Category: Philosophy

If it’s literally true that anger is “necessary” for human survival then how do you explain people who don’t exhibit anger and yet flourish — life seems to offer us many examples. I asked my daughter if she’d ever seen me get angry and she said only once. But I think I get on pretty well on life, indeed, much better than if I was prone to anger. So how can it be necessary? It hasn’t proven to be in my life. And like I said in the article, anger often actually makes people weaker and less effective at fighting — see the George Foreman example where he got knocked on his ass by Ali due to his anger.

Yes, the Stoics carefully distinguish between voluntary and involuntary feelings of anger. This is a complex question because modern cognitive research shows that people tend to be very confused about what’s voluntary and what isn’t, especially with regard to their thoughts and feelings. We actually need to train ourselves properly to clearly understand what’s automatic and what’s deliberate in our anger. Deliberate anger is absurd, for Stoics, and irrational. Automatic anger, is morally neutral or indifferent. What matters is how we respond to it, i.e., what happens next.

Ancient Philosophy as a Therapy for Violent Passions

Ancient Philosophy as a Therapy for Violent Passions

One of the most celebrated physicians and medical researchers of the ancient world, Galen of Pergamon, wrote a book about mental illness, called On Passions and Errors of the Soul. The passion considered most dangerous by Galen and other ancient writers is anger. That’s because anger is, in a sense, the most interpersonal of emotions. It poses a threat not only to the angry individuals themselves but to others around them, and even to society as a whole.

Galen’s most striking case study for anger is that of the Emperor Hadrian, who had a violent temper tantrum one day because an unlucky slave did something to annoy him. Hadrian was writing at the time and happened to have a stylus in his hand — the Roman equivalent of a fountain pen. In a moment of madness, he stabbed the slave right in the eye with it, blinding him. Later, when Hadrian had calmed down, and was feeling highly ashamed of himself, he summoned the man and asked what he could do to make amends. The slave was silent for quite a long time but eventually found the courage to speak frankly to the emperor: “All I want”, he said, “is my eye back.”

The consequences of anger are often very destructive. Sometimes they cannot be reversed. Even the most powerful man in the world may be unable to undo the harm he’s done in a fit of violent rage.

Marcus Aurelius mentions overcoming anger in the very first sentence of The Meditations…

Stoicism

Galen is famous in his own right but he also happens to have been court physician to an even more famous historical figure, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. (You might have seen Marcus Aurelius portrayed by Richard Harris in the Ridley Scott movie Gladiator, although that’s going back a few years now.) Marcus is well-known today, though, as the author of one of the most influential self-help classics of all time, a book which we call The Meditations.

He was the last famous Stoic philosopher of antiquity. Like Galen, the Stoics also believed that anger is one of the biggest psychological threats that we face. In fact, Marcus mentions overcoming anger in the very first sentence of The Meditations, and it’s one of the main themes running through the rest of his much-loved book.

The Stoics agreed with Galen that we should take care to contemplate the dangerous consequences of anger, picturing them in our mind’s eye. As we get older, and hopefully wiser, we can look back on our lives in this way, and learn from our experience. What have been the consequences of our own anger in the past? How has the anger of others affected our lives or the lives of those we care about?

The Stoics also liked to discourage anger by contemplating its consequences closer to home: how it contorts our face. Anger is ugly and, in a sense, unnatural, because, as though in a trance, we seem to abandon reason when we’re in the throes of rage. We’re thinking creatures and yet when anger takes control of us we become mindless and stop thinking. We’re therefore less human when enraged — that’s what the Stoics found most unnatural about it. Anger, hatred, and the desire for revenge, potentially turn us into animals.

One of the most famous Stoic slogans says that: Anger does us more harm than the things about which we’re angry. We eat our own hearts when we give in to anger, as philosophers used to say. It’s self-destructive. The consequences of our anger might harm others but we also harm ourselves. Modern research in cognitive psychology has shown that people who are very angry tend to underestimate risk. For that reason, they often expose themselves to danger. Anger makes us vulnerable, in other words.

