The Ancients - Marcus Aurelius: The Philosopher Emperor

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

He's known as Rome’s philosopher-emperor and faced plague, rebellion and war in the East. Yet Marcus Aurelius ruled with a pen as much as a sword, finding peace in philosophy which still inspires the world today.In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor William Stephens to uncover the life, legacy, and stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. From his rise to emperor at the height of Rome’s power to his struggles with plague, rebellion, and invasion, they unpack how this philosopher-king embodied the ideals of Stoicism while leading through crisis and ask what Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations can tell us about duty, resilience, and the mind of Rome’s most thoughtful ruler?MORECommodus: The Gladiator EmperorPax RomanaPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Tim Arstall, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here:https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Think you know your history. Which 16th century peasant uprising shook Europe to its core? Who declared himself the King of Haiti and fought both French and American Revolutionaries? And what does shopping, voting and finding your romantic partner have in common? Find out the answers and more about the three books chosen as finalists for the 2025 Cundell History Prize. Stay tuned to discover which book will win the $75,000 prize announced on Thursday, October the 30th. Find out more at Condilprise.com. Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. I'm all good here. I'm currently looking out of my window.

It's a bit of a dreary day here in London. Got some scaffolding right outside that I hope will be taken down soon. But all is good here and I'm really excited to share with you this episode, all about the Stoic, the philosopher, Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Now, we've had quite a few of you requesting that we do more on the emperors who ruled Rome in the second century when the Roman empire was at his height and it felt important that we do cover the story of Marcus Aurelius because he is a very popular figure today. We're covering it all today from his beginnings to his end. I really do hope you enjoy. Our guest is William Stevens Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Crichton University. Let's go.

A person's life is a moment. His existence a flowing stream. His perception dull. The entire fabric of his body readily subject to decay. His soul an aimless wanderer. His fortune erratic. His fame uncertain. In short, the body is nothing but a river. The soul is dream and delusion. Life is war. and a sojourn in the strange land, and oblivion is all there is to posthumous fame. What, then, can escort us safely on our way? Only one thing. Philosophy. Those were passages written down by a Roman emperor, an emperor today famous for his Stoic thinking. His book, The Meditations, has been incredibly popular for Stoics for centuries. And in recent decades, its popularity has risen to another level. This man was, of course, Marcus Aurelius, who reigned at the height of the Roman Empire in the mid-second century AD.

In this episode, we're going to cover his life from beginning to end, and how his stoic thinking fed into how he ruled the Roman Empire during a time of multiple crises. Invasions, rebellions, plague, economic strain, you name it, he faced it. This is the story of Marcus Aurelius, with our guest, Professor William Stevens. William, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Thank you, Tristan. And to cover a figure, a Roman emperor, one of the most famous names from Roman history, and yet we've never ever done an episode about him on the ancients until now.

Marcus Aurelius, William, first and foremost, is he known so well today because of his philosophic musings? Yes, yes he is. And can I just add, it is high time that you do an episode on Marcus Aurelius. So I forgive you for waiting this long, but you were waiting for the right time. And Stoic philosophy, doing the right thing at the right time is part of living the good life. But doing the right time is also, it's led us to you as well. Finally, you've got some free time in your diary that you can fit us in for an episode on Marcus Aurelius.

So dare I say the word fate alongside Stoic thinking here. Indeed. Yes. And so Marcus's popularity today, to answer your question. question, is very much driven by his philosophical journal or notes. And traditionally, they've been called the meditations, but as I argue in my book, that's misleading and deceptive. So I choose instead to refer to his philosophical journal as the memoranda. The memoranda. Yes, you do mention that in your book, don't you? Have you seen significant resurgence in Marcus or

release's popularity? Really, I mean, only the last few years, the last couple of decades. Yes. And that's also true more broadly of Stoicism. So Stoicism as a practical guide to life. Some people describe it as a life hack, but there are Stoic practitioners that number in the tens of thousands, if not perhaps hundreds of thousands, globally. And so these are people who are drawn to the wisdom of the ancient Stoics. And because of historical chance, we unfortunately don't have copious amounts of the writings of the earliest Stoics. What we have are the writings of the late imperial Roman Stoics of the Roman period. So that's Seneca, the younger, Epictetus, born into slavery, became a teacher of Stoicism. And Epictetus had very strong influence.

