The Daily Stoic - Classics Scholar Shadi Bartsch on What Ancient Texts Reveal About Modern Life | This Is Making You Who You Are

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Ryan read today’s meditation and talks to Classics scholar and professor Shadi Bartsch about Seneca’s contradictory service to the emperor Nero, why the classics are still relevant and important in modern society, how to use ancient texts as a way to reflect and think critically about oneself, culture, and politics, her translation of Virgil's The Aeneid, and more. Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer is the Helen A. Regenstein Professor at the University of Chicago. She works on Roman imperial literature, the history of rhetoric and philosophy, and on the reception of the western classical tradition in contemporary China. She is the author of 5 books on the ancient novel, Neronian literature, political theatricality, and Stoic philosophy,Go Macro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping on all orders over $50.Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.Talkspace is an 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.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookFollow Shadi Bartsch: Twitter, HomepageSee 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. This is making you who you are. You've been hit hard. Your plans fell apart. The other side isn't playing by the rules? Good.

That's what Jocco Wilnick says. Good. This is an opportunity. It's also a trial that will make you stronger. He has one without glory who has won without peril, Sennaka would write. Mousseus was tested by fire, fabricus, by poverty, rutilius, by exile, Socrates, by poison, Cato, by death. One cannot find great exemplars except in misfortune. To the Sto's life without adversity was a life without virtue. Virtue needs the struggle. It wants the challenge. It rises to it. So yeah, things have been rough.

Yeah, you've been hit hard, but good. This is making you better, making you into something stronger, wiser, more resilient, which is why you're not complaining, no, you're grateful. A more Fati. A more Fati is this credibly powerful idea. It comes to us from Nietzsche, but it's reflected most beautifully by the Stokes. I was introduced to the concept through Robert Green who has a chapter on a more Fati and is book The Fifty of Law. Robert and I collaborated on our Amor Fati medallion and then there's also a pendant. I think it's just one of the most powerful ideas in the world. Amor Fati, you can check it out in the daily stoke store. I carry it with me wherever I go. I've got it sitting on my desk as

well. Amor Fati, it's not just to endure your fate but to love it, embrace it, and make the most of it a more faulty. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoke Podcasts. This week was crazy for me. I've told you I've been working on this bookstore for the last 15 months. It's been crazy with the pandemic. One side of it is the bookstore. The other side is a record store. The record store

Astro Records is a great little record store. Small town. They were hosting a benefit for Kasa, which is a charity for abused children. And so we had them across both buildings. We did this charity benefit. And you know, all these dark months of whether it would work, whether the store would ever open, whether it was, you know, you got to cost me a fortune and I was going to barely get out alive. You know, having the books or open was one thing. And then having this event, you know, which you could safely do because of vaccines. And I just, I felt, it was just incredible, but a friend of mine came and he walked in. He had known that I had known that I was opening the story. He didn't know anything about what we were doing.

He just showed up and he walks in and he's just like his jaws on the floors. Adrian Grenier, who lives in town, is there at the event. Paul Oakenfeld, the DJ, is doing the music. Erica, if you don't follow Texas Beekeeper on TikTok, she's like that millions and millions of followers, she does Beekeeper. There's just all these cool people there, young people, people that you wouldn't expect at an event in a small town in Texas, at a bookstore, and a vintage record store. And it was just, I don't want to say it made all the hard work worth store. And it was just, I don't wanna say,

it made all the hard work worth it, but it was just like the first real significant statement that like, hey, this wasn't the world's worst idea and just maybe we're gonna pull it off. And it was so, it's just this cool experience that I don't get outside of my books very often because you know a book is a project you work on for years and years, people doubt it, you doubt yourself all these times and then at some point you have this moment whether

you see it in a store, you see some writing it, reading it on the subway or you know some basketball player tweets about it or whatever, you get those moments. But this is one of the first times I got it sort of totally outside that context. And this thing that we took this massive risk on and really sort of faced so many obstacles on. So it was just this awesome experience. I wanted to tell you about it. Just give you a little insight into my life, what's been going on with me. I think this bookstore is ultimately going to be one of the things that I'm most proud of.

It's, you know, it's cool that people from town just like thank you for doing this. We always wanted a bookstore in town. You know what I feel like when I walk through the bookstore, I feel like I'm proudest of it because I know that if I hadn't done it, it wouldn't have been done. And to me, that's a good rule for the projects to work on in life. Like, you know, if you're going to be the 5,000th venture capitalist or the 300th Wall Street analyst or the, you know, if you didn't do it, you would just be easily replaced. This probably a sign that it's not something to spend your life on. And when I think about the books

that I write, I want to write books that should exist but don't. And then if I don't write them, they won't get rid. And this bookstore, you know, I don't. And then if I don't write them, they won't get rid. And this bookstore, you know, I don't know what would have been in this space, but it was vacant for a long time before we took it over. And I don't think that another bookstore would have just magically taken the shop or spent the time or energy or money or care

that we spent, anyways, it was great. On to today's guests, who I'm very happy to have on. I heard her on Tyler Cowan's podcast, and she just blew me away. Her energy, her passion, her counterintuitive takes on the classics, particularly the Stelix. I was just riveted by, I asked Tyler for an introduction, and I'm just finishing her translation of Virgil's The Antiod. I'm talking about Shadi Barch.

She is a classicist at the University of Chicago. She's a Guggenheim Laureate. She's been a professor of classics for nearly three decades. She's published more than 12 books, including three translations of Seneca's tragedies, which if you haven't read, you should. She's translated the Estes, Medea and Fagia in a field of a lot of old, boring white guys.

