The Little Book of Stoicism is divided into two parts. The first, What is Stoicism, introduces the reader to the “theory” of Stoic philosophy and psychology. The second part contains 55 Stoic practices for self-improvement.
Part 1 includes chapters on the promise (or goal) of Stoicism, the history of the philosophy, and what Salzgeber calls the “Stoic Happiness Triangle” — his own conceptualization of the key ingredients required for a Stoic attitude and way of life — and it concludes with a chapter on the problem of negative emotions (passions).
Part 2 consists of a series of 55 short chapters, each describing a different Stoic practices. These are divided into three groups. The first deals with more general strategies for resilience-building, such as Stoic acquiescence and the “reserve clause”, contemplating your own mortality, etc. This is followed by techniques applied to challenging situations, such as coping with grief, counting your blessings, and taking the view from above. Finally, we’re introduced to techniques for coping with interpersonal challenges, such as remembering your own flaws, dealing with insults, and putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.
There’s a lot to digest here but that’s okay. The reader can pick the techniques they find most appealing and begin putting them into practice one step at a time. Small changes often have big consequences anyway.
As the Roman Emperor, Marcus certainly had more power than we have, and his actions had a bigger impact than yours and mine. Yet, even the most powerful man on earth at that time reminded himself to “be satisfied with even the smallest step forward and regard the outcome as a small thing.”
I thought this was a very readable and engaging book. It also contains several nice illustrations drawn by Salzgeber himself, which make it even more pleasurable to read. Written in a very accessible, down-to-earth style, the author obviously had the goal of engaging ordinary readers who might not be particularly interested in the more arcane aspects of ancient Greek philosophy.
It does a great job of providing us with an enormous range of techniques derived from the Stoic literature. Now, I’ve reviewed many books on this subject. However, I’m often very surprised to find that authors who trumpet their commitment to Stoicism as a “practical” self-help approach actually neglect to describe the key exercises familiar to modern practitioners of Stoicism. Salzgeber’s book, by contrast, provides an extensive overview of these practices, divided into no fewer than 55 separate descriptions.
Moreover, despite its popular / self-help approach it also gives the reader an accurate introduction to the philosophy of Stoicism, dispelling several common misconceptions about it along the way. That’s something that other books on the subject don’t always do very well either. Nevertheless, this isn’t an academic book on Stoic philosophy, it’s intended to help people actually benefit from the approach in their daily lives.
My ultimate aim of this direct and straightforward approach to Stoicism is to help you live a better life. I believe we can all become a little wiser and happier by practicing this wonderful philosophy.
So I’m sure I’ll be recommending this as a practical introduction to Stoicism for newcomers to the subject. There’s no shortage of techniques here for people to try in their daily lives so reading this book alone would, I think, be enough for most people to get started exploring Stoicism as a way of life.
This is an article about Greek philosophy and contemporary US politics.
Recently, I’ve started looking more closely at the views expressed by certain political figures and comparing them with the ethical teachings of ancient philosophy. They don’t necessarily have to be people whose politics I agree with. My own views are basically centre-left (democratic socialist) but I prefer to look at what people who are politically conservative have written. I don’t hold opinions about politics strongly wherever there’s room for uncertainty and debate, although I do hold some moral values that have political implications. Stoicism has taught me to remain emotionally detached from questions about which external states-of-affairs are preferable to which. For instance, I believe that a broadly state-run NHS is preferable to the privatization of British healthcare services. Nevertheless, if a health economist showed me solid evidence and a rational argument to persuade me otherwise I’d happily change my mind.
Once, it’s said, Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic school heard a pretentious young man exclaim that he disagreed with everything the (long-deceased) philosopher Antisthenes had written. It’s easy to make yourself seem clever by dismissing something out of hand or doing a hatchet-job on the author. However, Zeno asked him what there was of value to be learned from reading Antisthenes. The young man, caught off guard, said “I don’t know.” Zeno asked him why he wasn’t ashamed to be picking holes in a philosopher’s writings without having first taken care to identify what might be good in his works and worth knowing. That’s not unlike what philosophers call the Principle of Charity today. We arguably gain more benefit from reading a book if we look for the good bits first. Otherwise, if we indulge in criticism straight away, we risk missing what’s most important entirely. So it was with that in mind that I decided to read Stone’s Rules, the latest book from political strategist, and Trump-loyalist, Roger Stone.
Get me Roger Stone!
Stone’s story is now permanently entwined with that of President Trump. Stone claims he started calling on Trump to put himself forward as a presidential candidate back in 1988, although Donald wasn’t interested at first. “I launched the idea of Donald J. Trump for President”, he says. However, he later qualifies this by saying,
Those who claim I elected Trump are wrong. Trump elected Trump — he’s persistent, driven to succeed, clever, stubborn, and deeply patriotic. I am, however, among a handful who saw his potential for national leadership and the presidency.
Stone is a specialist in negative campaigning. His political career began way back in 1972 when, aged twenty, he joined Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign team. Nixon became his lifelong hero. Indeed, Stone collects Nixon memorabilia and actually has a large tattoo of the former president’s face on his back. However, after the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation, Stone was left with a reputation as a professional “dirty trickster”. He successfully turned this into a selling-point, though, and survived to have a long, albeit controversial, career in politics. In the 1980s he worked on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign and formed the political consulting firm Black, Manafort and Stone, along with Charlie Black and Paul Manafort.
Black, Manafort and Stone’s first client was, in fact, Donald Trump. Later, in the 1990s, Stone began working with Trump in a variety of other capacities. In 2000, he was appointed campaign manager for Trump’s first, albeit abortive, presidential campaign. Trump sought the nomination for the Reform Party but quit during the presidential primaries. It wasn’t surprising then that Stone later served as an advisor to Trump during the initial stages of his 2016 presidential campaign. He resigned in August 2015, although Trump said that he had been fired. However, Stone continued to support Trump and according to some reports to serve in an informal capacity as one of his political advisors. Stone and several of his associates came under the scrutiny of the Mueller investigation, mainly due to Stone’s communications with Julian Assange of Wikileaks and a team of hackers using the online identity Guccifer 2.0, who were subsequently revealed to be acting as agents of Russian military intelligence (GRU).
Stone’s a difficult man to describe. He revels in controversy. For example, he posed for a photo shoot dressed as the Joker from Batman. I find that, paradoxically, people who aren’t very familiar with him often assume that others are “attacking” him when in fact they’re just repeating his own claims. He became more widely-known outside of political circles in the summer of 2017 when the Netflix documentary Get me Roger Stone was released. The film is structured around ten of Stone’s “rules” for success in life and politics.
This idea was then expanded into his new book Stone’s Rules: How to Win at Politics, Business, and Style(2018). The blurb compares Stone to a combination of Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. However, the book actually consists of 140 rules, described in a few paragraphs each, written in a fairly casual and often humorous style. There are many short anecdotes about Nixon and other US politicians. As the title suggests, some of the rules are more about succeeding in life, some are more specific to politics. A considerable number of them are about sartorial advice, such as Rule #18: “White shirt + tan face = confidence” or Rule #36, which claims “Brown is the color of shit”. He also includes his mother’s recipe for pasta sauce (or rather “Sunday Gravy”). There are instructions on how to prepare martinis just like Nixon did — who, according to Stone, used to say of them, “More than one of these and you want to beat your wife.”
In the book’s foreword, political commentator Tucker Carlson of Fox News acclaims Stone “the premier troublemaker of our time” and “the Michael Jordan of electoral mischief”. However, Carlson also describes his friend as “wise” and “on the level”. Stone is happy to celebrate his notoriety as the “high priest of political mischief”, “slash-and-burn Republican black bag election tamperer” with “a long history of bare-knuckle politics” and the title “Jedi Master of the negative campaign”.
Why Socrates?
Stone himself believes that “To understand the future, you must study the past” (Rule #4: “Past is fucking prologue”) and that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. So I want to approach his rules for life from the perspective of ancient Greek philosophy, which began addressing similar ideas almost two and a half thousand years ago, in the time of Socrates. Some of the underlying assumptions about the best way to live, or to govern, haven’t changed much. Stone’s Rule #69 likewise acknowledges that “everything is recycled” in the political arena:
All the ideas today’s politicians present to the voters are simply recycled versions of the same basic formulae that have been employed by political hucksters and power-accumulating government careerists for nearly a century.
Indeed, the arguments Socrates and the Stoics deployed against ancient Sophists address difference of value so fundamental that they’re still just as relevant today. Stone’s rules contain several echoes themselves of perennial philosophical debates about the best way to approach life. Sometimes he says things that resemble Socrates or the Stoics and sometimes he sounds more like their opponents the Sophists. So let’s have a look at a few key examples…
Make Your Own Luck
Stone’s Rule #5 quite simply advises “make your own luck”. This is a sound piece of age-old wisdom. Socrates likewise argues, in the Euthydemus, that wisdom is man’s greatest gift because it allows him to turn bad fortune into good. In Plato’s Republic, Book Ten, Socrates also says that unlike the majority of people the true philosopher isn’t perturbed by apparent setbacks. He realizes that we can never be certain whether the events that befall us will turn out to be good or bad in the long-run — there are many reversals of fortune in life. If we stop to complain about every apparent setback, we do ourselves more harm than good. In these passages, Socrates sounds very much like a forerunner of the Stoics. For example, Epictetus, the most famous Roman Stoic teacher would later say that wisdom, like the magic wand of Hermes, has the power to turn everything it touches into gold — he means that the wise man knows how to turn apparent misfortune to his advantage.
