right back to Plato for the fourth century, I mean, dating right back to Plato to the fourth century, because Plato was very strongly against rhetoric, he thought that its values were superficial that it perpetuated superficial values as opposed to reaching for knowledge or understanding in any real sense. And so it's been a traditional dichotomy ever since then. Marcus, see, Houston,

had been attracted to philosophy from a very early age, and book one when he's thanking Junior's rusticus for acknowledging what he learned from him. He says that he was still a child when he became attracted to, I think, as rusticus, when he became attracted to Greek education and austerity, the sort of ascetic side of things. So that would have been a childish attraction. He wouldn't have, he would then have started studying philosophy only when he was much older, when he was 17 or 18 or so. And that would have carried on for some years in parallel

with rhetoric. But yeah, his heart was in philosophy, not in rhetoric, definitely. Why is rhetoric so controversial? It seems, the irony is, part of the reason we're talking about Marcus is that he was taught to be so articulate and clear in what he was saying that even his own private ramblings to himself stand as one of the greatest works of philosophy of all time. Yeah. I think the problem with rhetoric, I think the problem with the rhetoric that Marcus saw was that it was too overblown. In his day, there were two schools of, two chief schools of rhetoric, those who were into what was called

sort of a sciatic style and those who were into the planar attic style. Marcus would have been attracted to the planar style, but nevertheless there was this tradition of very overblown fancy rhetoric, clever illusions, clever word games, things like that, not using even going so far, atticists would go so far as not use any word that wasn't found in two cities and later or to most of these or people like that. And I think Mark has probably just saw that as a bit silly, a bit of a sort of complex and rather useless game. So he does have a set of philosophy teachers then.

He has Rousticus and who else instructs him in philosophy? Oh, I can't remember the names of the top of my head, but quite a few. One's, it's about one six to nine or all his philosophy teachers. So that's, I think that's right. Yeah, Rastikus is seven. So Agnetus is six. So Rostikus is seven. Apolognes was a philosopher,

sexist was a philosopher. Alexander the language teacher, yeah. And then Fronto. Alexander the Platonist who got, yeah, so quite a few philosophy teachers. There's not a full list in book one, there's not a full list of all his tutors, but there's the ones he mentioned. All sterics. And of course he doesn't explicitly think Epic Titus, but Epic Titus is really his main philosophy teacher, it feels like from a distance. Oh, definitely, definitely. It's not even clear to me how well read, I assume Marcus had access to the

you know the works of the early stakes like Xenon and Chrysipus which are lost to us. But it's not particularly clear to me that he was that well read in them. Everything, everything we can read in meditation seems to come through an epic tea and filter rather than giving us the idea that Marcus was actually immersed in Christy Puss' very complex works. Not any complex, but poorly written works. So is your view that he's reading directly the lectures of Epic Titus, or is he reading Aryan's translations? What does your take on that? Very difficult. Again, at the end, it must be rustic as he thanks him for the end of one seven.

Says, yeah, and reading Epic Titas' discourses, he shared his personal copy with me. Right, so were these rusticus's own notes? You know, he might have gone to Epic Teetas' talks and taken notes, or was that Aaron? I don't think there's any way of telling I suspect it was Aryans when when Marcus quotes Epic teetus it's from Aryan's discourses Sometimes it's not sometimes it's from the last books of Aryan's discourses So we can't tell how exactly quotation is but the other times when we can when we can figure it, it's always Aryan.

He may well have heard some of epictetus from Hadrian himself, who we believe attended some of epictetus' lectures, right? Well, we believe Hadrian visited epictetus, whether he actually sort of attended a lecture or anything I don't know. But yeah, he may have heard about him, sure. Yeah, I mean, he was brought up with intellectual curiosity, he deferred of all these people the same way that when you asked me at the beginning, you know, when did Marcus really ascend to your life? You know, epic teeders would have entered Marcus's life very early.