She is a breath of fresh air. She's half Swedish, half Iranian. And I think, you know, I'd read Robert Fagel's translation of the Ineid many years ago. And what I particularly liked about her, and she talks about this in our interview, is that because of her background, because of her perspective,

she's able to see this ancient poem with a fresh set of eyes. And I think it opens up new avenues, new perspectives, new questions, really, that allow you to get more out of the text. Just a joy of a conversation. We really nerd out about stoicism and I just, I had a lot of fun doing it. So here is my interview with Shadi Barch. You can follow her on Twitter at at shoddybarge. That's S-H-A-D-I-B-A-R-T-S-C-H. And you can get her new book, the translation of the Aniad, anywhere books are sold, including my bookstore,

The Painted Porch, here in Bastrop, Texas, which you're welcome to come to or just go to thepaintedporch.com. to come to or just go to thepaintedportch.com. So I wanted to start with a person we have some mutual affinity for slash perhaps disapproval of. Talk to me about your relationship with the one and only Seneca. My relationship with Seneca is deep and complicated and goes years back.

In fact, for me, a figure that poses a very important question in the world of ethics, which is, what do you do if somebody suggests an ethical system for life, but is unable to live by it, him or herself. And if you think about it, all of our great heroes in the West from Socrates to Jesus Christ have actually lived out the life that they urge other people to live, and Sennaka was unable to.

So should we throw out his writings with the bath water as it is, or can we excuse him on certain grounds, or can we even perhaps say that to live a life of moral complication and moral failure while writing a guide on the right life might make that guide even more worthwhile? You know, maybe it's precisely a good reason not to throw it out. This person is struggled. So how hypocritical do you think he actually was? Because sometimes when I, it sort of depends on my mood. Sometimes I go, this guy was the world's biggest hypocrite.

And on the other hand, I think maybe he was actually not hypocritical, but in fact, quite heroic. He would have liked to live this quiet philosophical life where he didn't have the wrestle with any of these difficult questions. And then suddenly is forced into a role that he, the only way out is suicide. And so he sort of selflessly takes it upon himself to constrain Nero, to be the insider who tries to steer Nero. I mean, where do you come down on the extent of Sena Kasipakrase?

Ryan, I think it's so difficult to come up with one motivation for a prison's actions. So I spoke that for suspect, that for him, it was a combination of many things. So as you know, he was called back to be Nero's tutor before Nero came to the throne. And he'd been an exile. And all of a sudden, he's offered what looks like,

you know, a plum job, right? Close to power, influence the future ruler, be back in Rome, get paid, be part of the court and court life. And at the same time, I'm sure he's hoping that he can teach the young Nero to think about life in a more stoic way. And ultimately, Sonika fails, right?

And he finds himself trapped. And he realizes that he's not having enough influence at court once he becomes Nero's actual advisor when Nero is the emperor. And a couple of years before he is his death, according to Tacitus, he goes to Nero and very politely says, oh, you've done so much from Nero and I'm really gratified, but I think I just want to retire now. And Nero says, nonsense, I couldn't possibly let you retire.

That would reflect badly on me. People would say, how could he treat his old teacher like this? So Sonica was stuck. And as he say, he did have to commit suicide. But I think it was a mixture of hope, greed, and idealism that drove him to take up that role in the first place, that role so close to an emperor who would turn out to be one of the worst ones Rome had.

It's funny, I do all my research on note cards, and so I write down these note cards, and it's a pretty good system, except for everyone, so I'll lose a note card, and I won't be able to find it, and I know it exists, but I can't Google for it, because it's not digital. And I just found it yesterday.

And to me, as you were just saying that, it struck me that it perfectly in captures Seneca's trajectory. These are supposedly Pompey's last words, quoting Sophocles. He says, whoever makes his journey to a tyrant's court becomes his slave, although he went there a free man. To me, that's the arc of Seneca's life, is it not?

Absolutely. And I don't know if you've seen the movie, The Last King of Scotland about a woman doctor. It's about a Western doctor from Scotland who decides to go help Edie Amin set up a medical system in Uganda. And of course, the Scottish doctor is sucked in deeper and deeper until he is complicit in EDM's crimes. And he realizes all of a sudden he's gone from being the good guy to being the bad guy. And it started out voluntarily.

And now he, like, son of a guy, is strapped. And I had General HR McMaster on the podcast. And I felt like I really wanted to ask him this because I feel like he's both a student of Stoic philosophy as his general Mattis and then found their way into, that's not quite called a tyrant's court, but let's say one of the more controversial American political courts, where the disposition

and the predilections of the, of the, the Seneca versus the Nero are about as far apart as they could be. You know, you have a thoughtful sort of philosopher warrior like General Mattis or General McMaster. And then you have, you know, you have a Donald Trump. And I tried to get from them like, how does that happen? Do you tell yourself that, and I suspect this is a big part of it.

I think you're telling yourself, if I don't do it, someone worse will be doing it. And to a certain degree, that's what happens when Seneca does leave, right? It's not like the departure of Seneca brings about Neero's end. In fact, it quickly devolves into a much worse scenario than it was when he was there. But that's also a great rationalization for complicity.

Yes. And so, again, maybe that's one of those binaries we have to crack apart in this instance versus complicity. But Boris, there's something really interesting about Seneca that not that many people have observed, which is that although he spends his life at court in his letters, that famous corpus, and in all the dialogues except for the on-anger and on-clemency, he pretends he has nothing to do with power or the Roman court. He doesn't mention his daily life there.

He doesn't talk about Nero. He makes no references to huge crises or huge developments in the Roman Empire. At that period, he's only writing to aylius or to his friends and it's always about stoicism, not about his own life. And the reason I think that's important or that we need to think about that is that I think he was actively abjuring his life as a model, saying my life can't be a model because it ended up being too corrupted.