Stone’s Rule #60 is his version of the wand of Hermes: “Sometimes you’ve got to turn chicken shit into chicken salad.”
In politics and in life, you play the cards you are dealt. Sometimes you have to take your greatest disadvantage and turn it into a plus. Lyndon Johnson called it “changing chicken shit into chicken salad.”
According to Stone, Donald Trump particularly exemplifies this philosophy of life. Likewise, Rule #13 “Never quit” cites Donald Trump, Winston Churchill and Richard Nixon as exemplars of psychological resilience and persistence in the face of setbacks. Stone quotes Nixon as saying “A man is not finished when he is defeated, he is only finished when he quits.”
Stone also admires G. Gordon Liddy who lived by Nietzsche’s maxim “That which does not kill me can only make me stronger.” Liddy might appear a surprising choice of role model. He was the man who, under orders from Nixon, led the Watergate burglary of the DNC headquarters, and was sentenced to twenty years in prison for doing so. Stone’s right to say, though, that in many cases “Today’s defeat can plant the seeds of tomorrow’s victory.” For example, as a psychotherapist and counsellor, I often heard clients tell me that, paradoxically, losing their job turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to them. Psychological endurance isn’t a virtue in itself, though, as Socrates points out in the Laches and elsewhere. It really only deserves praise when it’s in the service of something good rather than evil. Crooks can be very resilient. Toughness in the service of vice is arguably just another form of weakness.
Hate Trumps Love
Rule #54 “Hate is a stronger motivator than love” appears to be one of the fundamental premises of Stone’s entire political philosophy. It’s the basis of his favourite strategy: negative campaigning. Hatred is, he thinks, the most powerful motive incentivizing voters in US elections:
Only a candy-ass would think otherwise. People feel satisfied when there is something they can vote FOR. They feel exhilarated when there is something — or someone — they can vote AGAINST. Just ask President Hillary Clinton about all of the people who rushed out to vote FOR her.
Stone argues that Trump’s central campaign theme was extremely positive “Make America Great Again” but that he was nevertheless “the beneficiary, and an extraordinarily deft amplifier, of a deep, and frankly much-deserved, loathing” for Hillary Clinton.
Do-gooders and disingenuous leftists who decry the politics of fear and negativism are simply denying the reality of human nature, and only fooling themselves. Emotions cannot simply be erased or ignored, and to believe they can is a suicidally-naive approach to political competition.
There’s undoubtedly some truth in this but is it the whole truth? Stone’s Rule #52 “Don’t get mad; get even” arguably hints at a contradictory observation about human nature:
Be aggressive but don’t get angry. Nixon would get angry and issue illegal orders then reverse them when he calmed down.
So why isn’t the same true of voters? Hatred and anger are certainly powerful motivators but so are fear and regret. When people act out of hatred they’re not usually thinking rationally about the wider implications or long-term consequences of their actions: it’s more of a knee-jerk response. That often leads to a pendulum swing when the negative consequences of decisions motivated by anger become apparent. Perhaps, just like Nixon, voters might act out of anger (as a result of negative campaigning) but then come to regret their decision once they’ve calmed down again.
The danger of negative campaigning is that in voting against someone they have been encouraged to hate voters end up electing someone else, not on the basis of merit or competence, but just because they symbolize opposition to the hate figure. That can backfire dramatically, though, if it turns out the winning candidate’s shortcomings have been overlooked. Indeed, as we’re about to see, Stone is quite candid about employing his trademark negative campaigning strategy to create a smokescreen and divert attention away from potentially damaging criticism of his allies.
The Big Lie
Stone’s Rule #47 “The Big Lie Technique”.
Erroneously attributed to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, the “big lie” manipulation technique was actually first described in detail by Adolf Hitler himself. […] Nonetheless, the tactic of creating a lie so bold, massive, and even so monstrous that it takes on a life of its own, is alive and well all through American politics and news media. Make it big, keep it simple, repeat it enough times, and people will believe it.
Arguably, a classic example of this would be the “birtherist” conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that Barack Obama was born in Kenya in order to cast doubt on his eligibility to serve as US president. Stone previously stated in an interview that although he didn’t plant the idea of birtherism in Donald Trump’s mind he did encourage him to keep spreading it. However, although Stone proudly advocates this technique it obviously doesn’t serve his interests to place examples of his own handiwork under the spotlight so he doesn’t actually mention birtherism anywhere in his book.
Instead, he focuses on the claim that the Democrats propounded a “Big Lie” by claiming that the Russian state helped Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election and that Stone himself had played a role by colluding with Wikileaks. So despite writing about his mastery of this art in this book he’s also claiming that his enemies are the ones really perpetrating it. Of course, you can’t credibly admit that you’re telling Big Lies and then, in the next breath, go on to accuse your opponents of doing so unless you back that up with some pretty compelling evidence. Stone’s assumption, though, is that enough people won’t notice or don’t care about that. In some respects, he may be right.
One of the main reasons Stone gives for using the Big Lie is to create a smokescreen to defend yourself against criticism. Stone’s Rule #41 “Attack, attack, attack — never defend” and #42 “Let no attack go unanswered” hammer home the point that the best form of defence is attack. Stone’s argument is that, in life generally but especially in politics, if you try to defend yourself against criticisms rationally you simply risk educating more people about the accusations against you. Mud sticks. So instead launch a “devastating” counter-attack to divert attention away from the charges against you, and ignore them or at least say as little as possible in rebuttal of them. It doesn’t matter, of course, whether the criticisms you face are actually valid or not. Hence, Stone’s Rule #81 “Never Admit Mistakes”. He mentions briefly in passing that people will probably say that’s what he’s doing in response to the allegations that he colluded with Russia during the 2016 election campaign but he denies this and focuses instead on claiming that it’s all part of a Democrat / Deep State conspiracy against him.
In a nutshell, Stone believes that if someone attacks you in politics you should focus on attacking their character even more aggressively than they’ve attacked yours, and avoid having to defend yourself rationally. This is what philosophers call the ad hominem fallacy, being deployed as a deliberate rhetorical strategy. It’s also similar to the fallacy of “Whataboutism” or changing the subject — Never mind Russian collusion what about Hillary’s email server?! The hope is that everyone will forget about the criticisms made against you and focus on the allegations, true or false, that you’re making against your opponents. If it works, you’ve thrown them off your trail completely and instead sent them down an endless rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. Of course, that doesn’t prove you’re innocent, it just diverts attention away from the problem by changing the subject. Try that one in court: “Never mind that I robbed a bank what about the judge — everyone knows he’s a Communist and I heard he’s also the head of a weird sex cult!”
However, as Jon Meacham says “Lies are good starters but they’re not good finishers.” The truth usually comes out eventually. Stone is probably right that, rhetorically, it’s a very powerful strategy to attack the character of your critics instead of answering their criticism. However, that won’t keep working forever. Sooner or later your credibility will begin to wane as a result and people will stop taking you seriously, just like the proverbial boy who cried wolf. It might take months, or it might take years, even decades, but the more “Big Lies” you tell the more people will eventually begin to question your credibility.
Worse, although the Big Lie strategy may work quite well in the political arena, at least in the short-term, it has the potential to come back to haunt you in the law courts. For instance, some reports suggest that Stone is likely facing indictment as part of the Russia investigation. What would happen if the prosecution chose to read certain passages from this book aloud before a judge and jury? Once you admit to using deceit on a massive scale to deflect criticism, and never admitting to wrongdoing as a matter of principle, how can anyone ever again trust anything you try to say in your own defense? What goes around comes around.
Book One of Plato’s Republic features a Sophist called Thrasymachus (literally “fierce fighter”). Stone sometimes sounds a bit like him. Thrasymachus adopts the cynical position that justice is for losers and that true wisdom is possessed by those courageous enough to become unjust, by lying, cheating, and getting away with it. He particularly admires tyrants, who hold absolute political power and can do what they want. He looks down on the sheep who bleat about morality as naive simpletons. Might is right, in other words. The honest and just man, he thinks, is bound to be exploited by the dishonest and unjust. Socrates claims that the unjust seek power because they want to gain from it. However, truly good men do not seek political power for its own sake but are more often motivated by the desire not to allow tyrants to rule.
Socrates doesn’t say this explicitly but he strongly implies the view that the motivation of good and honest people to become involved in politics will wax and wane, reaching its peak in response to the threat of tyrants seizing power. History, in other words, may consist of a pendulum swinging between periods of political complacency, when corrupt leaders are allowed to take power, and periods of moral outrage when the people realize they’ve been duped and become motivated to set things right.
Thrasymachus is convinced that the unjust are always stronger than the just. However, Socrates argues that injustice breeds division and hostility, creating enemies within and without the state over time. Justice, by contrast, breeds harmony and friendship, and creates stronger alliances, although we might add that justice often moves more slowly than injustice. So although the unjust may prevail in the short term, over time their power is bound to crumble as they increasingly find their associates turning against them. Their problem is that they can’t really trust anyone.
Hypocrisy is Bad
Stone’s Rule #84 says “Hypocrisy is what gets you”, so he actually does recognize the danger of losing credibility. However, throughout the book he refers countless times to the deliberate use of hypocrisy, insincerity and deceit. For example, Stone’s Rule #55 “Praise ’em before you hit ‘em”:
This technique was one of Dick Nixon’s best. The veteran political pugilist would praise his opponent’s sincerity and commend the opponent’s genuine belief in what are, nonetheless, terrible ideas and repugnant ideologies. […] “Praise ’em before you hit ‘em — makes the hit seem more reasonable and even-handed, and thus more effective,” said the Trickster.