It's fairly incredible to have the most powerful man in the world be so influenced by, you know, such a powerless person in the world be so influenced by, you know, such a powerless person in the world. The only real analog I can think of is the friendship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas. Yeah, that's a good parallel. I didn't know it. Except they weren't directly friends, of course, Epidetus and Marcus, they never actually met.

But yeah, it is curious, but I mean, it's curious from the outside, but from the sterk inside, it's not so curious. Because of course, to a sterk, it doesn't make any difference whether you're born a slave or an emperor. You simply do the best with what the gods have given you. The hand has been dealt here. So, they both clearly did the best.

And goodness, we can still read them. We've got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle. And we're the host of Wonder e's new podcast, Dis and Tell,

where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the build-up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lin's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them.

It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Britney. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wonder App. Yeah, and it seems a bit patronizing, but I suspect that Marcus identified with the powerlessness of Epictetus

or that being dealt a bad hand by fate. I don't think Marcus relished the power that he was given. I think he saw himself assigned a role that he probably wouldn't have chosen. Do you agree with that? I broadly I would agree with it. Yes, he's critical of the idiots around him. I mean, as Emperor, he's having to deal with dozens of people every day and he doesn't seem to think most of them

are worth much. But at the same time, there is a contradiction in the meditations where there are four occasions, let's say four, maybe five, when he comments more or less directly on his position as Emperor, and twice it's like this is a real burden and it's a real obstacle and it gets in my way of being a philosopher, and then another couple of times it's like, this isn't an impediment, I can still be an emperor and be a practicing story. So actually, it's one of the few times the actually genuine, you know, completely contradicts himself within the book,

saying first one thing and then the opposite. That strikes me as pretty understandable. Sometimes you love your job, sometimes you hate your job. I'm lucky, I always love my job. Well, one other philosophy teacher I wanted to talk about in Marcus' life who you're sort of indirectly connected to is sexist, who we don't know a lot about, but for my understanding is Plutarch's grandson or nephew, I just love the idea that Rome was such a small world that Marcus Aurelius is being tutored by the kind, is being tutored by sexist and Plutarch. His whole life is about telling stories

about people just like Marcus Aurelius. They would have liked each other, I suspect. Yes, except for the fact that, okay, what well as writing biographies, PUTARC wrote a large number of essays, and quite a few of those essays are anti-stolic tracks. So what's curious is that PUTARC who was a playtunist, his nephew was a Stoic, and it was his nephew, Sextus, as he said, who was one of the influences on markers. But yeah, no, I think they would have liked each other. I rate Pluto very highly. I like his work. I like his mind. I like his use of language.

I've translated four volumes of Pluto, I think. Yeah, you're right. The irony of Plutarch's descendants being connected with the Stoics. It's not quite as ironic as Cato, the elder's great grandson being a Stoic, given his antipathy towards philosophy, but yeah, I wonder how bitter that taste would be in his mouth. Cato was not as supposed to philosophy, but opposed to all things Greek. Or he pretended to be. I think it was kind of a bit of a front for the sake of, you know, a politician saying

something for the sake of the effects it will have. But, you know, Kato said he was opposed to all things Greek. So talking about Marcus really says male influences, obviously they're significant, but you have an interesting annotation about Marcus's mother who doesn't get talked about quite as much, but seemed like she was an enormous force in his life. I don't know, as you say, she's not talked about much. I mean, she was immensely wealthy. She owned. talked about much. I mean, she was immensely wealthy. She owned dozens of factories, I think, but I can't remember what they were making. But, sorry, I'm speaking more as a philosopher than a historian. Yes, I don't pick up on all the historical details necessarily. But how much of a influence she was? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I remember reading, maybe it's in the Historia Augusta where where Marcus

almost doesn't want to be King because it means he's going to have to move out of his mother's house, which I thought was both cute and perhaps an insight into Marcus's character. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he moved into the Imperial Household aged about 16, I think. Yeah, because he loses his actual father quite early correct