You have to look at my writings. There is where you can learn something. It's where he never mentions the court. And there's an interesting passage in Tacitus' annals where he's describing Sonica's death. And according to Tacitus, Sonica has cut his wrists and his ankles and he's dying slowly and there are his acolytes around him. And he says to them,

the only thing I want you to remember is in Latin, the amago, the image of my life. And what he means by that, I think, is not my life as I lift it, but the image that I've left behind me and all this written material. And so that for me makes Sonica a little less complicit, the fact that he knew and he didn't try

to excuse what was happening at court. Yeah, Sonica, the first sort of Straussian philosopher, where he's sort of saying one thing, but there's a deeper meaning that you have to sort of get that he's intimating at. That's a very interesting question. Especially his plays, right? Like his plays are, I think, quite clearly a commentary on his political life. I so agree. The only thing is I wouldn't call it strousey and we can come back to strouse if you like. But I wouldn't call the place strousey and because I don't think the message

is particularly hidden in the place. Sure, right. You look at a fight, especially the thiastes, right? I mean, I read the thiastes as being all about stoicism. Here's this guy in exile, just like Sonica. He's in the woods with his kids, and he keeps saying things like, I'm so happy, it's so wonderful to eat eight warrants

and not to worry about being poisoned. It's so wonderful not to drink from a gold goblet and worry about what's inside it. You know, my head is resting on sticks, not cushions, but it's much better, and he goes on and on and on like this. And then his brother, Atriaus, offers him a position back at court. He says, come back, we'll share power, right? And of course, a good stoic would say, you know, power is an indifferent, right? And I don't want it. It's not a path to happiness. And that's kind of what the SD starts out saying, but he fails,

as he's thinking about it, he has a change of heart, he fails us to steal it and he returns the court and he ends up having to eat his children for his failure in judgment. But the failure in judgment is this, he's saying, I'm not going back and then his kids start tugging on his hands and saying, Daddy, Daddy, we want to go back. And that's when he breaks. And I think that's a beautiful allegory for how stoicism in the end can't work in some cases. It can't work with people you love deeply and want the best for. You can't just treat them as if time loaned them to you as Sonica suggests.

The demands of the family of love of emotional bonds will eventually triumph over the stoic, I think. And as somebody who tried to be a stoic, that's certainly what happened to me. So No, that's a fascinating reading that I hadn't quite thought of because yeah, in Thestis, he says something like, it's a vast kingdom to be able to cope without having a kingdom. Exactly. But he can't do it, right? He can't. You'd think that as a Stoic,

Seneca should be able to stay in exile as Epictetus does or some of the other Stoics, Musonius, that he should have been able to endure. In fact, it's more conducive to the philosophical life. But he actually can't resist the draw to be at the center of things, although, you know, to be charitable to Senaika, you know, perhaps it's that this stoic is, is in fact obligated to participate and be at the center of things, and that you don't have the luxury of being a remote academic observer of life,

you have to accept the lure to contribute to the state. Now, that's very interesting, and I know where you're getting that view of stoicism from. It's not an uncommon interpretation. It goes back all the way to Christophe and some of the things he said. And Sonica and his writings sometimes suggest that participation is necessary. Sometimes he adds the caveat if the government is good. And sometimes he just says that no, the stoic will want his distance. So it's very hard to read it. But we know that the letters were written late. And one of the later letters, he actually says something

like, well, maybe I tried and maybe I failed. And that's really all he says. And it's very hard not to read that as looking back on his time at court. So I wonder if in the end, he would have decided that you can't in fact go back in without losing something important of yourself. I think he certainly did believe that you could be at court and do some good.

Yeah, it's ironic that there's this sort of tension in stoicism between being the pen and ink philosopher and the sort of political philosopher and where do you make the most difference? The irony is that almost all of Senica's political contributions were sort of rendered meaningless and if not a mark against him, but that it's his letters and his writings that help the most people for the longest amount of time. So it's almost also an argument for there's different ways to contribute and it's not always about making yourself the center of things or wielding power. Perhaps sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword and Sennaka's real

influence comes from his writings, not from his political maneuverings and all the Amaki Avellian things that he has to do. Yes, and you know, we can draw a sharp contrast between Seneca as we've described him. And some of the other political stoics of his own day, who in a scholarship have often been called a stoic opposition. So figures like Thursaya Petas or Rubelius Plottis or Berea Serenis who are all exiled or executed

by Nero for fighting back as they could, which was very low key business of not attending the meetings of the Senate, not voting in favor of honors to Peja, Nero's wife, and stuff like that. And these guys paid what their lives for their beliefs, or for their unwillingness to countenance, an autocratic emperor. Yet what if we really learned from them for souls? They died for the cause. But Senator who hung out with Nero and who was the richest man in Rome did not die for his cause. And yet I think arguably more and much more influenced by him.

Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident, not so expert experts.

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about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. I've had this surreal sort of pleasure and experience of meeting with a group of US senators, a handful of times in Washington, who have sort of come to stoicism through my books and were sort of curious about, you know, what it teaches. And as it happens, they're sort of all Republican. And with a handful of exceptions in some key moments, it's been interesting to watch them sort of do exactly

what you're talking about. Like the opposition is at best low key. And if you said, well, hey, why, you know, why didn't you say anything when there's this sort of slow moving coup attempted? Why didn't you say anything when, you know, this abuse of power, that abuse of power, why didn't you vote to impeach? And, you know, the reason is usually like, well, if I did that, I would lose my job. Even though they have, you know, pretty decent job security, but there's this place you get to and it takes us right back to Sena, right back to Sena, which is like, if I drew the line here, I would be replaced in short order with someone who would not draw any lines. And so you have this sort of generation of leaders or this group of leaders who are sort

of going like, I'm here, I'm going to stand to the radar, but I'm going to step in when it gets really bad, when it gets really serious, then I'm going to do something. And that's also what Seneca says, but he never does. You know, Seneca never steps in. Yeah. So I think that's a really good analogy. And I was almost softening towards those guys for a second. And then I thought of a difference, which is that there were many of them.