Likewise, Stone’s Rule #39 “Wear your cockade inside your hat” by which he means that it can be advantageous to conceal your true affiliations from everyone except your allies. He writes “sometimes it is best to cloak your real political intentions, so you are able to accomplish more without being under suspicion.” But once you’ve told everyone that, in a book, you’ve kind of let the cat out of the bag haven’t you?
There’s undoubtedly some truth to the idea that deceit can be expedient in politics and Big Lies can have powerful effects. However, these aren’t qualities we normally praise or admire in other people, which makes it hypocritical to adopt them ourselves. That might work in the short-term but, once again, in the longer-term more and more people are likely to figure out what’s going on and you risk losing credibility as a result. If your philosophy is based on deceit you also run the risk of surrounding yourself with fair-weather friends who share similarly ruthless values. So you better hope that when a crisis looms they don’t just decide it’s expedient to throw you under the bus to save their own skin. For instance, that’s typically what happens when defendants agree to plea bargains and turn state’s evidence against their erstwhile “friends” during criminal investigations.
Conclusion
Stone prefaces his rules by explaining:
To me, it all comes down to WINNING. It comes down to using any and every legal means available to achieve victory for my friends and allies, and to inflict crushing, ignominious defeat on my opponents and, yes, enemies.
I can’t read this without thinking of Conan the Barbarian who, when asked what is best in life, replies: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!” I doubt Stone would object to the comparison. He describes his book as a “compendium of rules for war” and “the style manual for a ‘master of the universe’”.
So from the outset winning is everything. Although, a couple of pages later in Rule #1 he also says “There is no shame in losing. There is only shame in failing to strive, in never trying at all.” That attitude interests me because it’s more consistent with the values espoused by Socrates and the Stoics. If we invest too much value in outward success then we inevitably place our happiness, to some extent, in the hands of fate. The philosophers thought wisdom and resilience came from avoiding that and learning to place more importance on our own character and less on the outcome of our actions. It’s one thing to aim at a particular outcome, such as winning an election. It’s another thing to make it so all-important that we’re willing to sacrifice our own integrity in pursuit of it. That’s a recipe for neurosis because it makes our emotions depend upon events that are never entirely up to us. Stone’s good off to a good start with Rule #1 and it should make us wonder what would have happened if he’d developed that thought further and incorporated it into a more rounded philosophy of life.
That’s how the book begins. It concludes with Stone’s Rule #140 “He who laughs last laughs heartiest”:
I will often wait years to take my revenge, hiding in the tall grass, my stiletto at the ready, waiting patiently until you think I have forgotten or forgiven a past slight and then, when you least expect it, I will spring from the underbrush and plunge a dagger up under your ribcage. So if you have fucked me, even if it was years ago, don’t think yourself safe.
That brought to my mind something his hero Richard Nixon once said:
“I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch, that he will do what he’s told, that every income tax return I want to see I see, that he will go after our enemies and not go after our friends.”
Those are the words of Nixon giving instructions to his aides about the appointment of a new commissioner of internal revenue, caught on tape in the Oval Office on May 13, 1971. As part of this attempt to persecute his opponents, Nixon later handed his notorious “Enemies List”, containing 576 names in its revised version, to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). He assumed political power was a weapon to be wielded, a way of harming his enemies and helping his friends.
Nixon’s words happen to echo an ancient Greek definition of justice as “helping your friends and harming your enemies”, which Socrates vigorously attempted to refute nearly two and a half thousand years ago. In Book One of Plato’s Republic, Socrates basically points out that to genuinely harm your enemies, by definition, is to make them worse than they are already. Just making them weaker by removing certain external advantages such as wealth, friends, or status doesn’t necessarily harm them deep down. As Stone himself conceded: the wise man can “make chicken shit into chicken soup” and turn setbacks into opportunities.
We can only really harm others, according to Socrates, by corrupting their character and turning them into foolish and vicious people, if that’s even possible. He concluded that, paradoxically, the wise man will actually help both his friends and his enemies. That doesn’t mean giving his enemies external advantages, which would be foolish because they’d probably use them against us other others. Rather it means educating them and helping them to become wiser and better individuals, perhaps one day becoming our friends instead of our enemies as a result. Of course that’s idealistic, but it’s arguably a much healthier goal than simple revenge.
I’ll cut to the chase and say that I think the future of American politics should perhaps involve greater bipartisanship. People would do better to try to understand their political enemies, in my view, rather than simply attack them. The law of retaliation (lex talionis) is “an eye for an eye” but as Gandhi reputedly said, that leaves the whole world blind. Socrates argues that revenge harms us more than it does our enemies because it degrades our character and tricks us into investing far too much importance in external things. I’ll therefore leave the last word to him:
“Then we ought to neither return wrong for wrong nor do evil to anyone, no matter what he may have done to us. Be careful though, Crito, that by agreeing with this you do not agree to something you do not believe. For I know that there are few who believe this or ever will. Now those who believe it, and those who do not, have no common ground of discussion, but they must necessarily disdain one another because of their opinions. You should therefore consider very carefully whether you agree and share in this opinion. Let us take as the starting point of our discussion the assumption that it is never right to do wrong or to repay wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.” (Crito, 49c)
It’s part of a trilogy: The Obstacle is the Way (2014), Ego is the Enemy (2016), and Stillness is the Key (2019). Each book can easily be read independently of the others, though. These are Holiday’s self-improvement books, quite heavily influenced by Stoicism. However, he’s also the co-author, with Stephen Hanselman, of The Daily Stoic (2016), a bestselling book on Stoic philosophy, which contains many excerpts from the classics with commentary.
First of all, I want to say that I read The Obstacle is the Way, enjoyed it, and wrote a review a while ago. (Although, I’ve not had a chance to read Ego is the Enemy yet.) My feeling when reading Stillness is the Key is that it felt somewhat more “mature”, by comparison with the first book, and perhaps a more confident work. It’s also more focused on a specific idea — the notion of inner stillness. Holiday goes so far as to say “Stillness is the key to, well, just about everything.” He mentions in passing that what he has in mind is similar to the Stoic concept of apatheia (freedom from unhealthy passions) or Epicurean ataraxia (freedom from disturbance). Holiday uses this quote from Marcus Aurelius as an example of stillness:
Be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands, unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.49
The only real criticism of The Obstacle is the Way that I have, in retrospect, is that some of the many examples it contains of historical individuals seemed a little one-sided because they focused on character strengths and didn’t always mention the same individuals weaknesses. (And that’s a trivial point as long as readers bear in mind that we’re only meant to be focusing selectively on certain aspects of the individuals in question.) However, I felt that Stillness is the Key succeeded in painting a more balanced picture of its heroes, simply by adding a few more observations about their flaws.
I wanted to review this book from a broadly Stoic perspective, so I’ll just mention that this made me think of something the early Stoics said according to Diogenes Laertius: ”A rhetorical speech is divided into introduction, exposition, replies to opponents, and conclusion.” Some early rhetoricians left out the refutatio or responses to critics but the Stoics seem to have thought that an argument was incomplete without anticipating and answering criticisms against it. I think that in Stillness is the Key there’s more of an attempt to anticipate, and absorb, criticisms of the historical individuals used as examples than there perhaps was in The Obstacle is the Way. For instance, early in the book there’s a detailed discussion of Kennedy’s cool-headed handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. On the other hand, Holiday qualifies his admiration by also noting the lack of self-control exhibited by Kennedy’s reckless indulgence in casual sex. That more even-handed approach makes it easier, I reckon, for readers to enjoy and benefit from the anecdotes without getting lost in the weeds of analyzing whether or not everyone featured makes “a good role model” not.
Numa: “Hold your Tongue”
Stillness is the Key makes quite a few references, perhaps inevitably to Buddhism and other forms of eastern thought in order to illustrate its main theme concerning inner equilibrium and silence. However, Holiday points out right at the beginning:
It’s a powerful idea made all the more transcendent by the remarkable fact that nearly every other philosophy of the ancient world — no matter how different or distant — came to the exact same conclusion.
Sometimes it helps to “amplify” an idea when you can draw analogies from other religions and philosophies. So I’d like to add some observations about Greek and Roman philosophy. As I read the scattered references to Stoicism, the way Holiday presented this special type of “stillness” reminded me very much of the way the ancient Roman religion of Numa Pompilius was presented in an old book I enjoyed recently, Marius the Epicurean (1885) by Walter Pater, which is set in Rome during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
For instance, Pater uses the Latin saying favete linguisor “hold your tongue” (roughly translated) to illustrate his interpretation of the ancient religious rites attributed to King Numa as evoking a kind of inner stillness and receptivity to spiritual experiences:
But for the monotonous intonation of the liturgy by the priests, clad in their strange, stiff, antique vestments, and bearing ears of green corn upon their heads, secured by flowing bands of white, the procession moved in absolute stillness, all persons, even the children, abstaining from speech after the utterance of the pontifical formula, Favete linguis! — Silence, Propitious Silence! — lest any words save those proper to the occasion should hinder the religious efficacy of the rite. With the lad Marius, who as the head of his house took a leading part in the ceremonies of the day, there was a devout effort to complete this impressive outward silence by that inward tacitness of mind, esteemed so important by religious Romans in the performance of these sacred functions. To him the sustained stillness without seemed really but to be waiting upon that interior, mental condition of preparation or expectancy, for which he was just then intently striving. — Pater, Marius the Epicurean
That makes me think of the lines Holiday quotes from Herman Melville:
All profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence… Silence is the general consecration of the universe.