That’s why Mohammed Ali tried to provoke George Foreman, for example, during the Rumble in the Jungle by taunting him in the boxing ring. Ali realized that anger was Foreman’s greatest weakness. When Foreman became angry he became reckless, threw too many punches, tired himself out, let his guard down, and made himself vulnerable as a result. He underestimated the risk of exhausting himself early in the fight.

The consequences of yielding to our anger can be harmful. Ask George Foreman — he ended up flat on his back, handing a knockout victory to Ali, and the heavyweight championship of the world. However, the Stoics were actually concerned about an even deeper kind of injury: the harm that anger does to our very character. They called anger “temporary madness”, and they were right. In addition to causing us to underestimate risk, strong emotions such as anger introduce many cognitive biases into our thinking. We start to make sweeping generalizations, we jump prematurely to conclusions, we struggle to empathize with others or to understand their motives accurately, and our problem-solving abilities are seriously impaired.

Moderate Anger

Even in the ancient world, there were those who tried to argue that, in moderation, anger could be useful. Most notably, the followers of Aristotle believed that anger sometimes helps to motivate us to do good things such as addressing genuine injustice in society. We call this righteous anger. The problem with this idea is that every tyrant, every brutal dictator, believes his anger is justified and righteous.

On the other hand, we can all think of examples of individuals, such as Gandhi, who achieved social change through peaceful means, without giving way to feelings of anger. Anger clearly isn’t necessary as a form of motivation. Anything anger can do, love and reason can arguably do better. For instance, a soldier motivated by anger may fight very courageously against an enemy he hates. However, so may one without hatred and anger, who fights only to defend the country, and kinsmen, that he loves. Even if you believe that anger can sometimes be helpful, it’s clearly not the only option, and the motivation it provides comes at a terrible cost. Anger blinds us and makes us stupider, by undermining our ability to think clearly and make rational decisions about complex social problems.

Get angry — do stupid things faster and with more energy!

People who say that anger motivates them remind me of the Internet meme that says: Drink coffee — do stupid things faster and with more energy! Getting angry motivates you, sure, by making you do stupid things faster and with more energy. We can’t think clearly when we’re angry, though. That’s why we make mistakes and end up doing things we regret later.

Think about it this way. If you’re trying to fix a leaking tap and bang your thumb with a spanner, you’ll maybe get all angry and frustrated. Suddenly it becomes ten times harder to do what should be a really simple repair job. If you don’t take a break to calm down, you’ll perhaps end up losing your temper and throwing the spanner across the room. We can’t even fix a broken tap when we’re angry. How much more difficult, though, is it to fix a broken relationship, or a broken society?

The most difficult problems we face in life are the ones involving other people — and that’s where being motivated by anger can become particularly dangerous. The fact is that very few complex social problems, throughout history, have ever actually been solved, in the long-run, by angry mobs. That’s because anger seriously impairs our ability to engage in rational decision-making and problem-solving.

Worse, anger has a tendency to escalate. People who end up losing their temper, and regretting it, almost always started off by thinking they were on safe ground indulging in feelings of moderate anger. They’re playing with fire because anger likes to deceive us into thinking that it’s under our control but we all know how quickly it can spiral out of control once it gets started.

Stoic Remedies

So what do the Stoic philosophers think we should do about it? Well, of all the schools of ancient philosophy, Stoicism is the one that placed the most emphasis on self-help and psychotherapy. Although many people assume that psychotherapy is a modern concept that’s just plain wrong. The Stoics thought of philosophy as a form of therapy, therapeia in Greek, therapy for the soul or psyche.

They wrote influential books on the subject such as the Therapeutics of Chrysippus, the third head of the school. Most of these books are sadly lost today. Nevertheless, we do have many scattered references to their therapy techniques and even an entire book by Seneca called On Anger, which describes in great detail Stoic psychotherapy for this particular problem. Indeed, Stoicism was the original philosophical inspiration for cognitive-behavioural therapy or CBT, the leading evidence-based form of modern psychotherapy.

Now, the Stoics describe many techniques for managing anger. At one point, Marcus Aurelius actually gives a list of ten different strategies. They often bear a striking resemblance to methods found in modern cognitive-behavioural therapy. For example, one of the best-known and most fundamental Stoic techniques is simply to remind yourself “It’s not things that upset us but rather our opinions about them.” This is the basic idea that cognitive therapy inherited from Stoicism and in modern psychology we call it the cognitive theory of emotion — it says that our emotions, including anger, are shaped largely by corresponding, underlying beliefs.