There could have been a whole group of Republicans who decided to say, this is not okay. Right? And if there had been a majority, they would have been fine. Or even if there had been a large minority, right? But Sonica was only one person. So I'm, I still blame, I think, people who should have known better for going along with the Trump regime. Yeah, that's something you brought up to me, which is like, does stoicism and its focus on the individual make it a philosophy ill-suited for collective action problems? And in a way, Trump is a collective action problem. One senator, one congressman can't really do anything, can't enforce, you know, just even your sort of typical Republican

beliefs, but a group of them certainly could, right? And I think people have this view somewhat deservedly, somewhat undeservedly, that the Stoics are so focused on what's in your control, what you can do, that I wonder if it holds us back as far as getting a group of people together to solve a difficult problem. You know, I think it does. You will find people who argue that no, stoicism makes room for including people outside the family as part of one giant family and you can extend your ethical concerns for them and so forth.

And fine, yes, there's a little bit of that in there. But what there is so much more of is, as you said, this idea about keeping the self in a state of equilibrium, not feeling anger or grief or desire or any of the things that will knock you off your pedestal where you're standing and breathing well and feeling like you're okay. And most of the exercises and precepts that we find in the Stoics whose writings we have, the Roman Stoics in which I'm including Marcus Aurelius and Epititus as well as Seneca, even though they wrote in Greek, most of their precepts and exercises are about that, right? Are about making sure that when you come face to face with something that could

knock you off balance, you won't be knocked off balance, you won't feel that rage or that grief. And you can make it work for an individual under certain circumstances, I think, but the question of how do you make that work as a philosophy for action and change in the world is a very difficult question. Yeah, if you sort of think of the Greek and Roman Stokes as like they inherited this system

and it's just like how do I fit into it as an individual? Whether it's Seneca or, and I wanna talk about Athena Doris and Areas Dittimus, you know, they're like, hey, Rome is not a republic anymore, it's an autocracy, I gotta figure it out, right? It's not really until you get maybe all the way to like 1776 that you get these founders

who are influenced by the Stoics, that you get the sense that like, oh, you could use Stoic principles to create something new, to come together and do something that didn't exist. There is this sense in the Roman system, especially of like the status quo is the status quo and an individual cannot change it. Yes, definitely so. Definitely so. And you know, all the Stoics give us such a wonderful ways of dealing with the world around us.

And I think a lot of those ways are effective, but if you change the scale, if you scale up from person to society, then you have this difficulty. It's a little bit like the different kinds of physics. You know, for a while while everybody thought Newtonian physics was simply the physics of the way the world worked and then they discovered that Einsteinian physics was actually not compatible with Newtonian physics, you know, that at a certain scale Newtonian physics simply wouldn't work. So then we had two forms and now we have quantum theory and that's yet another kind of, what's the word I'm looking for,

dimension in which the other two physics don't work. So I'm a really strong believer in the idea that both science and humanistic approaches to the world are suited to particular contexts, but there are other contexts in which they simply won't work, whether you're scaling up or down or sideways. And you have to be aware of that. Otherwise, you're not going to be a very good person who's doing what they're doing, right? You're at stock at some point. Well, the two StoEx that I mentioned earlier, honestly, I didn't even know about until I was writing lives of the Stoics, but they're closer to Augustus, who obviously is sort of tangentially related to Virgil and the Ineid, which you translated. But Athena Doris and Arias Dittamus, what I found so fascinating about them, you know,

for people who don't have any real lives of the Stoics, they're the two Stoic tutors slash teachers of the young young future emperor Octavian. I thought it, it's like you have Kato who like with literally disembowel himself rather than serve under Julian Caesar. And then like five minutes later, these other two Stokes are like, okay, the king is dead, long live the king. We're gonna be tutors to the emperor.

I was both surprised and kind of disappointed, but I guess also it makes sense that how quickly the Stoics accommodated themselves to the new realm. There's a Vigie France-ness to how quickly they worked themselves into the court. Yes, so again a slight difference which may help us understand this this apparently different morality of these two stoic guys. They're both Greeks or from or or I think

Arias is from Alexandria and and so they're not already embedded in the Roman value system and still in the pack. And so I think Ari has even told Augustus to kill off Julia Caesar's son with Cleopatra, his area. There cannot be too many Caesars here. There are not too many Caesars, exactly. And tell me that that sounds like a stoic thing to say. Right. So these guys are in a different pot. They are, I think of them as kind of more cynical professional philosophers, rounding out the emperor's education, rather than people who lived and breathed the things they were expounding. Yeah, that's right. I guess there's a line in meditations that I think about.

I think it's illustrative what Marcus says. He says, don't go around expecting Plato's Republic. I think it's interesting that he doesn't say, don't go expecting Zeno's Republic, because he would have actually been able to read it. But I think it's interesting that there is a pragmatic streak to the Stoics that perhaps Senaqa embodies most of all, but Athena Doris and Areas do, which is like governance is

a complicated thing. And like, what are you supposed to do if you become emperor? You just fought this bloody civil war. You become emperor. And there's a, there, there's a rival heir. You know, there really can't be too many Caesar's. So what is one to do? I think that philosophy in general struggles,

I think, to solve the real world problems of power and governance. Absolutely, that's why Plato's attempts to intervene and Sicily failed. That's why his own republic is based upon not only the philosophers being in charge, which is something to think about indeed, but it's also based on people believing a huge lie about the social order in order to keep them quiet, right, play those noble lie. So even Plato has to make some serious compromises before he can create an imaginary city in which

philosophers actually make a difference or have power. And I think at this point, we could bring in Strauss again if you want because Strauss's whole view, and I'm not a Straussian, and I don't think his readings of the Republic or my monides or any one of the other ones are necessarily correct. But he does hold this very basic strong view that reappears on all his writing, which is that philosophy is dangerous to the state, as well as the state being dangerous to the philosopher, right? We know why the state is dangerous to the philosopher, it's because it can throw him into the

guillotine. But the reason the philosopher is dangerous to the state is that the philosopher stands outside state ideology, right? So whatever the ruler is saying to the people to make them happy, the philosopher doesn't believe it. He has an unjonged view of not only history but metaphorical truths and so forth. I mean, sorry, not metaphorical, metaphysical truths. And that's incompatible with government, with nationalism, with exceptionalism, with all sorts of things.