The Romans believed that Numa, their second king, famous for bringing peace, founded the most important of their priestly orders and religious rites in the seventh century BC. How the profound numinous silence of these ancient Roman rites contrasts with the scene of urban clamour described by Seneca in the opening pages of Stillness is the Key. Nevertheless, Seneca was able to recover his inner stillness, to some extent, by leaning on the doctrines of Stoic philosophy.
Marcus Aurelius’ family claimed descent from King Numa. Hadrian enrolled Marcus, when he was only an eight year old boy, in the arcane college of the Salii, or leaping priests, founded by Numa. A few years later, Marcus had risen to become the leader of the order. Marcus seems to have been genuinely fascinated by the ancient Roman religion and to have studied it meticulously. As emperor he became its ultimate guardian, pontifex maximus, a role that, unlike some other emperors, he took very seriously. If Pater’s right, it’s easy to see how Marcus’ profound immersion in the religious tradition founded by Numa, from childhood onward, would leave impressed upon him the spiritual value of outer quiet and inner stillness.
Pater’s own translation of the following passage from The Meditations, although a little idiosyncratic, brings this reading of Marcus’ Stoicism to the foreground:
Men seek retirement in country-houses, at the sea-side, on the mountains; and you have yourself as much fondness for such places as another. Still, there is no proof of culture in that; for the privilege is yours of retiring into yourself whensoever you please — into that little farm of one’s own mind, where a silence so profound may be enjoyed. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3
The Pythagoreans
The Romans felt that Numa’s religion bore an uncanny resemblance to the mystical teachings of Pythagoras and some even argued that Numa was a Pythagorean, although this was dismissed by others as pseudohistory. However, it’s no surprise that Marcus was also drawn to the aspects of Pythagorean philosophy that associated inner stillness, and a kind of profound simplicity of character, with the contemplation of nature.
The Pythagoreans used to say that, first thing in the morning, we should look up at the sky, to remind ourselves of beings who forever accomplish their work according to the same laws and in an unvarying fashion, and to remind ourselves too of their orderliness, purity, and nakedness; for nothing veils a star. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.27
Indeed, the followers of Pythagoras were known for taking a vow of silence, which it was claimed allowed them eventually to hear the “music of the spheres”, the sound made by the universe itself, normally drowned out by our incessant talking and thinking.
After [their initial training] the [Pythagorean] candidate was compelled to observe silence for five years, so as to have made definite experiments in continence of speech, inasmuch as the subjugation of the tongue is the most difficult of all victories, as has indeed been unfolded by those who have instituted the mysteries. — Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras
Perhaps surprisingly, because they seem quite different on the face of it, the ancient Spartans shared something in common with the Pythagoreans in this regard. The Spartans thought that too much talking was a vice.
This is Sparta!
An ambassador who had come to Sparta once made a long speech. When he had stopped speaking and asked King Agis what report he should make back to his people, the Spartan said only, “Report that during all the time you wanted to speak I listened in silence.” When somebody criticized Hecataeus the Sophist because he remained silent at a communal meal to which he had been invited, the Spartan king Archidamidas, Agis’ father, defended his behaviour saying, “You do not seem to realize that he who knows how to speak knows also the right time for speaking.” In a council meeting a Spartan was asked whether it was due to foolishness or lack of words that he said nothing. “But a fool,” said he, “would not be able to hold his tongue.”
Like the Pythagoreans, therefore, the Spartans firmly believed in practising the sort of applied wisdom that consists, when appropriate, in being able to remain silent and do nothing for a while. The Stoics, whom Cicero says adopted a way of life and way of speaking modelled on the ancient Spartans, were also known for being laconic, i.e., concise. Holiday mentions the saying attributed to Zeno that Nature gave us two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak — something that, as you can see from the examples above, could easily have been a Spartan proverb.
Muddy Waters
Elsewhere, Holiday notes that in The Meditations, Marcus Aurelius poses a shockingly powerful but simple question: “Ask yourself at every moment ‘Is this necessary?’” Try doing that for a few weeks. Most of what the majority of us do, most of the time, isn’t necessary, or even very helpful. Doing less should be the inevitable consequence of genuine self-awareness, or mindfulness, it seems, and I think the ancient Greeks realized that. The Spartans clearly wanted their youth to learn that much of what we say is just background noise but the Pythagoreans seem to have believed that the same applies to much of what we think, at least much of what we think in the form of inner dialogue. Indeed, Greek philosophy contains the distinction Holiday makes between discursive thought, or which is like talking about something, and intuitive thought, which is more like seeing something, and can therefore potentially be achieved better, sometimes, in silent contemplation.
Holiday also mentions that Stoicism, like many other religions and philosophies, has a notion of our mental vision being clouded by emotional disturbance.
The world is like muddy water. To see through it, we have to let things settle.
The Greek word ataraxia, sometimes translated “peace of mind” or “tranquillity” literally means “undisturbed”, like muddy water that’s been allowed to clear and settle. The Cynics had another word for that disturbance, though, which the Stoics sometimes borrowed from them. They call it tuphos, “mist” or “smoke”, and they sometimes said that we’re going around surrounded by this mist in the world, or that our minds are clouded by it. It’s the grand illusion that affects the majority of people throughout their lives, the illusion that external things like wealth or fame are somehow all-important just because other people keep chasing after them — it’s all smoke and mirrors, though. When the wise man or woman sees through these illusions, their mind is no longer disturbed, their life goes smoothly, and they have achieved eudaimonia.
Conclusion
I enjoyed this book. I read the whole thing in about half a day. (The first half in the Ilision Grove park in Athens, see photo.) However, there’s a lot more in it than I can easily summarize here. It’s divided into three sections: mind, spirit, and body. These include chapters such as:
Become present
Limit your inputs
Choose virtue
Conquer your anger
Say no
Build a routine
And more…
I think a lot of people will benefit from reading Stillness is the Key. Although it’s not a book on Stoicism per se, it has lots of references to ancient Stoic authors like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. And I think its basic message should definitely resonate with people who are interested in Stoicism, as well as with a more general audience.
After being released in April, we were lucky enough to get a favourable review in The Wall Street Journal. The book then became a #1 bestseller in philosophy in the US, hopefully introducing a whole new audience to Stoic philosophy. The audiobook, which I recorded myself at Voodoo Highway studios in Toronto, has been doing particularly well, and the book’s also available in hardback and ebook formats.
Since, then, I’ve been travelling around doing various events to promote the book. It’s now available in German, Italian, Dutch, and Greek translations, with lots of other languages to follow in due course. And it’s just been announced that the paperback will be released August next year — you can already pre-order it on Amazon to get the best price.
The ancient Cynic and Stoic philosophers were very interested in food. (At the end of this article you’ll even find a modern recipe for Stoic soup.)
They talk both about what we should eat and how we should eat it, if we want to live wisely and gain strength of character. For instance, we’re told of the Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus:
He often talked in a very forceful manner about food, on the grounds that food was not an insignificant topic and that what one eats has significant consequences. In particular, he thought that mastering one’s appetites for food and drink was the beginning of and basis for self-control.
Musonius taught that Stoics should prefer inexpensive foods that are easy to obtain and most nourishing and healthy for a human being to eat. It might seem like common sense to “eat healthy” but the Stoics also thought we potentially waste far too much time shopping for and preparing fancy meals when simple nutritious meals can often be easily prepared from a few readily-available ingredients.
Musonius advises eating plants and grains rather than slaughtered animals. He recommends fruits and vegetables that do not require much cooking, as well as cheese, milk, and honeycombs. The Stoic weren’t strictly vegetarian — unlike their philosophical cousins the Pythagoreans. Some Stoics were probably vegetarian and others not, although they wouldn’t have eaten very much meat in general.
The Early Stoic and Cynic Diet
Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic school, had for many years been a Cynic philosopher. “Zeno”, we’re told, “thought it best to avoid gourmet food, and he was adamant about this.” He believed that once we get used to eating fancy meals we spoil our appetites and start to crave things that are expensive or difficult to obtain, losing the ability to properly enjoy simple, natural food and drink.
We know more about the Cynic diet because it was simpler and more austere. The Cynics were known, typically, for drinking water (instead of wine), and eating barley-bread and lentil soup or lupin beans — all very cheap ingredients. One Cynic letter says: “It is not only bread and water, and a bed of straw, and a rough cloak, that teach temperance…” We’re told of Crates, the Cynic teacher of Zeno, who abandoned his fortune:
Having adopted simpler ways, he was contented with a rough cloak, and barley-bread, and vegetables, without ever yearning for his former way of life or being unhappy with his present one.
The Stoics were generally more urbane and less extreme than their Cynic predecessors, and their diet seems to have been a bit less restricted. However, right down until the time of the last famous Stoic of antiquity, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, we hear about some Stoics modelling themselves on the Cynic lifestyle, which in turn appears to have been influenced by aspects of the notorious Spartan agoge or training.
For example, in a letter to Marcus Aurelius, we find his rhetoric tutor and family friend, Marcus Cornelius Fronto, joking about how he saw one of the emperor’s little sons clutching a chunk of brown bread, “quite in keeping with a philosopher’s son.” In another letter, we get a glimpse of Marcus’ eating habits:
Then we went to luncheon. What do you think I ate? A wee bit of bread, though I saw others devouring beans, onions, and herrings full of roe.
Eating with Attention and Moderation
Musonius also thought we should train ourselves to avoid gluttony:
Since this behavior [gluttony] is very shameful, the opposite behavior — eating in an orderly and moderate way, and thereby demonstrating self-control — would be very good. Doing this, though, is not easy; it demands much care and training.
Stoics should eat slowly and with mindfulness of their own character and actions, paying attention (prosoche) to their thoughts and actions. They should use reason to judge where the boundary of what’s healthy lies and exercise moderation wisely.