When a therapy client arrives for their first session they’ll often spend a while describing how negative feelings like anger are causing them problems in life and making them miserable. They explain that anger is ruining their health, affecting their work, damaging their relationships, and so on. As they’re listing all the problems caused by their anger, it seems glaringly obvious why they’re desperate to change. Finally, though, in total frustration, they’ll say “I know my anger is causing all of these problems, and that it doesn’t make any sense, but I can’t help it, it’s just how I feel!” So they’re stuck — there’s nothing they can do to help themselves. A good cognitive therapist would lean forward, smiling, at that point and reply: “Yes but it’s not just how you feel, is it? — it’s also how you think!”

That’s important because most of our thoughts are propositional — meaning they’re either true or false. Once we recognize that our feelings are caused by our thinking we gain more control. We can question the evidence for and against the thoughts that are making us angry, check them against the facts of our experience, highlight contradictions in our thinking, and look for alternative perspectives on the same events, which might be more rational, realistic, and helpful. In other words, when we really understand the cognitive theory of emotion, it suddenly opens up a whole toolbox of cognitive therapy techniques for us. That’s a big deal because it often seems difficult, or even impossible, to change strong emotions such as anger directly. However, it can be easier to change angry emotions, indirectly, by learning to question our angry thoughts and beliefs.

It’s not other people who make us angry, therefore, but rather our opinions about them, especially our strongly-held value judgments. Marcus Aurelius tends to describe this as separating our opinions from the external events, or people, to which they refer. The Stoics like to follow this by asking themselves how someone wiser and more patient would respond to the same situation. They actually asked themselves: what would Socrates do? We might ask: what would Marcus Aurelius do?

However, the Stoics realized that in many cases it’s already difficult to think clearly once we’re in the grip of a violent passion, such as anger. So they recommend postponing our response until we’ve had time to calm down. This is actually a very ancient technique, which goes all the way back to the pre-Socratic philosophers, known as the Pythagoreans. In modern anger management, we call it the “time out” strategy. If you can walk away from an argument, for example, and wait until you’ve settled down again it’s easier to think things through more rationally and make better decisions about how to respond.

Conclusion

For Marcus Aurelius, as for other Stoics, the most important thing was a sense of connectedness. Humans were clearly built for cooperation, he says, like pairs of feet, hands, eyelids, or jaws working together. Acting against one another’s interests is contrary to nature, he adds, and it is against nature to become angry with our neighbour or to desert them.

Stoics were ethical cosmopolitans, in other words, who saw the whole of humankind as fellow-citizens of the cosmos. When we’re angry, though, we alienate ourselves from other people. The Stoics tried to conquer anger precisely because they wanted to restore our sense of oneness.

One of the most celebrated physicians and medical researchers of the ancient world, Galen of Pergamon, wrote a book about mental illness, called On Passions and Errors of the Soul. The passion considered most dangerous by Galen and other ancient writers is anger. That’s because anger is, in a sense, the most interpersonal of emotions. It poses a threat not only to the angry individuals themselves but to others around them, and even to society as a whole.

Galen’s most striking case study for anger is that of the Emperor Hadrian, who had a violent temper tantrum one day because an unlucky slave did something to annoy him. Hadrian was writing at the time and happened to have a stylus in his hand — the Roman equivalent of a fountain pen. In a moment of madness, he stabbed the slave right in the eye with it, blinding him. Later, when Hadrian had calmed down, and was feeling highly ashamed of himself, he summoned the man and asked what he could do to make amends. The slave was silent for quite a long time but eventually found the courage to speak frankly to the emperor: “All I want”, he said, “is my eye back.”

The consequences of anger are often very destructive. Sometimes they cannot be reversed. Even the most powerful man in the world may be unable to undo the harm he’s done in a fit of violent rage.

Read the rest of this article on Medium.