And so the philosopher and the ruler for Strauss have to stay apart from each other. They can't talk to each other. They're just fundamentally different. Yeah, one of my favorite books, I think it's by William Lee Miller. It's called Lincoln's Virtues. And it basically the premises, like Lincoln was a politician.

Lincoln didn't have a different job than all the other presidents. He was elected to office. He had to be reelected to office and he had to manage unwieldy political apparatus to accomplish a number of goals. Just as FDR was a politician. But we tend to take these successful leaders who we admire, especially after they die tragically,

and return them into these sort of like immortal figures or these myths or legends. But like he was a politician, and I think that's maybe also an emitting factor for Senaqa. Senaqa is a politician and Marcus Aurelius is a politician. And they have to figure out how to be both philosophers as far as they can be and also do this job which requires compromise and backroom deals and sometimes the exercise of violence. Marcus Aurelius probably doesn't want to be fighting a war against, you know, quote unquote barbarians at the border,

but he also can't just allow the border to be overrun, right? And that's a reality of the job, just as you can't have too many seasors, is a reality of Augustus and Areas's situation. And that tension that you're describing is present today, right? If we, if we generalize it into a kind of tension between let's say politics, nationalism,

the good of the state, the idea that the state is special and it's people are special, we put all that on the one side. And on the other side, we put abstractions such as what is fair, what is just, what is morally good, right? Those two things can't go together, and that's always been a problem, I think, in countries foreign policies. And maybe especially for the foreign policy of a place like the US,

where being on the right side morally has always been so great a part of its self-image, just like the Romans' self-image. And, you know, it's spreading democracy, which we value as a good, it's standing up for human rights and so forth. But in practice, what the US ends up doing, like any other country is looking out for its interests abroad and at home. And so there's a little gap there between the political rhetoric of the US and the political actions of the US. I think it's a gap that's present in every country, but not every country runs around

saying that they are morally good, quaint nation. Right. And I think that very difficult thing to say. I mean, I believe, I mean, after World War II, there was a real reason for saying that, but I think that reason is fading with time. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show, stay tuned.

Well, yeah, and Biden has said this, it's both a blessing and a curse. America is the only country sort of founded around an idea, right? And that idea is an animating inspirational principle, but it also, if we go back to Senaqa, is a nice new surrounder neck as far as hypocrisy goes. Like I was thinking about this with the vaccines. Like, you know, the morally correct

sort of effective altruistic approach of America should be to give as many vaccines away as possible to the countries that have people that want to take it instead of trying to get our vaccination rate from 65% to 70%. But, you know, Joe Biden wasn't elected by the people of India. And they're not going to be able to reward him at the ballot box in four years for his effect of altruism. So there's this tension always between the philosophical good virtue and effective governance and maintaining your power to effectively govern. And that's when you're actually aware of what's going on. So you know that there is a problem there, but most of the time people aren't aware,

right? So they don't even ask themselves that question. So look at the declaration of independence. You know, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. And people are writing that in a slave state, there are enslaved people around them. And all they need to do to not twitch at that contradiction is to say, well, slaves aren't fully human. That way, when we say that all humans are created equal, we don't have to worry about what

we're doing. And that is ideology for you. Let me look at the way it can blind you even to the most stark and grotesque problems with your own moral claims. Well, I wrote about this recently. I think it's fascinating. I think it's a note from the state of Virginia or something. Jefferson is well acquainted with the brilliance

of the Roman slaves. He's like, there's Epictetus and Terence and Pubilius Cirrus. And so you know, and he goes, but so what's the difference between their slavery and our slavery? And he, again, as you just said, can't face the inherent contradiction of what he's saying. He has to go, well, our slaves are a lesser form of human.

And that's what cognitive dissonance does. Instead of staring for the same reason, Seneca can't see Nero's full horror because it would indict himself. Jefferson is unable to see the monstrosity of what he's doing, except for, you know, brief flashes. I think he says something like, when I think that God is just, I shudder, you know, at the thought of what he's going to do to the United States, that's how complicated human beings are. Wow. He said that. I didn't know that. Yeah, let me look it up. It's a great quote, shutter, Jefferson.

And specifically, God's shuttering here specifically around slavery. Yeah, he says, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that is justice cannot sleep forever, that considering numbers, nature, natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune in exchange of supernatural is among possible events. And yeah, he's referring to slavery.

So he knows it, but he can't stop himself from, you know, participating in the slavery because I think this goes back to Sennaka. There's that great, great quote from up in Sinclair. It's impossible to get a person to understand what their salary depends on them, not understanding. You know, I put them in very different if Thomas Jefferson had to pay the labor on his farm. You know. Indeed, the whole South would be very different.

This reminds me of something I was thinking about recently and so similar, and I have to do with China and, you know, Chinese socialism or communism or whatever you wish to call it. So after the economic reforms put in by a Deng Xiaoping, the country thrived and has continued to thrive. And now, in many ways, China is as capitalist as the West, but it still thinks of itself as a socialist and communist country, and it still thinks of its values as largely confusion, emphasizing the group

over the individual and thinking about the larger good, over say, individual power or liberty. And I was wondering, so how do you say we're communists and yet have this thriving economic market going on at the same time? And somebody interviewed a number of Chinese sales people and CEOs and so forth. And they said, well, there's no contradiction there, because those two things are normally

related. And in any case, it's perfectly OK to use the market and money in order to get to a place where all men will be equal and they'll no longer be any poverty in China. So what they do is they add this kind of value-laden goal to what they're doing instrumentally and that explains the way the apparent contradiction. The ends justify the means. The, yeah, I guess so, as long as the ends are in their eyes more or correct, right?