The person who eats more than he should makes a mistake. So does the person who eats in a hurry, the person who is enthralled by gourmet food, the person who favors sweets over nutritious foods, and the person who does not share his food equally with his fellow-diners. […] Since these and other mistakes are connected with food, the person who wishes to be self-controlled must free himself of all of them and be subject to none. One way to become accustomed to this is to practice choosing food not for pleasure but for nourishment, not to please his palate but to strengthen his body.
That very simply means making an effort to eat healthy food. However, for Stoics the main reason for doing this isn’t just to improve our health, paradoxically, it’s to strengthen our character by exercising self-awareness and the virtue of self-discipline. That’s important today because we’re bombarded with contradictory advice about the healthiest way to eat. The Stoics would say that we shouldn’t allow that to confuse us. We should make a reasonable decision and stick to it in order to develop self-control because that’s fundamentally more important than losing weight or becoming physically healthy anyway. To be clear, both goals are of value, but for Stoics the primary goal is strength of character and physical health, while “preferred” as they phrase it, is of secondary importance.
Therefore, the goal of our eating should be staying alive rather than having pleasure — at least if we wish to follow the sound advice of Socrates, who said that many men live to eat, but that he ate to live. No right-thinking person will want to follow the masses and live to eat, as they do, in constant pursuit of gastronomic pleasures.
Many people who follow Stoicism today also employ intermittent fasting. It’s likely that some ancient Stoics did too, I think. Socrates famously said that “hunger is the best relish”, alluding to the irony that we actually enjoy our food more when we’re hungry, and spoil our appetites when we over-indulge. I fast at least once a week, sometimes eating and fasting on alternate days. For lunch I tend to eat dakos, a simple Cretan salad made from barley-bread rusks, perhaps like the ancient Spartans and Cynics used to eat, and a few common ingredients like chopped tomatoes, olives, and feta.
I think Musonius, and the other Stoics, would also approve of the recipe below because it’s very cheap, mainly uses common vegetable ingredients, which are easy to obtain, and it’s also very easy to prepare. You can easily make a large batch and store it in portions to reheat later. It’s unfussy but tasty and nutritious.
Recipe for Stoic Soup
In Meals and Recipes from Ancient Greece, Eugenia Ricotti describes the following recipe called “Zeno’s Lentil Soup”. It’s a modern recipe loosely based upon ancient sources, including remarks attributed to Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoic philosophy, which are found in the Deipnosophistae (or “Dinner Experts”) of Athenaeus of Naucratis.
1 lb. (450g) lentils 8 cups (2 litres) broth 1 large minced leek 1 carrot, 1 stalk of celery, and 1 small onion, all sliced 2 tablespoons vinegar 1 teaspoon honey olive oil 12 coriander seeds salt and pepper to taste
She says to rinse the lentils and put them in a pot with the broth to boil. Then reduce heat and simmer for one hour. Then skim the top, add the vegetables, and leave to simmer until cooked, which should be about 30 minutes. She says that if it seems too watery either add cornstarch or pass some of the lentils through a sieve. Finally, add vinegar and honey for flavour.
After pouring into serving bowls, add a good amount of olive oil — she suggests about 2 tablespoons per serving. Finish by sprinkling on the coriander seeds and adding more salt and pepper to taste.
I’ve made this recipe quite a few times myself. I use dried green lentils, which I soak overnight and boil for a few minutes. I use red wine vinegar and often add a couple of garlic cloves and perhaps a few bay leaves, possibly also a little paprika. I’d also usually garnish it with a few fresh coriander leaves and serve with bread. This is a photo of my version…
What Ancient Stoics Took from the Spartan Training (Agoge)
What Ancient Stoics Took from the Spartan Training (Agoge)
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the last famous Stoic philosopher of antiquity, contains a curious passage where the Roman emperor thanks his painting tutor, Diognetus, for having introduced him to philosophy. Marcus says that Diognetus also encouraged him:
[…] to set my heart on a pallet-bed and an animal pelt and whatever else tallied with the Greek regimen. (Meditations, 1.6)
The suggestion that Marcus, as a boy, embraced certain austere features of a self-disciplined “Greek” lifestyle is actually confirmed by the Historia Augusta:
[Marcus Aurelius] studied philosophy intensely, even when he was still a boy. When he was twelve years old he embraced the dress of a philosopher, and later, the endurance — studying in a Greek cloak and sleeping on the ground. However, (with some difficulty) his mother persuaded him to sleep on a couch spread with skins. He was also tutored by Apollonius of Chalcedon, the Stoic philosopher […]
That is, when Marcus was only twelve years old, under the guidance of Diognetus, presumably a Greek, he began to adopt a lifestyle described as somehow modelled upon the Greek agoge, a word normally used to denote the ancient Spartan training regime. Here we’re told that Marcus’ agoge, or regime, involved training in “endurance” (tolerantiam).
From age seven until about thirty, Spartan boys were rigorously trained to become ideal citizens and soldiers. They slept in a mess hall, on military camp beds, and were given only a single garment, a cloak, to wear. They were taught to tolerate hunger and to endure pain and physical discomfort. They were also trained in rigorous physical exercise and the ancient military arts.
They always went without a shirt, receiving one garment [a cloak] for the entire year, and with unwashed bodies, refraining almost completely from bathing and rubbing down. The young men slept together, according to division and company, upon pallets which they themselves brought together by breaking off by hand, without any implement, the tops of the reeds which grew on the banks of the Eurotas. — Plutarch, On the Ancient Customs of the Spartans
Marcus likewise says that his agoge involved, among other things, sleeping on a camp-bed on the ground, like a soldier on campaign, under animal skins rather than soft blankets. The French scholar Pierre Hadot therefore noted the curious similarity between Marcus’ agoge and the Spartan regime:
In his life of the Spartan legislator Lycurgus, Plutarch describes the way in which Spartan children were brought up: once they reached the age of twelve, they lived without any tunic, received only one cloak for the whole year, and slept on mattresses which they themselves had made out of reeds. The model of this style of life was strongly idealised by the philosophers, especially the Cynics and Stoics. (Hadot, 1988, p. 7).
Elsewhere, Plutarch describes the Spartan youth as having “hair untrimmed, taking cold baths,” and as eating “coarse bread, and supping on black porridge” (Life of Alcibiades).
The Historia Augusta mentions that as part of the austere lifestyle he adopted in his youth Marcus donned the “Greek cloak” (pallium), traditionally associated with the followers of Socrates, and later Cynic and Stoic philosophers. However, as Hadot notes, this cloak, a single piece of cloth made from grey (undyed) wool, was also traditionally associated with the Spartans.
One might add that the philosophers’ cloak (Greek tribôn, Latin pallium) worn by the young Marcus Aurelius was none other than the Spartan cloak, made of coarse cloth, that had been adopted by Socrates, Antisthenes, Diogenes, and the philosophers of the Cynic and Stoic tradition. (Hadot, 1988, p. 8).
The author of the 10th century Byzantine dictionary known as the Suda quotes thirty passages from The Meditations that he refers to as the agoge of Marcus Aurelius, borrowing the word used by Marcus himself in the passage quoted above. Once again, it sounds as though Marcus’ use of Stoicism as a philosophy of life was being compared to aspects of the Spartan training regime and lifestyle.
This might seem surprising. However, centuries earlier, during the Roman republic, the orator and philosopher Cicero had mentioned that the Stoics looked and sounded like Spartans. During a legal speech, Cicero explicitly attributed his friend and courtroom opponent Cato’s Stoic practices to “the Spartans, the originators of that way of living and that sort of language” (Pro Murena, 74). Cicero takes it for granted that his audience, including Cato, the “complete Stoic”, will accept as uncontroversial his claim that the Stoics modelled their lifestyle and manner of speaking upon that of the ancient Spartans.
The Stoics’ were renowned for their concise way of talking as were the Spartans before them. The region surrounding the ancient city of Sparta was known as Lacedaemon, or Laconia, from which comes the adjective “laconic”, still used today to mean an artfully terse manner of speech. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was particularly known for his abrupt style of speech, and notoriously compressed syllogistic arguments. Once when someone complained that his philosophical arguments were very short, Zeno replied that they were and that if he could he’d make the words shorter as well.
I think brevity was considered a virtue in Stoic philosophy in part because the founders of the school believed that philosophical doctrines should be simple and concise enough to be memorable, and easily recalled in the face of adversity. That happens to be one of the reasons why Stoicism is popular once again today. People find the Stoics eminently quotable and their sayings easy to remember, such as: “Stop arguing what a good man should be and just be one.”
Socrates and Sparta
Now, ancient Sparta was, for the most part, a notoriously brutal regime. The severe training (agoge) they put their young sons through was intended to build courage and self-discipline in preparation for military service. However, I suspect what philosophers from at least the time of Socrates onward intended was to argue that certain aspects of the Spartan training could be adapted for use in a philosopher’s way of life, in the service of developing a character shaped by wisdom, justice, and virtue in general.
We’re told that Socrates definitely thought that his fellow Athenians should model their way of life more on that of their ancestors, or that of the Spartans:
Socrates: “If they [the Athenians] rediscovered their ancestors’ way of life and followed it no worse than they did, they would prove to be just as good men as they were. Alternatively, if they took as their model the present leaders of the Greek world [the Spartans] and followed the same way of life, then with similar application to the same activities they would become no worse than their models, and with closer application they would actually surpass them.” (Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates, 3.5)
Indeed, in his comedy The Birds, Aristophanes, a contemporary of Socrates, portrays the young Athenian youths who followed Socrates as being obsessed with Sparta (Laconia), and emulating the austere way of life more associated with Spartan youths.