Yeah, very early Before the age of ten you had say and and I feel like he there's also a few illusions to mothers in Meditations, you know he talks about philosophy being your true mother and, you know, your job being sort of like your stepmother. So, yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm making it up, but I did feel like clearly his mother was a symbolically significant

in his life at least. Yeah, I think I think it's safe to say that, yeah, but I'm being a pedantic scholar and not not pushing it any further. All right. So, talk to me about his relationship with his brother, which is kind of his, what is it, his adopted step brother? I don't know what you would call it exactly, but this strikes me as a pretty remarkable a remarkable relationship.

Yeah. strikes me as a pretty remarkable, a remarkable relationship. Yeah, I mean, the first thing that's interesting about it is it's the first time Roman had a dual Emperor ship, first time that had been two Emperor. I think that I mean, we don't know really what the dynamic was between them. We can't know. There's a recent book about Lucius Berus, which I haven't read, which tries to- Oh, what's it called? I don't know. It was mentioned at the anniversary conference yesterday, which I, but it, but it enraged what I know about it is that it's trying to correct his reputation and say he wasn't just the sort of dandy and playboy, which is the sort of first thing that people think of when they think of Lucius Ferris.

But I think the dynamic between them, it been very interesting as they were growing up because as far as I can tell, it was Lucius who had been first intended to become Membra. And then it was only when Antoninus Pierce became Membra that he elevated Marcus over Lucius. And Marcus accepted that, and so when they became joint emperors, he made it clear that he was the senior of the joint emperors by getting Lucius to marry his daughter, making Lucius his son-in-law slightly sort of inferior position to her father-in-law. But I think the dynamic between them when they were growing up, perhaps because Marcus could see less quality in Lucius than he thought the emperor should have. I think the dynamic between them when they were growing up would have been very, very interesting. One could write a novel about it,

but I don't think there's enough historical evidence to write a historical book about it. So you're saying that Marcus is the heir and Lucius is the spare or vice versa. And they end up sort of just sticking with it. Is the dual emperors maybe a descendant or an homage to the idea of the two consoles before Rome becomes a dictatorship? Yes, it could be that or it could be there were a lot of other presidents.

Classical Sparta had, okay, in Classical Sparta, had two kings. A lot of the Greek kingdoms in Egypt and Macedonia, after Alexandria when it all sort of basically divided up into three or four kingdoms, Syria, Egypt and Macedonia were the three cheap ones, they often had dual kingships. They often made their sons their joint kings a few years before they retired or died. So there was quite a strong president for dual kingship, but just the first time the Roman had one. When I was writing Lives of the Stoics,

one of the interesting examples that came up to me is when Arius becomes the advisor to young Octavian and then Octavian becomes emperor, the first thing that this Stoic philosopher tells the emperor to do is to kill Caesarian, Caesars illegitimate heir, who actually probably in some ways has a, you know, a closer claim to the throne being an actual descendant of Caesar and Cleopatra. So I don't know, I just find it remarkable that, you know, given what had happened

just a generation or two before with, with Nero, you know, there's not a long history of kings allowing their rivals to peacefully coexist or or quite frankly continue breathing for very long. No, well going back to what we said earlier, I mean this this might be why the Roman Emperor's or the the Flavin Emperor's used adoption rather than rather than children, so to avoid that kind of conflict. But yeah, I mean, again, going back to the Greek kingdoms, the Greek and Macedonian kingdoms, they were, I mean, those families were apart from the Macedonian kingdom. That was fairly stable. They didn't tend to, there's only one case there, but a son being killed.