When I loved your Washington Post piece about not surrendering the classics to the alt-right, it does strike me as like to get rid of them is effectively surrendering them to these extreme groups. Because it's not like by not teaching them in college, they become irrelevant and people won't use them anymore. It is giving them over to the worst people. I would be curious like, what is your perspective as not an old white guy studying the classics

that you're half Iranian, right? Like what unique perspective does that give you on these texts that maybe people are missing? Um, well, again, I think professional classics are missing this, classicists are missing this last these days because there's a large number who we agree, all of us, that there needs to be more about the area beyond the ancient Mediterranean. There needs to be more study of underrepresented peoples in the Roman Empire itself. There needs to be less of an emphasis on only mastering the languages, but also learning

something about cultural and anthropological issues. And for me, I remember deciding to study ancient Greek and Latin and being very indignant about the Greek representations of the Persians, right? Sure. It's found its craziest denouement in that film, the 300, where I think Zerksi is wearing plumes and he's half naked and the persons all have pedicures or something. And if we would all come to the classics multi-culturally,

we would see that classical cultures, one among many, that is as inhospitable and rude to other countries as all self-regarding cultures are. You know, no matter where you are, it's always the other guy who's the barbarian, right? The person thought of the Greeks as the barbarians. The Greeks thought of the person as the barbarians. The terminology stays the same.

The question of who uses it changes. You know, people always say that the victor's right history, but I would like to say that the victor sees the moral vocabulary, right? So they don't only say we won because we were stronger, they say we won because we were better, better people, and we are the good, and you are the bad. And that's how everybody thinks. I mean, even let's take the Senate. I bet you the Republicans think that they represent the good stuff, and of course the Democrats think

that they represent the good stuff. Everybody grabs the same vocabulary, no matter who they are, it's too bad. No, your point about sort of Persian representation is interesting. And I think it's why it requires a deeper dive into the classics, because, you know, to me, like I love Marx's realies, he's fascinating. I think someone worth studying by all young people as sort of a model of leadership. But Cyrus, the great, should be studied right alongside him

and is put, you know, up on a pedestal by Zenefin. So it's fascinating how I think it's almost, you can only say that the classics are not diverse, that it's only all dead, rich white guys. If you've never read Epic Titus, or as you said, you've never read Sappho, or you've never read about Cyrus the Great. It actually is much more diverse than I think people think that it is. I would agree. I would agree.

There's also pushback from people who think that the classics can only be read in one way, which is in favor of dead white guys. And even if that were true of the text, which it's not, one could still use the classics as a way to reflect and think critically about oneself, one's culture, one's politics, and so forth. And I'm thinking in particular of a really beautiful short article I happened to read earlier today. It was a new reading of the story of Genesis. And in this reading, the author, who is Rabbi Dania Routenberg, points out that Eve is the first one to show agency and

initiative, that Eve craves knowledge and that she's willing to do what it takes in order to get it and then of course The patriarchal forces that be including the God God, I should say I'm punisher But you can read even Genesis in this way, right? Like who? Who had curiosity who wanted to do something, who had agency, who was curious about knowledge, right? And of course, this is going against the original thrust of the Genesis, I'm sure. But you can read against the grain, and you can make people see ancient texts differently, just as this little article that I happened to read this morning made me think about Genesis a little bit differently.

Yeah, and obviously as a classicist, you're a tad biased, but I feel like it's a shame that not only should I think we should not be getting rid of classics departments, I think we should not be getting rid of classics departments. I think maybe having them sort of ghettoized in the classics department is the whole problem, right? Like, I didn't study and I dropped out the end of my sophomore year, but so I had to teach myself all these works. But, you know, a kid a hundred, a hundred years ago, maybe even 50 years ago, would have learned Sennaka and Cicero and all these things in their in Latin, right?

Like I learned how to say, can I go to the bathroom in Spanish, right? Instead of memorizing, you know, the epigrams of Cicero because I was taking Greek or Latin in school. I think perhaps the solution is to make classics a more pronounced part of our education. Well, you won't get a protest from me on that obviously, but what you said really struck me as important because I happen to also have another hat I wear, which is I run an institute on the formation of knowledge and we're very interested in how

knowledge comes to be and what shapes influence and force it, cultural shapes, political shapes, you name it. But anyhow, the reason I raise it is that one of our motto essentially is that we are discipline agnostic, which means we're pretty doubtful that the disciplines as they currently stand should be reified, right? So we shouldn't have classics, physics, sociology, economics all in their own boxes because knowledge in real life isn't cut up into little boxes. And by siloing it at the university, we create the solution that these things have nothing

to do with each other, which couldn't be more false. And so I think the humanities, and even the distinction between the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences, is ultimately a historical decision and I haven't really heard good contemporary arguments for why this has to be the case. Yeah and I think you have done a great service with your translation of the anion and and so I think Emily Wilson did an equal service with her great translation of the Odyssey, which is taking

the text, making it accessible, and making it readable as a work of art, as it was intended for everyday people. These works were as popular as breaking bad or madmen were in their own time. This was popular culture. It wasn't just sort of a thing that only the elites knew. Absolutely. It was taught in all the schools. If you weren't lucky enough to go to school, you scribbled badly spelled graffiti, you know, quote,

patients from the innate are all over the place, misspelled and pompy on bathroom walls and stuff like that. Yeah. Isn't there a quote from one of Sennaka's plays on a wall in Pompey on bathroom walls and stuff like that. Yeah, isn't there a quote from one of Seneca's plays on a wall in Pompey, like that's been entombed in the ash? I would not be surprised. There's a lot of literary quotations. There is a lot of mockery of these primary texts. So, you know, there's actually a quotation that says something like, I'm not going to sing of dogs of, sorry, of arms and the man.