[…] Laconian-mad; they went long-haired, half-starved, unwashed, Socratified with scytales [wooden staffs] in their hands. (Aristophanes, The Birds, 1282)
Socrates and his followers were known for their admiration of Sparta, which was controversial because during his lifetime Athens had been conquered and violently oppressed by the Spartans, following the Peloponnesian War.
For example, Plato’s Crito, which depicts the scene in the Athenian prison as Socrates awaits execution, mentions his great admiration for the laws of Sparta and Crete, which he was “always saying are well-governed”. In The Republic Plato likewise portrays Socrates claiming that the constitutions of Crete and Sparta represent the best forms of government, superior to that of Athens. One of Socrates’ most influential students, Xenophon, fled from Athens to Sparta and spent the rest of his life there. He wrote a treatise about Spartan society called On the Lacedaemonian Constitution. Plutarch likewise tells us that one of Socrates’ most austere students, Antisthenes, who is traditionally seen as the founder or at least inspiration for the later Cynic tradition, held Spartan society in particularly high regard.
The Cynics and Stoics on Sparta
The Cynic and Stoic philosophers who came later were therefore greatly influenced by Socrates and apparently shared his admiration for aspects of Spartan education system, seeking to wed training in self-discipline with the study of philosophy.
A generation after Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic was known so much for praising the Spartan way of life that it’s said an Athenian once asked him sarcastically why he didn’t go and live among them instead, to which he replied that a doctor doesn’t carry out his role among the healthy (Stobaeus, 3.13). We’re likewise told that when asked where in Greece he had found good men, Diogenes answered “Men nowhere at all, but boys in Sparta”, as though he thought the agoge should be a lifelong training (Diogenes Laertius, 6.27). Again, when returning from a trip to Sparta, someone asked him where he was going, and Diogenes, exhibiting the typical sexism of his era, answered: “From the men’s quarters to the women’s.” (Diogenes Laertius, 6.59).
The Cynics famously referred to their Spartan-style training in endurance as “voluntary hardship.” We’re told, for instance, of Diogenes the Cynic:
In the summer he used to roll in the sand, and in the winter embrace snow-covered statues, using every means to train himself to endure hardship… (Diogenes Laertius)
However, the Spartans were apparently unimpressed by these public displays of endurance, and taught Diogenes that once he’d mastered such feats he needed to keep finding new challenges.
On seeing Diogenes the Cynic embracing a bronze statue in extremely cold weather, a Spartan asked him whether he was feeling chilly; and when he replied no, the Spartan said, ‘Then what’s so wonderful in what you’re doing?’ (Plutarch, Spartan Sayings)
It seems that, like Socrates, the Cynics were perceived as modelling themselves on the Spartans, taking aspects of the agoge’s training in endurance and self-discipline and employing them in the service of philosophy as a way of life, the cultivation of a more general type of wisdom and virtue
Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, had originally been a Cynic philosopher, and in many ways the Stoics resembled their predecessors the Cynics, including their interest in philosophical training influenced by the Spartan agoge. In his Studies in Stoicism (2013), the scholar P.A. Brunt wrote “Old Sparta apparently evoked Stoic admiration, because of the strict and simple life prescribed by Lycurgus” (p. 287). The Stoics, like many Hellenistic philosophers, particularly admired Lycurgus (820–730 BC) the semi-mythical founder of the Spartan constitution and the agoge.
There’s no doubt that the Stoics were particularly interested in studying the original Spartan laws and education system. Plutarch wrote a biographical account of Lycurgus in which he claims that his Spartan constitution was the inspiration for the ideal societies described by Diogenes and in Zeno in their books both entitled The Republic. Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoa, wrote a book entitled On Agoge, which perhaps contained an early Stoic appraisal of the Spartan education system. Persaeus and Sphaerus, two of Zeno’s most important Stoic students, both wrote books called On the Spartan Constitution. Sphaerus also wrote three volumes titled On Lycurgus and Socrates.
Moreover, according to Plutarch, Sphaerus went to Sparta to train the youth who would become King Cleomenes III in Stoic philosophy, which he did “with great diligence and success”. We’re told that Sphaerus greatly admired Cleomenes’ strength of character. Whereas the famous Spartan king Leonidas had once said that certain poetry could inspire Spartan youth to courage in battle, Sphaerus’ inspired Cleomenes’ and other Spartan youths to virtue and the love of glory through his lectures in Stoic philosophy. Presumably, because of his initial success in this regard, Sphaerus then proceeded to assist Cleomenes’ later attempts to restore the agoge after it had fallen into decline (Brunt, p. 91).
Socrates therefore had been an admirer of the Spartan agoge as were several of his most important students, the Cynics, and the early Stoics who came after them. These aspects of Spartan training apparently continued to influence the characteristic way of life adopted by Cynic and Stoic philosophers right down to the time of the Roman empire.
The Roman Stoics on the Spartan Lifestyle
Marcus Aurelius writes, in a private letter to his rhetoric tutor and family friend Fronto:
Then we went to luncheon. What do you think I ate? A wee bit of bread, though I saw others devouring beans, onions, and herrings full of roe.
In another letter, Fronto says that he saw one of Marcus’ young sons holding “a piece of black bread, quite in keeping with a philosopher’s son.”
Eating cheap unhusked bread or barley-bread was something associated with the Cynic tradition and probably therefore with some Cynic-influenced Stoics. For example, one Cynic letter says: “It is not only bread and water, and a bed of straw, and a rough cloak, that teach temperance…” We’re told of Crates, the Cynic teacher of Zeno, who abandoned his fortune: “Having adopted simpler ways, he was contented with a rough cloak, and barley-bread, and vegetables, without ever yearning for his former way of life or being unhappy with his present one.”
Whereas the Cynics were known for mainly drinking water and eating coarse bread, lentils, and lupin seeds, we have a surviving lecture from Musonius Rufus, the teacher of Epictetus, who says that Stoics should prefer food that’s healthy and easy both to obtain and to prepare, such as “fruits in season, certain vegetables, milk, cheese, and honeycombs.” In any case, it’s clear that philosophers in the Cynic-Stoic tradition believed in following a simple diet, although perhaps not as severely restricted as that of the original Spartan agoge whose youths dined on the notorious black broth, made from pig’s blood.
Musonius Rufus nevertheless says that a youth brought up “in a somewhat Spartan manner”, who is not accustomed to soft living, will be more able to absorb the Stoic teachings that death, pain, and poverty are not evils and their opposites are not good (Lectures, 1). He links this to an anecdote about Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoa, and a Spartan boy, who had been trained well for virtue and therefore easily grasped Stoic philosophy at a practical level. Elsewhere he tells his students that Spartan boys who are whipped in public without shame or feelings of injury set a good example for Stoics, insofar as philosophers must be able to scorn blows and jeering, and ultimately even death (Lectures, 10).
Indeed, he praised Lycurgus as one of the greatest of all law-makers, because of the austere training he instigated for Spartan youths, which Musonius encourages his own students to emulate.
Consider the greatest of the law-givers. Lycurgus, one of the foremost among them, drove extravagance out of Sparta and introduced thriftiness. In order to make Spartans brave, he promoted scarcity rather than excess in their lifestyle. He rejected luxurious living as a scourge and promoted a willingness to endure pain as a blessing. That Lycurgus was right is shown by the toughness of the young Spartan boys who were trained to endure hunger, thirst, cold, beatings, and other hardships. Raised in a strict environment, the ancient Spartans were thought to be and in fact were the best of the Greeks, and they made their very poverty more enviable than the king of Persia’s wealth. (Lectures, 20)
Musonius’ most famous student was Epictetus, who became an influential Stoic teacher in his own right. Indeed, Epictetus is the only Stoic teacher whose teachings survive today in book-length, although half of the Discourses recorded by his student Arrian are lost. We have a fragment from the anthologist Stobaeus in which either Epictetus or Musonius Rufus — the attribution is unclear — is seen also to praise the personal example set by Lycurgus:
Who among us is not amazed at the action of Lycurgus the Spartan? When a young man who had injured Lycurgus’ eye was sent by the people to be punished in whatever way Lycurgus wanted, he did not punish him. He instead both educated him and made him a good man, after which he led him to the theatre. While the Spartans looked on in amazement, he said: “This person I received from you as an unruly and violent individual. I give him back to you as a good man and proper citizen.” (Stobaeus, 3.19.13)
Spartan Sayings
The ancient Spartans were known, as we’ve seen for their brevity of speech. However, they combined this with a certain type of succinct wisdom, which philosophers such as the Stoics and Cynics greatly admired. The philosopher Plutarch gathered together many of their remarks in Sayings of Spartans. Elsewhere Plutarch explains:
They learned to read and write for purely practical reasons; but all other forms of education they banned from the country, books and treatises being included in this quite as much as men. All their education was directed toward prompt obedience to authority, stout endurance of hardship, and victory or death in battle. — The Ancient Customs of the Spartans
First of all, the Spartans, like the Stoics, prized good character and self-discipline. When someone said, for instance, that the Spartan Alcamenes lived a very austere life although he owned plenty of property, he said, “Yes, for it is a noble thing for one who possesses much to live according to reason and not according to his desires.” Character is more important than property. When some people were amazed at the costliness of the raiment found among the spoils of the barbarians, the Spartan Pausanias said that it would have been better for them to be themselves men of worth than to possess things of worth. The Spartans were also doubtful whether intellectuals of the sort that flourished at Athens had much of value to teach them. When asked why he didn’t admit one of the most learned men of the time to his presence, the Spartan king Agasicles reputedly said: “I want to be a pupil of those whose son I should like to be as well.”