But in Egypt and Syria, they were bumping each other off left-right in the center. Brothers, sisters, wives, daughters, cousins. Yeah, and it's like, you know, Hadrian gets credit for sort of putting this into motion, but I mean, he dies. So he has no idea whether the experiment works. Perhaps most of the credit is due to Antoninus that he manages to keep all this together and sort of shuttle it from, you know, that he manages to inherit the throne, hold it for so long,

and then peacefully transition power to two essentially polar opposites is a pretty incredible feat. Yeah, now he was clearly a good emperor. one of the emperors we call the good emperor, and a strong emperor, but I think in the first place he wasn't expected to live so long. I think when Hadrian passed it on to him, he thought, okay, he'll be, because he was already his fifties or something, and people didn't necessarily live that long in those days. So I think Hadrian expected to answer nine as to live for another sort of, you know, six

or ten years and then pass it on. As I say, I think Hager wanted him to pass it on to Lucieus in the first place. It was Antonynes who then turned around and made it Marcus, seeing, I think, the greater quality of markers. And Antonina strikes me as everything Marcus wanted to naturally be, but was not. Yeah, you obviously. I mean, the admiration that he expresses in both book one, one sixteen and in book six thirty, the admiration to express for antelimuses, absolutely genuine. And it makes those two entries really unique because what we know about Roman emperors is what the historians choose to tell us, and they're dealing with a mixture of court gossip and official documents and this and this.

But here is Marcus writing from personal knowledge about an emperor, Antoninus P.S. And that's unique. And what he says about him is really remarkable. And it gives us more insight into the workings of a Roman emperor's mind than the historians do, I think. Yeah, what's remarkable is in some ways, Antoninus is in the way of what Marcus is, you know, birthright or what he's been given. So to me, what makes the admiration so impressive is that, you know, by hanging around so long,

Antoninus is preventing Marcus. Like, you know, we have this idea of the impatient error. You know, the young son whose father has an empire, you know, a business empire, they want their turn in charge, they've got new ideas for a new generation. Yeah. in charge, they've got new ideas for a new generation. It's remarkable how respectful he is, even though in some sense they're sort of jockeying with each other for power. You know what I mean? But do you think, I mean, I think that I think I don't think Marcus was unhappy about

being delayed before becoming emperor. I think it gave him more time to be a private individual and get on with his sterec reading. I mean, he had lots of official jobs. You know, he was a console and priest and all sorts of things even before he became emperor, but at least he would have had slightly more time to himself, slightly less having to deal with these people, regardless of idiots and fools and crooks. Antoninus does seem to have a good understanding of Marcus's nature.

There's the story that I love where, when Marcus is, one of Marcus's teachers dies and Marcus is crying. And supposedly another instructor goes to, you know, sort of say, this isn't dignified, you know, this isn't what a stoic would do. And he says, you know, let the boy be human for once. And so there is, there are these moments of where we get just through the, you know, the centuries,

we get a glimpse at the affection and the understanding that these two had for each other. Yeah. I'm not sure I particularly believe in the historical accuracy of that story, but it might reflect some aspects of the truth. I mean, because that's the trouble with these stories, the historian, in particular, is that there's a lot of kind of tropes in it, which you just sort of apply an idea to a person because he's an emperor or because you think he's a good man or because this or because that, rather than necessarily has too much basis in reality. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show stay tuned. Yeah, but if you're telling me that I can't trust the anecdotes in Plutarch or these sort of insights into the character of these philosophers, I feel like you're shaking the entire foundation

of my worlds here. No, one just has to be careful, that's all. I mean, you have to have a good, this is what we do. This is what students of the ancient world do we pick a judicious path through the evidence we try to determine what's sound and what's unsound and we stick to what sound and yeah cast out the rest no plutars are good source but the story or Augusta isn't do you think Marcus was happy? No, I don't I mean one of the one of the major themes in the book is is anger management