I'm going to sing about the tortoise and the floor or something completely ridiculous nonsense. And you have pictures of Anais leading his father out of Rome, but they're wearing dogs on their heads, right? I mean, their heads are dog heads. So yeah, so all of this is in circulation and antiquity. I think it's just a part of culture, high brow, low brow, not necessarily a great distinction. Yeah, it's weird that we have sort of elevated

what was common art to be inaccessible to people. Just in Shakespeare's plays, you could watch the poorest person in England could sit and watch a Shakespeare play. They might not understand everything that's happening, but he was so brilliant that it could operate on multiple levels. Right, right. And we know that the common people went to hear his place. There's evidence. So even that medium, which is so verified for contemporary English speakers, even that at its time was something for everybody. Do you have any advice for someone like, let's say,

they're not studying the classics, but they do want to integrate these works of art into their life. They want to have a background, they want to read Herodidus, or they want to read DSTs, or they want to read virtual. How do you suggest tackling an intimidating text like this,

ideally in English? And what kind of imaginary person are we talking about? Just like someone listening to this podcast that goes, you know, I've heard a Virgil, but I've never actually read it. I'm going to pick up your translation, but it's, you know, it isn't as simple as getting a James Patterson novel that you can just read from cover cover, you know? It's not. Well, I guess I would say pick up a copy that comes with a really good introduction and has really good notes that explain the historical and political circumstances of the time when this was written and that makes clear what references and the texts are

when you as a modern reader wouldn't necessarily get what's going on, right? Because you can't just read it through as a story, because there's too much you'll miss, right? So you need some kind of entry into that world. And I think often it's the editor or the translators' responsibility to provide that kind of entry or that kind of context around the work.

Yeah, that's something I recommend is like go to Wikipedia and figure out what the hell happens. So, you're familiarize yourself with the plot of the whole thing first, ruin the ending, it's not a movie that you need to be surprised by. So, as you can understand what the hell is happening as it's not a movie that you need to be surprised by. So then you can understand like what the hell is happening as it's happening. Absolutely. You know, people always ask about like for example ancient Greek theater, well they knew the story already, right? They knew that Edois was going to blind himself after sleeping with his mom. So why did they go see the play? And the answer is just what you said, it's not like a modern movie where you go to, you know, clutch at the edge of your seat and then go wow at

the ending. You're there to see what kind of variations the playwright has made on the traditional story, and it's those variations that have meaning. But if you're not aware of the context, you'll never understand what the variation is, right? So you do have to know what's going on to really appreciate these works. Well, that is something I think you miss if you're not sort of well first in the context, which is like they were kind of repeating the same plot So over and over again even even Shakespeare is just ripping off Plutarch Who himself is just ripping off old myths and ideas that may or may not be true. It was much more about what they did within the constraints of the story that was interesting, but you vaguely knew what was happening.

It was just the characters that were surprising you and what they said. Absolutely and what they did and there was a lot of variance in that. And in fact, you know, one of the things that I myself didn't realize about the whole innate story until I was already a PhD student and maybe even a ready a professor, is that the innate as we see in Virgil, even though he's become the aneus that everybody knows, who's a classicist, is a huge innovation, because prior to Virgil, the bulk of the tradition said that aneus was a traitor who turned Troy over to the Greeks, right? So if you know that story, and you read Virgil's aneid, you can see all along what Virgil's anade, you can see all along what Virgil is doing, how he changes the story very carefully to show that he's improved anade but how he also lets you see that he knows the prior version so that what he ends up doing is something very interesting. He says, it's like he's telling us,

I Virgil, I'm writing this epic so that he will forget about the previous ineases. And he will only remember this good one, because I want you to think he's a model or a copy of the Emperor Augustus in some way, and I'm really praising Augustus by praising ineas. But readers, even though I'm doing this, I know you remember the other stories, and I'm going to refer to them occasionally to keep you on your toes and to make sure you understand that this is just another version of one of the multiple myths, right? And of course, it becomes authoritative, and it helps Augustus, and it becomes part of the rhetoric of his empire. And I also believe that this inadvertent outcome

was why Virgil asked for the enaed to be burnt when he was on his deathbed. I think he saw that he'd been a little bit too subtle and that nobody was going to see the signs that his enaed was problematic in any way. They just thought he was a good dude if slightly boring, which is the general take on an ace. Yeah, it's sort of like how, you know, Frazier is a spin-off of cheers and better call Saul is a spin-off of Breaking Bad.

It's like what the ancient Greeks and Romans would do is like take some side character from one epic and spin them off and to get to getting their own epic. That is a great analogy and yes, I know that you put it that way. I see it because a NAS was a very minor character in the Iliad. And in fact, in the Iliad, he's not the greatest warrior and he has to be rescued by his mom a couple of times. Which, you know, I expect if you are an Iliadic warrior, getting rescued by your mom is pretty much as embarrassing as it gets. Yes. But there you go. Virgil picks them up and makes them a household word, almost, in my household.

Yeah, no, no, he does. He spins them off into his own thing. And it's so good that it's on par with the other great classics. And that was the last thing I was going to talk to you about. What I think so interesting, I'm sitting down, I'm working on my next book right now. And it's easy to forget that Virgil or maybe not Homer, but these playwrights were people

and that the process of sitting down and writing this thing was not that different than you sitting down to translate it or me sitting down to write one of my books or Taylor Swift sitting down to write one of her songs which people might be listening to a thousand years from now. Like it's always sort of humbling and inspiring to me to kind of relate to the creative process that all of these figures thousands of years ago were sitting down and engaging in when

you when you read them through cittities, you know, he goes like, I am trying to make a work that will last forever. And there's like, people are still doing that. I just find that so cool. Yeah, isn't that the coolest? I mean, in antiquity especially, everybody is obsessed with surviving, their name surviving history either through deeds or through writing, which is how they put it. And you know, these guys all chose writing or song, I guess. Although I think I would be surprised if people are listening to Taylor Swift in a thousand years, possibly because I don't think I've ever heard Taylor Swift myself and work in temporaries Wow, that's that's that's surprising. I'm surprised to hear that. I think that may say something very strange about me

No, I mean, I guess that also goes to the point though of like these things weren't necessarily the most pretentious forms of art when they came out. They were popular culture. And then it's only with time that they take on this sort of sheen of being something elite. I think what all of those authors wanted and what we all want ourselves is probably just this,

to have been relevant in some small way in the world. Yes. And I think when we read anything, we should look for its relevance still, right, rather than putting it on a pedestal or throwing it in the garbage. Although Marcus Aurelius would question why Sennaka wanted to be remembered so badly, you know, he's like, you're dead, you're not going to be able to enjoy it. So I think that's the irony of Marcus Aurelius writes repeatedly about the worthlessness of posthumous fame, and he's one of the most famous of all the Romans, all these thousands of years later. Yeah, that is a huge irony. He shouldn't have written anything if he wanted to be forgotten.