The Spartans therefore thought that Athenian philosophers such as the followers of Plato’s Academy talked too much about virtue without actually training themselves to have virtuous characters. When the Spartan Eudamidas saw the elderly head of Plato’s Academy, Xenocrates, discussing philosophy, he inquired who the old man was. Somebody said that he was a wise philosopher who was seeking virtue. “And when will he use it,” said Eudamidas, “if he is only now seeking for it?” Likewise, when the philosophers in the Academy were conversing long and seriously, and afterwards some people asked the Spartan Panthoidas how their conversation impressed him, he said, “What else than serious? But there is no good in it unless you put it to use.” This “cynical” attitude toward the Academy, and other overly-verbose philosophers, was shared by the Cynics.
The Spartans thought that too much talking was a vice. An orator who asserted that he could speak the whole day long on any topic whatsoever, they expelled from the country, saying that a good speaker must keep his discourse equal to the subject in hand. Likewise, an ambassador who had come to Sparta made a long speech. When he had stopped speaking and asked Agis what report he should make to his people, the Spartan said, “What else except that it was hard for you to stop speaking, and that I said nothing?” Antalcidas, when a lecturer was about to read a laudatory essay on Heracles, said, “Why, who says anything against him?” When somebody found fault with Hecataeus the Sophist because, when he was received as a member at the common table, he spoke not a word, Archidamidas said, “You do not seem to realize that he who knows how to speak knows also the right time for speaking.” In a council meeting Demaratus was asked whether it was due to foolishness or lack of words that he said nothing. “But a fool,” said he, “would not be able to hold his tongue.”
Lochagus, the father of Polyaenides and Seiron, when word was brought to him that one of his sons was dead, said, “I have known this long while that he was fated to die.” Similar remarks are attributed to Xenophon and others. These perhaps influenced the Stoic Epictetus’ notorious advice “If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a mortal whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies, you will not be disturbed” (Encheiridion, 2).
Being asked how one could be a free man all his life, Agis said, “By feeling contempt for death.” Anaxandridas was asked why the Spartans, in their wars, ventured boldly into danger, and he replied, “Because we train ourselves to have regard for life and not, like others, to be timid about it.” When Philip of Macedon invaded the Peloponnese, and someone exclaimed, “There is danger that the Spartans may meet a dire fate if they do not make terms with the invader,” Damindas replied, “What dire fate could be ours if we have no fear of death?” Likewise when Antipater made dire threats against the Spartans if they didn’t comply with his demands, they answered, “If the orders you lay upon us are harsher than death, we shall find it easier to die.”
The Spartans also believed that they should train themselves to act decisively but without anger clouding their judgment.
Moreover the rhythmic movement of their marching songs was such as to excite courage and boldness, and contempt for death; and these they used both in dancing, and also to the accompaniment of the flute when advancing upon the enemy. In fact, Lycurgus coupled fondness for music with military drill, so that the over-assertive warlike spirit, by being combined with melody, might have concord and harmony. — Plutarch, On the Ancient Customs of the Spartans
In other words, although fierce in battle, Spartans did not allow either fear or anger to govern their actions. When one of the Helots, or slaves, conducted himself rather boldly toward the Spartan Charillus, for instance, he said, “If I were not angry, I would kill you.”
When someone commended to Ariston the maxim of Cleomenes, who, on being asked what a good king ought to do, said, “To do good to his friends and evil to his enemies,” Ariston said, “How much better, my good sir, to do good to our friends, and to make friends of our enemies?” This, which is universally conceded to be one of Socrates’ maxims, is also referred to Ariston, says Plutarch. (Socrates famously disputes this traditional definition of justice in Book One of Plato’s Republic.)
In 1815, the Italian scholar Angelo Mai discovered a cache of letters between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and several of his friends, including Marcus Aurelius.
One of these letters is basically a birthday greeting from Marcus to Fronto, believed to have been written around 140–143 AD, when Marcus would have been a young Caesar, somewhere between nineteen and twenty-two years old.
The tone of Marcus’ letters is generally strikingly affectionate and, indeed, he says in The Meditations “From Fronto I learned… that generally those among us who are called Patricians are rather deficient in natural affection.” (1.11), which suggests that Fronto taught him how to display greater affection toward his friends and family.
Hail, my best of masters.
I knew that on everyone’s birthday his friends undertake vows for him whose birthday it is. I, however, since I love you as myself, wish to offer up on this day, which is your birthday, hearty prayers for myself.
I call, therefore, with my vows to hear me each one of all the Gods, who anywhere in the world provide present and prompt help for men; who anywhere give their aid and shew their power in dreams or mysteries, or healing, or oracles; and I place myself according to the nature of each vow in that spot where the god who is invested with that power may the more readily hear.
Therefore I now first climb the citadel of the God of Pergamum and beseech Aesculapius [the god of healing] to bless my master’s health and mightily protect it.
Thence I pass on to Athens and, clasping Minerva [Athena, goddess of wisdom] by her knees, I entreat and pray that, if ever I know aught of letters, this knowledge may find its way into my breast from the lips of none other than Fronto.
Now I return to Rome and implore with vows the gods that guard the roads and patrol the seas that in every journey of mine you may be with me, and I be not worn out with so constant, so consuming a desire for you.
Lastly, I ask all the tutelary deities of all the nations, and the very grove, whose rustling fills the Capitoline Hill, to grant us this, that I may keep with you this day, on which you were born for me, with you in good health and spirits.
Farewell, my sweetest and dearest of masters. I beseech you, take care of yourself, that when I come I may see you. My Lady greets you.
I get a lot of enquiries from people asking “When is your book coming out in…?” So here’s the current list of translations. There may be more coming, though, this list is just how things stand at the moment.
The Croatian translation, Kako razmišlja car filozof, is now available from Planetopija (ISBN 978-953-257-457-9).
The Turkish translation, Roma İmparatoru Gibi Düşünmek, is available from Beyaz Baykuş Yayınları (White Owl Publishing, part of the Destek group). (ISBN 9786254410895)
The Benefits of Understanding More About Stoic Philosophy
The Benefits of Understanding More About Stoic Philosophy
I write books about and run courses on Stoic philosophy. (I’m currently working on a graphic novel about Marcus Aurelius.) I also run a large discussion group for Stoic philosophy on Facebook. One of the most common things you have to deal with online is the phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, a very common cognitive bias whereby people who lack competence in some field will tend to underestimate their own incompetence. Professor Dunning, for instance, said that the Dunning-Kruger effect “suggests that poor performers are not in a position to recognize the shortcomings in their performance.”
Where you encounter that in the classics is with people who have read very little on the subject assuming that they know everything there is to know. They don’t know how much they don’t know, precisely because they don’t know enough to realize. That used to take the form of people who have read one or two classics— usually The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius or Handbook of Epictetus — assuming that they’re experts and have nothing left to learn about the philosophy. Nowadays, surprisingly, you’ll find people who haven’t even read those books and whose only exposure to the subject is from a few blog articles, podcasts, or videos.
Now, it’s true that the ancient Stoics thought that too much study was potentially a vice, if it didn’t actually improve our character. Knowledge for its own sake isn’t a virtue in Stoicism. Scholars who argue over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin are simply wasting their time. Stoicism isn’t about reading endless books. However, neither is it about intellectual laziness. You can’t make a virtue out of ignorance when it comes to the most important things in life. Marcus Aurelius, for instance, although he tells himself to put his books away, was a voracious reader. He meant that he should cease wasting his time on irrelevant studies, stop arguing about what a good man should be, and just be one. That’s typical Stoicism. He didn’t mean that people should embrace ignorance, though, and rest on their laurels after only having scratched the surface of the subject.
The central principles of Stoicism are actually quite simple, as Epictetus says. For example, “to make correct use of our impressions”. But if people don’t understand what that means, as Epictetus also says, the explanation takes time and can become lengthy. When it comes to reading the Stoics there’s a lot that people can gain from further study, particularly reading modern texts. I’m not suggesting that people have to read my books. I’d be happy if they read more or less any modern commentaries, as long as they were trying to genuinely penetrate deeper into the real meaning and practical application of the ancient texts.
For example, I know that I would only have obtained half as much value from reading The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius if I hadn’t also read books like Pierre Hadot’s The Inner Citadel, which explain the philosophical presuppositions of Marcus’ Stoic philosophy, the historical context that give his remarks meaning, and the connotation of the Greek words and phrases he was using. People study The Meditations for decades. There are many different translations you can compare. You can study the original Greek, learn about the philosophical and historical context, and read the surviving Roman histories of Marcus’ reign, in order to learn more about his character and some of the people to whom he’s referring in the text, such as his main philosophical tutor Junius Rusticus.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it’s virtually impossible to fully understand texts like The Meditations and The Handbook of Epictetus unless you have at least a basic grasp of the principles of Stoic philosophy. None of the main surviving Stoic texts — containing the thought of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius — were intended as systematic treatises on Stoic philosophy. They all take for granted that the reader will have some familiarity with the philosophy to which they’re referring, as well as to the historical events and other individuals mentioned.
The closest thing we have to a systematic presentation of Stoicism in an ancient text is the third chapter of Cicero’s De Finibus, in which Cato of Utica is portrayed discoursing at length on Stoic Ethics. However, that’s pretty limited in scope. The only way to really get a primer in Stoic philosophy is to read modern commentaries, such as Brad Inwood’s excellent Stoicism: A Very Short Introduction, John Sellars’ Lessons in Stoicism, or any number of other excellent books which are available to guide you. That way you’ll be more able to understand what Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius take for granted, and won’t run the risk of misinterpreting their philosophy.