He he was frequently disappointed with the people around him you frequently thought the world was You know basically shit and filth I mean he actually uses more or less those words at one point He thought the people around him as I've already said the lies and crooks less those words at one point. He thought the people around him, as I've already said, the lies and crooks, he calls them at one point. These were the people he had to deal with. He thought, at least in some moods, that being Emperor was a major impediment towards his pursuit of, you know,

philosophical enlightenment. So I think on the whole, he wasn't happy. I think the tone, I mean, we should qualify this, he was a practicing stoke or he was trying to be a good stoke, so he wouldn't have allowed himself to be unhappy. But nevertheless, I think that was there, and I think the way it shows chiefly in the book and the meditations is that there's a certain sort of melancholy in the book, a certain kind of sadness, which, you know, melancholy is not necessarily a negative state. It's a state of mind that can lead one to quite quite a lot of profundity. And I think that's where it takes markers.

But nevertheless, I think he was menacolic. Yeah, I think he would have preferred to... But he wasn't. No, we see the county would say he would have preferred to be something else or do something else because he was a state. He accepted a lot that Zeus had given him. That was to be emperor. But what of the argument that perhaps what we see in meditations is not a representative picture of the whole personality because he's writing about his temper because he's struggling with that. Perhaps he's not reminding himself that jokes are funny or that sex feels good. He's actually doing the opposite. He's saying, hey, remember, don't be deceived by this lust

that you feel or this fit of passion in your temper that you feel, maybe there's a certain amount of omission here. Oh, absolutely. We're only getting one of some facets of the diamond. And you can pick up other aspects of his character from the historians. I mean, for instance, I think it's pretty reliable information that during the Markamanic Wars, he, you know, he wanted to eliminate an entire tribe.

He wanted to, he put a price on the head of the chief of this tribe, literally, you know, bring him to me alive or dead. So here we see, you know, Marcus, as Emperor of Rome, had to be a times of violent person, a war like a belligerent person, ruthless to his enemies. That's not a side we see in meditations, but necessarily an emperor had to do that. Yeah, it's interesting, right? You hear him talk about sex, for instance, and he seems to be sort of, as you say in

meditations, you know, he's sort of disgusted by lust. But at the same time, doesn't he have like 11 children? So he couldn't have been that turned off by sex. He had, I think it was even more, nearly all of them died, of course. I think they were like, when he died, there was only one son remaining. That was confidence, but I think there were four daughters remaining. But, well, I don't know, but Ryan, come on now. We can't tell whether he enjoyed it, or whether Faustina did.

We just kept going back to that well. You might have just been doing his duty as an emperor to make sure that he had a son and a, but isn't that interesting going back to what we were saying before, but he broke this pattern. I think three emperors before him had all gone with adoption to produce an air. And Marcus let Commodus be the next emperor and made him join tempera while he was still alive for the last three years of his life. And yeah, I think historically we tend to think that was a bit of a mistake. Maybe you should have adopted somebody, and somebody better. Well, unquestionably,

comedists as Marcus really is his greatest failure, but it is strange because, first off, if you have 12 children, at certain point I think statistically, one of them is gonna be a dud, right? And then maybe I'd also say, you know, what is it, what does it do to a family to lose? I think he loses what seven children or six children

before adulthood. Yeah. I can only imagine the trauma that that inflicts on a person and as Marcus, but I also just think of the trauma that must have inflicted on comedists. Like if comedists was a totally normal individual and then six of your brothers and sisters die, I mean, I could see that being a story one tells an alcoholic's anonymous or something. Now, I think I want to put a slightly different spin on it because you're looking at it from

a modern perspective. In the ancient world, it was very, very common for children to die, probably more died in infancy than live to their teenage years. And the result of that is this, what seems to us, a very callous attitude towards death. Not just among the Stoics, we know what the Stoics thought about your child's death and how you should be able to cope with it easily or at least relatively easily. But everybody, everybody necessarily had to be much more hard-hearted than we were all hard-hearted or realistic about death than we ought to be today. I actually, I mean, you've got to think about things like gladiatorial contests.