Yes, because Marcus doesn’t mention Seneca in The Meditations, nor does Epictetus, or in fact, as far as I recall, any subsequent Stoic author. Cassius Dio implies that Thrasea had said that people who had collaborated with Nero, like Seneca, should have their memories damned, i.e., never be mentioned again. Marcus had read him, although Fronto despised his writings and really trashes them, in his letters to Marcus.

Three Easy Steps to Wisdom in the Face of Adversity

Three Easy Steps to Wisdom in the Face of Adversity

Let me tell you one of my favourite stories… Two and a half thousand years ago the Greek philosopher Socrates remarked that society will never flourish until kings become philosophers, or philosophers become kings. However, there had never actually been a king who was a Socratic-style philosopher. In fact, about five hundred years elapsed before a man appeared on the world-stage whom historians would confidently call a philosopher-king. Or rather, not just a king but an emperor. His name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of Rome in the late 2nd century AD.

Marcus followed a Hellenistic philosophy called Stoicism, which was inspired by Socrates. And he left behind a record of his private philosophical contemplations, which is known today as The Meditations. Some of you may know it. Former US president Bill Clinton said it was his favourite book. The former US Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis, carried a copy with him on deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

My belief is that Marcus’ inner life, in The Meditations, helps us to understand his outer life, as the Emperor of Rome. I’m going to divide that into three Stoic philosophical themes, illustrated by three historical events: The Antonine Plague, The Marcomannic Wars, and The Civil War of Avidius Cassius.

1. The Antonine Plague

No sooner than Marcus had been acclaimed emperor, the Parthians invaded Rome’s ally Armenia, starting a war in the middle east. After five years, the Roman armies led by the co-emperor Lucius Verus were finally victorious and plundered the defeated Parthian cities. Marcus and Lucius rode through the streets in triumph, with the loot brought home by their legions.

As part of this ceremony, a slave accompanied them whispering the words memento mori, in their ears, “remember thou must die”. The Stoics made this into a slogan of their philosophy, which encourages us to contemplate our own mortality and focus on living in the here and now. As the poet Horace, who dabbled in Stoicism, said: carpe diem, seize the day, do not put your faith in tomorrow.

Ironically, the legions also brought back death from Parthia… in the form of smallpox, or the Antonine Plague. Over the next fifteen years, about five million people died. Yet Marcus’ only reference to the plague in The Meditations is to say that terrible though it was, it paled in comparison to the moral plague of ignorance and vice that infects many people’s minds. However, he frequently refers to the contemplation of his own mortality, and uses it as a way to focus his mind on his genuine priorities in life, and his duty as emperor.

2. The Marcomannic Wars

A few years after the Parthian War ended, another war began on the far side of the empire, the northern frontier. Millions of barbarian tribesmen from Germania and surrounding areas — the Marcomanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians — started invading nearby Roman provinces, sacking their towns. Rome was thrown into crisis because in the middle of the Antonine Plague, the army was barely fit to respond.

This time, Marcus donned the military cape himself and rode forth with the legions. Unusually for a Roman emperor, he had no military training or experience whatsoever. In their initial battles, the Romans were badly defeated. However, they persevered and studied their enemy very carefully.

One of the most dramatic battles of the war was fought on the frozen surface of the river Danube. The Romans pretended to fall into a trap set by the barbarians but used a cunning new tactic to defeat them. To resist the Sarmatian cavalry charge, the legionaries would form a defensive hollow square in the midst of the frozen river. However, this time they braced their feet against a line of shields laid down behind them to secure their footing. With thousands of tribal warriors attacking them on all four sides, Marcus’ legionaries held their defensive formation and fought them on the ice, awash with blood. It was an incredibly dangerous tactic, but the Romans won, and they began to turn the tide of the war.

The empire would typically enslave captured warriors. However, in The Meditations, Marcus says that someone who takes pride in capturing barbarians is no better than a robber. Stoics are cosmopolitans, who believe that all humans are brothers and sisters, even if they don’t speak the same language. And we’re told Marcus actually resettled a great number of defeated tribesmen in the outlying regions of Italy, recruiting others into the Roman army. He actually formed an elite cavalry unit composed entirely of Sarmatian horsemen and sent them to fight my ancestors, in Britain. He was a pragmatist, who said “It’s impossible to make men exactly as we wish, rather our duty is to use them as they are.”