And I don’t just mean at what some people like to call the “theoretical” level but in your daily practice of Stoicism. Individuals who haven’t properly acquainted themselves with the philosophy often get completely the wrong idea about what the Stoics are actually suggesting you do. They also don’t realize how many practical techniques the Stoics describe. In my first book on Stoicism, The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, I tried to give a comprehensive overview of the parallels between ancient Stoicism and modern evidence-based psychotherapy. I listed roughly eighteen distinct psychological strategies that can be found in the Stoic writings. Yet people who think they’ve exhausted everything the ancient texts have to teach them and have nothing more to learn can usually only describe one or two of those strategies, if you’re lucky. There’s a lot more to learn, in other words, not only about the theory that informs the practice but also about the practice itself.
The greatest empire is to be emperor of oneself. — Seneca, Letters, 113
When I came up with the title of my latest book How to Think Like a Roman Emperorit was intended to have a double meaning. First of all, of course, I had in mind a specific Roman emperor. Not one of the bad ones like Caligula, Nero, or Commodus, but rather one of the good ones: Marcus Aurelius. That’s made explicit in the book’s subtitle: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. Indeed, we might say that we have an excellent guide to thinking like the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in his private notes, known today as The Meditations.
However, I was also referring to one of the famous paradoxes of Stoicism, the notion that being a king, or a ruler such as an emperor, is actually a state of mind.
We can all be kings or emperors, in this sense, as long as we free ourselves from certain unhealthy desires and emotions, which the Stoics call the “passions”. We might view this as a striking metaphor, although the Stoics intended it to be taken more literally. The true meaning of kingship, for them, is self-determination and freedom from slavery to our passions. Most of the individuals, though, who are popularly called “kings” (or “emperors”) aren’t actually worthy of the name.
How better or how otherwise could a man be a good ruler or live a good life than by studying philosophy? For my part, I believe that the good king is straightway and of necessity a philosopher, and the philosopher a kingly person. — Musonius Rufus, Lecture 8
Over a hundred years before the Stoic school was founded, Socrates had considered equating moral wisdom with the art of kingship, according to Plato’s Euthydemus. As is often the case, notions hinted at in the Socratic dialogues appear later to have been embraced more fully by the Cynics and their philosophical heirs the Stoics. Indeed, according to Diogenes Laertius, Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, wrote a lost book On Kingship. We’re told that he said, presumably in this book, that as only the wise are truly free only they can truly be called kings. This obviously seemed ridiculous to many people. The third head of the Stoic school, Chrysippus, had to defend his paradoxical use of the word “king” by arguing that a true king must know the difference between good and evil, and that only the genuinely wise can be said to possess this knowledge. Once again, therefore, only the wise man can be called a king.
When Epictetus later says that “An ill-fortuned king does not exist more than an ill-fortuned god”, he means that a true king makes his own good fortune out of whatever circumstances befall him in life (Discourses, 3.22). According to the Stoic definition, the mythic tyrant Eurystheus wasn’t a true king, although he appeared outwardly to be one. How could he be if he did not have sovereignty over himself? By contrast, his cousin Hercules, despite being constrained to complete the Twelve Labours, and having no kingdom of his own, was a true sovereign because he exercised wisdom and self-mastery of the kind revered by the Stoics.
[Zeus] does not supply me with many things, nor with abundance, he does not will me to live luxuriously; for neither did he supply Hercules who was his own son; but another (Eurystheus) was king of Argos and Mycenae, and Hercules obeyed orders, and laboured, and was exercised. And Eurystheus was what he was, neither king of Argos nor of Mycenae, for he was not even king of himself; but Hercules was ruler and leader of the whole earth and sea, who purged away lawlessness, and introduced justice and holiness; and he did these things both naked and alone. — Discourses, 3.26
The training in self-mastery endured by Cynic and Stoic philosophers is in the service of attaining the sort of inner “kingship” possessed, at least according to the their interpretation of the myths, by the hero Hercules: “Great is the combat, divine is the work; it is for kingship, for freedom, for happiness, for freedom from perturbation” (Discourses, 2.18).
According to Stobaeus, the early Stoics held that the wise man is the most fulfilled (eudaimon) type of person and therefore also the most blessed, prosperous, pious, and indeed the most like a king and a general. Hence, the vicious, foolish and base are the opposite, being essentially bankrupt and servile by their very nature. Therefore, “only the wise man is a king and regal, but none of the base is”, because true monarchy is absolute and superior to everything else, we’re told. Likewise, “only the virtuous man rules, and even if he does not in all circumstances do so in actuality, still in all circumstances he does so by disposition.” In other words, even if he lacks any worldly power, the wise and virtuous man is still kingly in his very character.
By this standard, men like Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic were kingly and free. Socrates lived in relative poverty, was ridiculed by many Athenians, condemned, and eventually cast into prison and executed. Diogenes was an exile who lived like a beggar, was mocked even by children, and ended up being kidnapped and enslaved by pirates. However, they were considered wise and therefore absolutely free. Powerful rulers like Xerxes I, the Great King of Persia, and Alexander the Great, by contrast, were more like slaves than kings, according to this paradox, insofar as they lacked moral wisdom and were ruled by their passions.
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was one of the most powerful men in European history. However, ironically, we can see from his private notes in The Meditations that he dedicated his life to learning how to think like the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, a crippled former-slave who had lived, a generation before him, in poverty.
What are Alexander [the Great], [Julius] Caesar, and Pompey when compared to Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Socrates? For these latter [were wise and free]. As to the others, consider how many cares they had and to how many things they were enslaved! — Meditations, 8.3
If this sounds like he’s being a bit harsh on these great rulers, he does comes back to this point later to justify his remark.
Go on, then, and talk to me of Alexander [the Great] and Philip [of Macedonia] and Demetrius of Phalerum. If they saw what universal nature wishes and trained themselves accordingly, I will follow them; but if they merely strutted around like stage heroes, no one has condemned me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest; do not seduce me into vain ostentation. — Meditations, 9.29
Here famous rulers are compared to actors playing a role on stage. They pretend to be regal, heroic, and powerful but if they haven’t mastered themselves, and aren’t living in agreement with Nature as the Stoics described the goal of life, then it’s just an appearance rather than reality. The external trappings of wealth and power are of negligible importance from the perspective of philosophy because, in the grand scheme of things, they’re temporary: “Alexander the Great and his stable boy were brought to the same level in death” (Meditations, 6.24).
In one well-known passage, Marcus does say that he’s seeking to avoid having his character turned into that of a Caesar:
Take care that you are not turned into a Caesar, that you are not stained with the purple; for such things do come about. Keep yourself simple, then, and good, sincere, dignified, free from affectation, a friend to justice, reverent towards the gods, affectionate, and firm in the performance of your duties. Struggle to remain such a person as philosophy wished to make you. — Meditations, 6.30
However, he clearly means that he must avoid being made ostentatious and insincere by his position as emperor, again, like an actor playing the role. On the contrary, the true ruler speaks plainly, without affectation. He is also someone unafraid of death and totally committed to virtue.
When you act, let it be neither unwillingly, nor selfishly, nor unthinkingly, nor half-heartedly; do not attempt to embellish your thoughts by dressing them up in fine language; avoid excessive talk and superfluous action. Furthermore, let the god within you be the overseer of one who is manly and mature, a statesman, a Roman, and a ruler, who has taken his post as one who is awaiting the signal for his recall from life and is ready to obey without need of an oath or another man as his witness. And show a cheerful face to the world, and have no need of help from outside or the peace that others confer. In brief, you must stand upright, not be held upright. — Meditations, 3.5
Marcus uses one of his favourite phrases here to express the self-reliance of the wise and good man, who rules over his own mind: he stands upright of his own accord, without having to depend on others to hold him up.
In his tragedy Thyestes, Seneca expresses the same notion albeit dressing it up in fine language himself:
Ye know not, for high place greedy, wherein true kingship lies. A king neither riches makes, nor robes of Tyrian hue, nor crown upon the royal brow, nor doors with gold bright-gleaming; a king is he who has laid fear aside and the base longings of an evil heart; whom ambition unrestrained and the fickle favour of the reckless mob move not, neither all the mined treasures of the West nor the golden sands which Tagus sweeps along in his shining bed, nor all the grain trod out on burning Libya’s threshing-floors; whom no hurtling path of the slanting thunderbolt will shake, nor Eurus, harrying the sea, nor wind-swept Adriatic’s swell, raging with cruel wave; whom no warrior’s lance nor bare steel ever mastered; who, in safety ‘stablished, sees all things beneath his feet, goes gladly to meet his fate nor grieves to die. — Seneca, Thyestes
In particular, one of secrets of true kingship is the ability to endure criticism and even insults from others with relative indifference. In Hercules Furens, Seneca wrote “’Tis the first art of kings, the power to suffer hate.” This notion perhaps goes back to Antisthenes whose saying Marcus Aurelius later quoted with approval: “It is a king’s part to do good and be spoken of ill” (Meditations, 7.36). If we’re easily upset by negative remarks then we make ourselves into slaves of our own passions, and we grant other people lordship over us. Someone who has the wisdom and strength of character to genuinely rise above these things, though, is a king.
I think, ultimately, though, the Stoic king, or emperor, is someone unafraid of death. Their inner sovereignty and freedom is grounded in the philosophical acceptance of their own mortality. Seneca said that to learn how to die is to unlearn how to be a slave. This reminds me of the final verses from William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