I mean, that's an extraordinary, extraordinary thing. And warfare, I mean, thousands of people being killed in brutal warfare, year after year, after year. I mean, there was warfare going on, you know, in ancient Greek times and Roman times, or almost annually, a brutal, horrible warfare. I think people were far more disinterested in death than we are now. Our more objective about it. And hence, of course, you know, all the stories about what's important isn't you as an individual, but it's the perpetuation of the family, the family name, you've got to be noble, you've got to die nobly, courageously, etc., etc., and battle, whatever.

So this is all like consolation for the fact that they were probably going to die anyway. Yeah, you know, I was it was weird as you know Marcus talks about how you know It gets this from Hera clearest that we don't step in the same river twice I do feel like I've gotten a different understanding of Marcus as I've gotten older as I've had my own kids You know, I know I know he gets this lesson from Epictetus about you know as you tuck your child into and I'm standing in the market, it says, I've gotten older, as I've had my own kids. You know, I know he gets this lesson from epictetus about, you know, as you tuck your child into, and I, you know, to just say to yourself

that they might not live till the morning. And I sort of got, I got that, but it wasn't until I read your translation, I'm thinking about notebook 11, where the epictetus thing appears, but also the meditations on either side of it, I never really comprehended them all in one block together, but it was very striking to me that notebook 1133 where he says, it's crazy to look for figs and winter.

It's no less crazy for someone to look for his child when that's no longer possible. I don't know when I heard that, I was almost moved to tears to think of Marcus like thinking of or reaching for these children that he would have loved that he no longer had. And to see it juxtaposed next to this other reminder where he's having to tell himself, hey, when you talk a minute night, think about this, it really brought home that Marcus isn't always being figurative.

Often he was probably being quite literal about his actual painful experiences. No, I think you make a good point there, right? And it hadn't occurred to me, but yes, he obviously had been looking for his children when it was no longer possible. And so he's sort of, that's how he came to the realization that it's crazy to do so,

because that's exactly what he was doing. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, and it's heartbreaking to, you know, I agree with the philosophy, but then the image of a father having, trying to convince himself in the pages of his journal, that it's crazy to miss the child that he lost. There's something, I don't want to say discordant about that, but something almost sad about the philosophy of

doing that to a person. Oh, well, I wouldn't say that, but no, it's moving. It's certainly moving. but no, it's moving. It's certainly moving. Yes. And I'd say, I think you're right, a bit of insight into his character there. But I mean, this is, I think, the proper understanding of the stoic teaching about apapheia, about not feeling any emotions or passions, it's I think to understand that is that you're just you know cold blooded and callous and you know collected and all circumstances is is wrong I think a stoic felt the emotion or was aware of the emotion but didn't let it affect him, rose above it. By substituting, by substituting a rational proposition, I knew my child was, I know my child is mortal, instead of the pain of the child dying, then you could rise above it, but it doesn't mean you didn't feel something. rise above it, but it doesn't mean you didn't feel something. They weren't feeling less.

Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Yeah, the myth of the Stoics is that they were emotionless robots, and I suspect it's actually that they felt the emotion, they just didn't let the emotion rule their lives. They transcended the emotion probably partly by processing it in the pages of a journal like Marcus is doing here. That would help. That certainly one of the purposes of the journal.

But yeah, no, that's what I was saying. You're right. They feel the emotion, but rise above that. So I had another thing that struck me about meditations that I'd be curious for your thought on that, that again, I didn't really get until I read meditations again at the beginning of the pandemic. When did you start doing this translation?