3. Avidius Cassius

Then another crisis rocked the empire. Marcus had to abandon the northern frontier just as he was winning when the shocking news reached him that one of his most senior generals, Avidius Cassius, had been acclaimed emperor by the Egyptian legion. “Fake news” had been circulated throughout the eastern provinces proclaiming that Marcus had died from the plague. The Senate immediately declared Cassius a public enemy, which threw the Roman people into a panic because they expected him to respond by marching on the capital. Suddenly Marcus was facing a civil war, three weeks’ march away. And yet, miraculously, it ended without any real bloodshed.

Every morning, Marcus used a Stoic contemplation that involved imagining himself encountering betrayal and all manner of setbacks throughout the day ahead. Stoicism requires facing all types of misfortune, in our imaginations, while retaining our equanimity, and having a “philosophical attitude” toward adversity. To the Senate’s surprise, Marcus calmly announced that he was going to forgive everyone involved in the rebellion. But Cassius didn’t back down. The legion in Egypt knew they were hopelessly outmatched when they heard that Marcus was marching against them with a massive army of veterans from the northern frontier. Knowing that he’d sworn to pardon them, they had no more reason to risk fighting. Cassius was assassinated by his own officers, who delivered his head to Marcus, and said sorry. So, ironically, Cassius was killed by kindness. Marcus kept his word and pardoned the rest of the conspirators.

Conclusion

These three examples are situations in which Marcus Aurelius’ inner life as Stoic philosopher can help us understand his handling of events in his outer life as Roman emperor. I believe he thought of himself as philosopher first and emperor second. As I mentioned in my introduction, politicians today still read The Meditations but I’ll leave you to ponder whether any of them actually have the wisdom of a philosopher-king.

What did the Stoic emperor actually read?

What did the Stoic emperor actually read?

The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius was extremely well-read. Indeed, he urges himself several times in The Meditations, his personal notebook of philosophical reflections, to set aside his reading and focus on improving his character instead. He was clearly a bit of a bookworm. So what exactly did he like to read?

In his love of ancient literature he was second to no man, Roman or Greek…

We have several Roman histories which discuss Marcus Aurelius’ life. These contain a few references to his literary interests. Indeed, one historian, Herodian, writes:

He was concerned with all aspects of excellence, and in his love of ancient literature he was second to no man, Roman or Greek; this is evident from all his sayings and writings which have come down to us. — History of the Empire

The Historia Augusta portrays Marcus quoting the Roman poet Ennius:

The state of Rome is rooted in the men and manners of the olden time. — Ennius, Annales

We also have a cache of letters between his Latin rhetoric tutor, Marcus Cornelius Fronto, and several friends, mainly Marcus Aurelius himself. In it they mention in passing several Latin writers that Marcus has read, such as Cato the Elder, Cicero, Lucretius, and even Seneca. However, there are also several prominent references to literature in The Meditations, mainly to Greek tragedies. Marcus actually prefaces some of these quotations with the following explanation of their significance to him:

At first tragedies were brought on the stage as means of reminding men of the things which happen to them, and that it is according to nature for things to happen so, and that, if you are delighted with what is shown on the stage, you should not be troubled with that which takes place on the larger stage. For you see that these things must be accomplished thus, and that even they bear them who cry out, “O Cithaeron.” And, indeed, some things are said well by the dramatic writers, of which kind is the following especially… — Meditations, 11.6

‘Ah Cithaeron!’ is from Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King. As we’ll see, though, by far the majority of the quotes Marcus incorporates in The Meditations are from the Greek tragedian Euripides.

Euripides in The Meditations

The tragic poets have also provided some helpful sayings. This, for instance, is particularly good: ‘If the gods have neglected me and my two sons, this too has its reason,’ and again: ‘Do not be angry with outward events,’ and this: ‘Our life must be reaped like a ripe ear of corn,’ and many another like them. — Meditations, 11.6

These quotes come from three lost plays by Euripides. They appear to have been of special importance to Marcus because they are also found, quoted more fully, in an earlier chapter of The Meditations.