on the emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Also, Mius Rufus was a teacher of Hepatitis. So those are the four Roman imperial Stoics whose writings we have substantial amounts of, as it turns out. And with Marcus Aurelius' character, he's often quoted as being a good guy who lived in a bad time. Is this oversimplifying his character? Yes, I think so. He was a good guy insofar as he took living virtuously, acquiring virtue, and applying the virtues of justice and wisdom and temperance, and courage to his life very, very seriously. That's very clear from reading the memoranda. But it is also the case that as a Roman emperor, he had responsibilities to defend the empire. And defending the empire, not so much expanding it, although his predecessors did

expand the empire. Marcus didn't really expand the empire as such, but he was very diligent, very determined to protect the provincial areas, the boundaries of the empire, from what a Roman would describe as barbarian incursions, non-Romans settling along the Danube and even striking into Italy itself. For various reasons, part of the reason might have been environmental changes, making it difficult to farm and raise animals in Central Europe and various kinds of displacements and movements and migrations of various different tribes. So he had to respond to that and he did it with the sword because he was trying to protect the lemais, the boundaries of the empire, from that instability. And so in that regard, you know, was he a good guy? He was an emperor,

commanding armies of hundreds of thousands of legions, right? So he was not a pacifist. A good guy in terms of Roman standards, presumably. And the bad times that we hinted at, we're going to explore. You mentioned those incursions there, but also there's plague and other key events in his life that we will cover. First of all, William, I must ask about the types of sources we have available. So if we talk about sources not written by Marcus Aurelius himself, do we have many?

Yes. We have the Historia Augusta, and we have other ancient sources written by a Roman senator. These tend to be written several generations after Marcus, or even longer, even a century or two after Marcus. So these are digested copies of earlier sources. We also have numismatic evidence from the coinage that we've discovered, and when they were created and stamped, so we can use those to date certain events and draw other inferences about developments in the empire and rulers. We also have the busts, of course. We also have the portraiture to see what Marcus looked like as he was aging. And there's archaeological evidence as well in Europe along the Danube so that we can learn things about encampments and forts and villages and dwellings and that sort of thing. So we do have literary sources, the coinage, the numismatic evidence, archaeology to piece together the events as best we can. And how important is Marcus Aurelius' meditations, or as you said earlier, William, his memoranda, in learning not just about

his philosophical, stoic thinking, his approach to life and ruling the empire, but also his life in general. I mean, can you see elements of an autobiography there? Can you use that source to track his emperorship, story, and key moments of his life? Unfortunately, no. Those details are exceedingly sparse with an asterisk, right? In book one of the memoranda, Marcus lists a number of mentors, teachers, and family members. Book one does offer, information about those people to some extent. But it doesn't really go into any detail about his relationship with them. Rather, what he offers is a kind of inventory of virtues that they modeled for him. And so he's thanking his teachers and mentors and parents and adoptive parents and

grandparents for the positive traits that they mirrored to him. And so he thanks them for becoming the person that he is. But in terms of the actual events of his life, the memoranda is not a good source of that because he doesn't talk about those things. And I'll even mention some people who we don't otherwise know. And a couple times he mentions events that without describing the events, so we don't know what he's talking about. So that's why the memoranda is really not very good for fine-grained details of Marcus's life. Does he sometimes detail in it, though, where he's writing from, or can we get a sense of when during his reign he is writing certain inputs into his memoranda?

Yes. So in the preface to book two, he mentions that he's writing on the Gran, or Granua. So that's a tributary of the Danube, as I recall, in central Europe. And so we believe that it's likely that he wrote the bulk or all of the memoranda when he was on campaign near the Danube, conducting these wars of defense, as he would say, against the invading tribes, the Kwadi and the Markomani, the Iazagis and these various other Germanic tribes. A great pronunciation there of that. I've seen the Iazigays or however they're pronounced written out on paper. and it looks one of the most confusing names of a non-Roman ancient group to Germanic group to say. We will get to them, absolutely. But that feels a bit later in Marcus Aurelius' story.

I feel before then we need to go back to his earlier years. Do we know much about Marcus Aurelius' background? We do. We do. Because since he was an emperor, the people came after him, they did chronicle his life. And so we know that he was groomed to become emperor from a very early age. Hadrian, two emperors before him. So Hadrian saw very early on that this very serious young boy, he was going to be the successor to the throne, or at least Hadrian decided that he would be. So we know that Hadrian chose a successor when he was very sick in his older age. And after a month or two, that chosen successor died. So he then had to pick, yes. So. he had to pick another successor. So he chose this fellow who we know as Antoninus Pius. And he chose