I'm curious of the, what was happening in the world as you were writing. Yeah, I wasn't in lockdown. It was before lockdown. I was doing it basically throughout 2019. I did epic theaters in lockdown. Well, I can't wait to read that, but the thing that struck me, and I'm forgetting where it appears in meditations, but Marcus talks about how a plague can take your life, but

the real pestilence is the one that destroys your character. And again, you know, reading that many times, you know, I came to think of that as a figurative statement. And then watching how humanity acted during the coronavirus pandemic and some of the, you know, sort of awful, cruel things that, you know, human beings revealed themselves to be capable of, it struck me that perhaps Marcus was being literal there as well. What a plague does to us can be worse than the plague itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did, I think I added, I was tweaking the introduction

at the beginning of lockdown. So I did include a reference to COVID-19 in the introduction, but basically I was writing the book outside of that. But yeah, now I think you're right about what you say about Marcus's insight barrier. How does the internet play shape him? We can't know. We can't know the answer to that right. We can't. I mean, it must have been devastating. It was, you know, powerless to stop it. The only attempt they had at curing it was praying to the gods, which wasn't going to do much good. So it must have been devastating that we're goodness knows tens of thousands of people dying when you're the emperor

and you feel in a sense you're the shepherd and they're your block and they are just dying around you all the time, must have been devastating. So, you've questioned some of the historical moments that I like to hang my hat on, as I just think they're beautiful, but I am struck by the actions that Marcus takes during the plague, particularly when he supposedly sells off some of the imperial treasures to keep Rome going. It does seem like he steps up to the plate at least as the world is falling to pieces. Yeah. Yeah, I repeated that story in the

introduction. But again, I'm not 100% sure of it. The resources of the Emperor of Rome were vast. I don't see why he was so broke But he had to but it might have been a gesture you see it might have been it might have been a Look a bit of PR to To do that to say you know, I'm I'm suffering along with you people And I'm doing the best I personally can to see that your lives get better. I had one other question about the intro. You have this interesting note. You talk about

the distinction between high and low philosophy. What does that mean? Well, the way I'm using the terms high philosophy is more or less what we nowadays think of as philosophy. In other words, you know, the study of concepts, argumentation, the development of logic and epistemology and complex theories to explain the world and all its parts is high philosophy. And that was a strong feature of ancient philosophy as well. As I said in the introduction, some of the work of the Stoic's on logic and epistemology is really challenging, really difficult, really complex. And very interesting, because for many centuries,

Stoic logic was thought to be pretty useless, not a kind of a digression from Aristelian logic, which was the main thing. And it was only in the 19th century that people put up and realized that stoke logic was actually very profound, very, very powerful tool. It was when people like Frager and Mathematical Digicians like that came along and they looked back and stoke logic and realized how great it was. So, yeah, so this is high philosophy doing this complex classroom and book learning type of philosophy.

And what I'm calling low philosophy is the type that we see in epictetus and Marcus really is, in other words, it's philosophy for life. It's philosophy for consolation, in the face of death, and it's philosophy for therapy to try to make you a better person. That's what I'm calling low philosophy. And that's clearly what Marcus was into.

He, if ancient philosophy was divided broadly into three branches, logic, physics, and ethics, logic covered more than what we think of as logic, it covered all argumentation and forms of reasoning and rhetoric and grammar and so on and so forth. Physics covered the way the world is, not just what we call the physical laws of the universe, but also things like theology and actually the gods and things like that. And ethics was supposed to help you make a better, become a better person. And it was also a high philosophical level. Ethics was just the study of abstract concepts of ethics. But in terms of those three branches, Marcus clearly felt himself to be

at one point, he says, not bright enough to be an expert in logic and physics. As another point he just says, I don't know enough about them. So, what his focus is entirely on ethics, his focus is entirely on how philosophy can help me, Marcus, become a better person and a better emperor. That's Epic teacher's focus as well, or at least this Epic teacher's focus in the ext and discourses. He also was teaching the other stuff in his school, but we don't have that surviving that course. But yeah, so Marcus is a low philosopher in that sense. And I think it's also worth remembering always that he's an amateur philosopher. He was a professional emperor, but you know, he hadn't taken a full course in stoic philosophy. He read widely clearly.