But I don't think that's, to me, that's a message as an artist, which is he wasn't writing for publication. He was writing for himself. And in being so specific and personal, he somehow manages to create something universal. That is so true. And he's so much better like than Sonica. Well, Sonica was performing, you know Sennaka, he wasn't really writing letters to Lucilius. Do you know what I mean? He had his other eye on how foreign wide these would, he wanted his letters to go viral to use the modern term. He did want them to go viral.

You know, I'm sure you know this, but it's a mark of Sennaica's lack of success in his own day and in a couple of centuries after that when people talked about Socrates, they said, oh, and there was a Roman Socrates too. And I always think they must be in Sonica, but they're talking about Musonius Rufus. They didn't like Sonica. I mean, Dio Cassius just trashes him. Yes. And it's weird because very little of

Masonius' writing survive. And I think they're interesting. They don't strike me as particularly, like, sort of, so critic or brilliant. I mean, I like them. But, yeah, Senica clearly put a bad tasting people's mouth to me, most specifically, that Marcus really has never mentioned him.

I think he mentioned him in what I had a guest on who correct me that he mentioned to him in one of his letters to Fronto, but nowhere else, nowhere in meditations to Marcus ever acknowledge Seneca's existence. Oh man, he was canceled. Yes. And perhaps, you know, perhaps rightly so, if you're looking at, you know,

if you look at his years of dedicated service to one of the worst rulers of all time, there's actually gonna be some collateral damage from that. I'm afraid that's gotta be true. Well, is there anything you feel like we didn't cover? Not in particular, it's been wonderful talking to you because you're so well versed in all this material. Thank you.

So, you know, that's, that's amazing. I'm a little bit sad that we didn't get to talk about, um, how all our problems or at least many of them as individuals are based on false judgments, which is a big belief of mine. Well, let's, let's talk about that. Are you talking about the sort of the stoic idea of, what is it, fantasya, that we have these impressions that are incorrect, or is it something that we're given that? No, that's it.

And Marcus really talks about it too. He talks about it when he's talking about that fish. Remember, he's like, you think this is a high quality, fancy fish, but it's just some flesh and bones and red sauce and so forth. Strick things of the legend that encrusted them, he said. Exactly, right. And then, so those are false judgments.

And then Epictetus has, my favorite one is an Epictetus, where he sees a beautiful woman walking towards him, and he writes down, wait a minute, Fontezia, right? Like, hang on, impression. I need to think about this, because I'm pretty sure this is a wrong impression. The impression being that somebody very desirable is approaching him. And so I guess he doesn't say what his answer was, but my guess is that he would say, you don't know this woman at all.

You're falsely judging her to be a thing of value. But for all you know, she will bring you great unhappiness. You know, her shoe habits, for example, who's going to bankrupt you. And better not, better not make that, that, that judgment, better instead, stick to judging, judging things based on their intrinsic worth for you as a stoic, right? Yeah, I think, you know, Epictetus has something about like taking every impression and putting it up to the test.

And my favorite, you know, sort of analogy he uses, he talks about how, you know, a dealer of coins can tell from the way you bang a coin on the table, you know, whether it's full metal or whether it's alloyed with something that you develop the ability to sense counterfeits. And I think, to me, that's the art of stoicism whether it's alloyed with something that you develop the ability to sense counterfeits. And I think, to me, that's the art of stoicism is really the ability to interrogate your

own opinions, thoughts, judgments, impressions rather than accepting the false ones and the true ones as if they're the same. Exactly. And I think as one of them said, you know, when you are angry, every time you are angry, that is actually based on a false impression. Every time you are enraged, that is a false judgment that made you enraged. And that's a great thing to say to yourself when you are angry. You say, this is a false judgment. Why am I having it? Oh, I'm having it because I didn't know that this person's sister is in the hospital gravely ill and that's why they snapped at me or you know, I didn't know that this man

is driving his sick kids to the hospital. So that's why he almost knocked me off the road. But what's soon as you start thinking about the different judgments you could apply to it, you realize your judgment is one of many and probably has nothing to do with the right judgment. And you should not be angry. This is the danger of social media, right? Which is like, you have a thought, please share it with everyone you know indelibly for the public record.

And that's not just a real dangerous career strategy as we're finding, but it encourages you to react emotionally in the moment rather than thinking about it. One of the ones I love from Mark's Realist, he goes, remember, you can always have no opinion. And that's what I go like, I share about something and I just go, I'm not going to decide one way or another whether this is right or wrong, I'm just going to think nothing about it. That is great. Yeah, well, I hope you managed to teach about it. That is great. Yeah, well, I hope you managed to teach that to the people of Twitter. I think the solution there is just to spend

as little time as possible on Twitter. I'll take that under advisement for sure. No, this is truly an honor. I'm so glad that you exist and that you're doing the work you're doing and I loved your episode with Tyler Cowan and I'm really glad that we got to talk. Thanks so much, Ryan. And congratulations on your newest and latest book,

which I look forward to. Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The reviews make a difference, and of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out. The crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with.

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