The first is a quote from Euripides’ Bellerophon, of which only fragments survive.

‘Be not angry with outward events,
For they care nothing for it.’ — Meditations, 7.38

It tells the story of the eponymous Greek hero. Bellerophon appears to have lost everything, and lives in despair in a barren land. At some point, he tries to fly to Olympus on his winged horse Pegasus but falls to earth. Finally, wounded by his fall, he repents of his blasphemy against the gods.

The second is from another lost tragedy of Euripides, Hypsipyle, of which only excerpts remain.

‘Our lives must be reaped like a ripe ear of corn,
And as one comes to be, another is no more.’ — Meditations, 7.40

It tells the story of Hypsipyle, former queen of Lemnos, and lover of the hero Jason.

She is captured by pirates and sold into slavery, thereby becoming the nursemaid of Opheltes, the infant son of a Nemean priest called Lycurgus, and his wife Eurydice. Hypsipyle brings Opheltes with her to a spring, where she intends to obtain water for a sacrifice. In a terrible accident, though, the child placed in her care, Opheltes, is ensnared and killed by a monstrous serpent.

The child’s mother, Eurydice, wishes to have her put to death for neglect but is persuaded by a famous seer that her son’s death was ordained by the gods.

The third is from Euripides’ Antiope, which was lost, although many fragments have now been recovered.

‘If the gods have neglected me and my two sons,
This too has its reason.’ — Meditations, 7.41

Antiope of Thebes was a beautiful princess who was raped by Zeus, in the form of a satyr, and became pregnant. Her father, the king, committed suicide as a result.

Antiope then fled her home in disgrace and was taken far away to the city of Sicyon, in the south of Greece, by a king called Epopeus who made her his wife. Her deceased father’s brother, her uncle Lycus, pursued her, and seized her, though, taking her back to Thebes. Along the way, she gave birth to twins near Mount Cithaeron in central Greece. One the son of Epopeus and one the son of Zeus. She was forced to abandon both to the care of an elderly herdsman. Back at Thebes she was treated as a slave, and suffered terrible persecution for many years.

However, eventually she escaped and ended up taking shelter in a house in the city of Eleutherae, near Mount Cithaeron. Her two sons, who are now full-grown adults working as herdsmen, turn out to be living there. They eventually recognize their long-lost mother and save her from persecution.

Those are not the only passages Marcus quotes from Euripides, though.

‘For fortune is with me and the right.’ — Meditations, 7.42

Another fragment from an unknown Euripidean tragedy. It can also be translated as the good (to eu) is with me and the just (to dikaion). It directly follows the quote from Antiope, so it’s possible that Marcus saw the two as related. For example, it could be read: If the gods have neglected me and my two sons, this too has its reason, for the good is with me and the just. In other words, perhaps someone like Antiope doesn’t deserve to be abandoned, or punished, by the gods because she was acting virtuously, not viciously, so she consoles herself by thinking there must be another meaning to what’s befallen her.

‘The earth loves showers, and the holy ether loves [to fall in showers].’ And the universe loves to create whatever is to be; so I will say to the universe, ‘Your love is my love too.’ Is that not also implied in the expression, ‘This loves to come about’? — Meditations, 10.21

This is another fragment of Euripides, from an unknown tragedy. Marcus seems to be interpreting it here in relation to the Stoic concept of divine Providence. “Your love is my love too”, sounds like an expression of what the early Greek Stoics called “living in agreement with Nature”, or what we call today, following Nietzsche, amor fati, love of one’s fate.

‘What springs from the earth to earth returns,
But that which springs from a heavenly seed 
Returns again to the heavens above.’ — Meditations, 7.50

This fragment comes from a lost tragedy by Euripides called Chrysippus, about the death of a legendary Greek hero from the region of Elis. (Not to be confused with the Stoic philosopher of the same name.) This quote could easily be in reference to the death of the main character, Chrysippus, who reputedly committed suicide out of shame after being abducted and raped by his male tutor, the legendary King Laius. It may be a reflection on the separation between his body, which has been violated, and his soul, which remains pure and returns to the heavens.