He attended lectures when he could, but he hadn't gone to epic teachers, not that he could, because epic teachers was a little dying by the time he was young. But he hadn't gone to a teacher like epic teachers and hang out in his school for three years and become a professional philosopher. He was an amateur philosopher. But again, that's part of his appeal to us because we read him as amateur philosophers ourselves. We read him as people, you know, trying to improve ourselves, trying to improve our own

lives, trying to be nicer people. And so it's good that he's an amateur philosopher because we see the same struggles in him that we're having in our sound. Yeah, it's ironic that we would think of the low philosophy as being, or that not as good philosophy being the one you can actually use that would actually help you in life. That's not the one that people get paid money to teach at Stanford or Harvard. It's the least accessible part that sort of gets that people chase. Although, I guess that distinction exists even in Marcus' time, and this is why they

were against, maybe it's the softest or some of the fancier sort of thinkers. There was this bias towards action even amongst the stilloks, I feel like. Sure. Yeah. No, I think you're right about philosophy nowadays as well. A lot of kids, I think, go to university. They like ideas. They like chatting with their friends at night,

over at pint in the pub, and sorting life out, and trying to be better people and using ideas to make themselves better people. And so they say, right, well, I like this stuff. So I'm going to go to university and study philosophy. And then that whole, you know, what they meet there is high philosophy and the low philosophy, which they, what they wanted gets kind of burned out of them. It's a shame. With the revival of stursism, I mean, people confided again now. It's really great. You didn't tune into yesterday's anniversary, Marcus, anniversary conference.

No, I didn't. I've looked at it on YouTube. The last bit, I thought was really good, because the last bit was just two young women, one a lawyer, a cameraman, what the other one did, talking about what stursism meant to them as young women, as young professionals, and so on and so forth. And to me, it was the most profound art of the conference because it was really showing how philosophy can still, how stuices can still be a force for good in people's lives.

Yeah, one of my favorite lines and meditations is where he says, it stares you in the face. No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you're in right now. I think that's I think that's how Greg Rehaze says it. But the idea that he's he's saying that it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, doesn't matter what your job is. Philosophy, there is a role for philosophy inside that and it can make you better, whether you're a classic scholar or a writer

or a general or a, you know, a merchant of some kind. Yeah, absolutely right, yeah. Yeah, this haze translation, I have never come across it. It seems to be quite a popular one. I think I may have something to do with that. It's the one that I've, I've, I was first introduced to, you know, I just went on Amazon

when I was 19 years old and I bought, you know, meditations. And it was the one that arrived. And I think what I find to be particularly great about it is that it's very sort of lyrical and poetic. I've since, I've since come to hear from translators like you and I did a, we did a version of some Marx-release translations in my book, The Daily Stoic, but you know, he's taken some liberties, let's say, with the language, but I love Marx as, just as a writer, I'm particularly fond of Marcus and how beautifully he renders

some of these expressions. Who's the publisher of the Hayes book? This is the modern library. Okay, right. So that's Doc and his name, I think so. Yeah. I don't know. So I guess it's Random House.

Yeah, they're all part of same group, no, of course. I am suspicious of what you said about it then, because I've come across other translations of Marcus where, frankly, sometimes one is reading more of the translator than one is reading of Marcus and like, I said, you know, I've done, I've done, look, you know how many volumes of translation I've done, I've done 32 or something volumes of translation. I feel myself to be somehow a poster child for being a translator. So when I come across people taking liberties with the text, especially when it's a philosophical text and inserting their own ideas or paraphrasing Marcus's ideas into their own ideas, I really, really don't like that. My aim in all my translations is to be absolutely accurate to the original

and fluent English as well, but I don't add. Our newest course, Daily Stokes, Stoicism 101, Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life. You can sign up now, just go to dailystowach.com slash 101. You're going to be able to benefit from my synthesis of all this information over the years. This is going to be a live course. All the participants will join the course together and move through together at the same time. Registration is now officially open. It will close on Sunday, May 2nd at 11.59pm

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