‘With meats and drinks and magic spells 
To turn aside the stream and hold death at bay.’ — Meditations, 7.51

This quote is from Euripides’ Suppliants, or The Suppliant Women. This play actually survives today. It tells the story of women whose sons King Creon of Thebes has denied burial after they died in battle trying to seize control of his city. The women plead with the Athenian hero Theseus to attack Thebes and recover the corpses of their sons for burial. Eventually the remains of the dead warriors are recovered and returned to their families by Theseus.

Toward the end of the play, one of the characters, an old man called Iphis, wishes in frustration that we could live our lives twice over as the second time we would have learned from our mistakes, and would live more wisely. He then concludes by lamenting the inevitability of old age and the folly of those who desperately seek to avoid their inevitable demise by (enchanted) meats and drinks, and magic spells meant to prolong life.

It’s striking that Marcus quotes so often from Euripides because he appears also to have been of great interest to the early Greek Stoics. Euripides was a (slightly older) contemporary of Socrates. The two were viewed as connected in some way by other Athenians, e.g., as part of related cultural movements, or with Euripides actually learning philosophy from Socrates. There were even rumours that Socrates had contributed to writing of some of Euripides’ tragedies. Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school, and its most prolific author, wrote many lengthy treatises and was known for citing his favourite authors very frequently.

So much so that in one of his treatises he copied out nearly the whole of Euripides’ Medea, and some one who had taken up the volume, being asked what he was reading, replied, “The Medea of Chrysippus.” — Diogenes Laertius

It’s quite possible, therefore, that Marcus became familiar with some of these passages from earlier Stoic writings, which quoted Euripides in the context of philosophical analysis of his tragedies.

Homer in The Meditations

Homer, the most influential of all Greek poets, unsurprisingly, was another favourite of the Stoics. Indeed, Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, wrote a (lost) book titled Homeric Problems, spanning five volumes, and other early Stoics also wrote books concerning Homer’s texts. Nevertheless, Marcus only seems to quote Homer twice in The Meditations, a fact that perhaps serves to further highlight Euripides’ unique importance for him.

The first Homeric quote is rather cryptic:

‘ — and my heart laughed within me.’ — Meditations, 11.31

It is from The Odyssey, where Odysseus is delighted at his victory over the Cyclops. It’s impossible to tell why Marcus thought this particular phrase was so important.

The second is a shortened version of a famous passage from The Iliad. By contrast, Marcus explains exactly what it means to him, so it’s worth quoting the surrounding passage in full.

To him who is penetrated by true principles even the briefest precept is sufficient, and any common precept, to remind him that he should be free from grief and fear. For example:

“Leaves, some the wind scatters on the ground
So is the race of men.”

Leaves, also, are your children. And leaves, too, are they who cry out as if they were worthy of credit and bestow their praise, or on the contrary curse, or secretly blame and sneer. And leaves, in like manner, are those who shall receive and transmit a man’s fame to after-times. For all such things as these “are produced in the season of spring,” as the poet says. Then the wind casts them down and the forest produces other leaves in their places. But a brief existence is common to all things, and yet you avoid and pursue all things as if they would be eternal. A little time, and you shall close your eyes and soon another will lament him who has attended you to your grave. — Meditations, 10.34

Hesiod in The Meditations

Hesiod, another early Greek poet, is also quoted by Marcus.

And Faith, Modesty, Justice, and Truth have fled ‘away from the broad-pathed earth up to high Olympus’. — Meditations, 5.33

This is from Hesiod’s Work and Days.

‘They will heap reproaches on virtue, uttering wounding words.’ — Meditations, 11.32

This is also from Work and Days, although the word “virtue” has been inserted.

These passages seem to allude to the Stoic notion that the virtues are ideals, and although their “seeds” exist within all of us, everyone is tainted by folly and vice. So the Stoics believe wisdom, ironically, consists in firmly grasping the fact that none of us are wise, and that it’s therefore inevitable that men will act foolishly and even condemn virtue. Compare this to perhaps the most famous passage in The Meditations (2.1) where Marcus says that each morning he prepares himself mentally for the day ahead by anticipating that he will meet all manner of foolish and vicious people.

Unknown Poets in The Mediations

There are also several quotations from unknown sources.

‘To the immortal gods and to ourselves may you bring joy.’ — Meditations, 7.39

This implies that we should view the same thing, virtue, as bringing joy both to ourselves and to the good — it is both good for us and praiseworthy, both healthy and pious, according to the Stoics.

‘Join them not in their laments and feel no agitation.’ — Meditations, 7.43

This simply echoes the familiar view of the Stoics that we should avoid becoming “carried away” by the complaints of others, and although we may listen to them we should not “groan along with them” as Epictetus put it.

‘When a storm from the gods blows down upon us,
Man must toil and endure and not complain.’ — Meditations, 7.51

This last quotation is also quite striking and it beautifully expresses the Stoic view that we should be prepared for adversity and do our best to endure, in accord with wisdom and justice, and without lamentation or grief.

Conclusion

Marcus does refer to other books in The Meditations, mostly insofar as he quotes or refers to the writings of philosophers, particularly Epictetus, Heraclitus, and Plato’s dialogues portraying Socrates. Marcus was a conscientious student of the law and was definitely well-read in the literature of Roman jurisprudence, much of which was influenced by Stoic philosophy. He also appears to have enjoyed reading satires, histories, and at one point even mentions Aesop’s fable of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.

However, the quotes above from Greek epics and tragedies, though often overlooked, potentially help to amplify some of the key philosophical ideas of The Meditations. It’s striking, on closer inspection, how often Marcus quotes Euripides, and from how many of his plays. It could be that Euripides was simply one of Marcus’ favourite authors. However, as noted earlier, it’s also quite plausible that these quotes were found in earlier Stoic texts, where the provided material for philosophical discussion about their meaning.

For instance, there’s also a reference to Pindar, the Greek lyric poet, in The Meditations.

There is nothing more pitiable than the person who makes the circuit of everything and, as the poet says, ‘searches into the depths of the earth’, and tries to read the secrets of his neighbour’s soul, yet fails to perceive that it is enough to hold fast to the guardian-spirit within him and serve it single-mindedly. — Meditations, 2.13

This is a fragment of Pindar, cited by Plato in the Theaetetus, which lends support to the theory that some of Marcus’ other quotes from poetry throughout The Meditations may be second-hand and derived from earlier philosophical texts discussing them.

The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius was extremely well-read. Indeed, he urges himself several times in The Meditations, his personal notebook of philosophical reflections, to set aside his reading and focus on improving his character instead. He was clearly a bit of a bookworm. So what exactly did he like to read?

We have several Roman histories which discuss Marcus Aurelius’ life. These contain a few references to his literary interests. Indeed, one historian, Herodian, writes:

He was concerned with all aspects of excellence, and in his love of ancient literature he was second to no man, Roman or Greek; this is evident from all his sayings and writings which have come down to us. — History of the Empire

The Historia Augusta portrays Marcus quoting the Roman poet Ennius:

The state of Rome is rooted in the men and manners of the olden time. — Ennius, Annales

We also have a cache of letters between his Latin rhetoric tutor, Marcus Cornelius Fronto, and several friends, mainly Marcus Aurelius himself. In it they mention in passing several Latin writers that Marcus has read, such as Cato the Elder, Cicero, Lucretius, and even Seneca. However, there are also several prominent references to literature in The Meditations, mainly to Greek tragedies. Marcus actually prefaces some of these quotations with the following explanation of their significance to him:

At first tragedies were brought on the stage as means of reminding men of the things which happen to them, and that it is according to nature for things to happen so, and that, if you are delighted with what is shown on the stage, you should not be troubled with that which takes place on the larger stage. For you see that these things must be accomplished thus, and that even they bear them who cry out, “O Cithaeron.” And, indeed, some things are said well by the dramatic writers, of which kind is the following especially… — Meditations, 11.6

‘Ah Cithaeron!’ is from Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King. As we’ll see, though, by far the majority of the quotes Marcus incorporates in The Meditations are from the Greek tragedian Euripides.

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I wrote a book about Stoicism and ACT called Build Your Resilience but at that time the ACT community, when I asked them, generally didn’t seem to see the parallels with Stoicism.