Pius on the condition that Pius would adopt Marcus Aurelius, because Marcus's own biological father died when he was quite young, certainly before he was a teenager, maybe even when he was as early as when he was a toddler. And so Marcus's paternal grandfather raised him for a time. And his mother was still alive. So, Marcus was then adopted formally by Antoninus Pius, who also adopted Lucius Verus. So that's how Marcus got his adoptive brother. And Lucius Verus was the son of Coyonius Commodus, who was the initial successor that Hadrian had chosen. So the familial lines are really kind of complex. But that's how Marcus came to be adopted by Antoninus Pius, who became emperor after Hadrian died. And then when it was Marcus's turn, I'm getting ahead of myself. You haven't asked

this, but one big window into Marcus's character is that he really doesn't seem to have wanted to be emperor ever. He recognized that it was his duty. He was drawn to philosophy. He liked to paint. He liked to wrestle. We know these details. But he didn't want to rule. Nonetheless, it was chosen for him. And so it was a responsibility placed on his shoulders. And he agreed to do. He agreed to do it, but only on the condition that his adoptive brother, Lucius Ferris, be his co-emperor. Ah, so do you think it was actually Marcus Aurelius who asked for that to be included and not the decision of Emperor Hadrian or Antoninus Pius instead? No, indeed, no indeed. The Senate wanted Marcus to be emperor. The Senate chose him. They recognized that he would be a good

emperor, and they wanted him to be emperor. And so they asked him to do it. And he said, I will do it only on the condition that my adoptive brother, Lucius Ferris, be my co-emperor, that had never been done before, unprecedented in Roman history. Unprecedented to have two emperors at the same time. We should also mention as well, this is at the time in that second century that the so-called good emperors, but the adoptive emperors, isn't it? Because they said you've got Nerva adopts Trajan, Trajan adopts Hadrian, Adon, Antoninus Pius, and then, of course, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Ferris.

and they're right at the end of that adoptive period in Roman emperorship. That's right. That's correct. And do we know how much of an influence Antoninus Pius had over Marcus Aurelius? We do. And again, from the memoranda, we know in book one and another passage later in that work, that Pius had an enormous impact on Marcus. Marcus has a long eulogy, a long list of virtues. how to govern, how to interact with people, how to appeal to experts and take their advice, how to be modest, how not to allow oneself to become arrogant, how to avoid thinking of oneself

as divine, as a god. Because of course, previous Roman emperors were deified, some even before they died. And it was very clear that Antoninus Pius was a humble man who refused to get bogged down in the trappings of wearing the purple robe and living in a palace and having so many servants and so many advisors and be the most powerful human being in that part of the world at the time, of course. And absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? And so to guard against that megalomania of earlier emperors like Nero, like Caligula, thoughtful, emperors, like Hadrian and Antonius Pius, they had to pump the brakes hard to keep from getting bloated heads and thinking that they were all powerful because they knew their own

limitations, but their sycophants were always telling them otherwise. And Marcus's humility, Marcus's humanity, if you will, in dealing with other people, recognizing their strengths, tolerating and accepting their weaknesses and cultivating a sense of love and respect for other people around him. He learned these things from Antonus Pius because that's what he wrote in book one of the memoranda. It's very kind of a, hey man, let's spread the love.

Let's have a peaceful kind of existence in a weird kind of way, isn't it? But that's certainly too far from me. But the big question to ask, though, is how far as the fact that Antoninus Pius's reign is largely one of peace that this emperor didn't have to go to the borders of his empire to fight wars. He can stay in Rome. He can do that.

How important is that to Marcus Aurelius being able to develop that philosophy, you know, when he's at the palace, when he's learning to rule alongside this older emperor? That's really an excellent question, Tristan. And just as happenstance, historically, chance, Antoninus Pius, was fortunate, as you say, that there were no major consequences. There were no major rebellions. There were no wars that he had to wage. That was good luck for him. But it turned out to be bad luck for Marcus and Lucius Veris, because it meant that Antoninus Pius had no experience in campaigning.

He had never conducted a war in his lifetime during his rule. And so he had no lessons he could teach to the young Marcus about how to do that, about how to balance the demands of Rome against conflict. broad, right, on the borders of the empire. And so that meant that Marcus had no training. He had no experience. He had no guidance on how to conduct military matters. And he himself wasn't a soldier. Good heavens, right? He was a patrician, groomed from an early age, philosophically inclined. So hardly a warrior, not a military man, not a military mind. So he had to learn that. stuff on the fly very shortly after ascending the throne. And his brother, Lucius Ferris,

also had no experience, but also, unfortunately, in contrast, I should say, he didn't really have the seriousness and the commitment that Marcus did to doing what was right for the empire. So was Lucius Ferris, was he a stoic at all, or was that solely Marcus Aurelius at this time, even before their emperors? Is there a sense that Marcus Aurelius is much more invested? in this type of philosophy in this way of life than Lucius Ferris was. Indeed. In fact, Lucius Ferris was not only not a Stoic, he was not a philosopher in any way, shape, or form. Interesting. He had no interest in literary studies, so far as we could tell, at least from our sources. He was not bookish. He was not philosophical. He liked entertainment. So when he and Marcus agreed

that he would lead the campaign to the East for the Parthian War, which is the one that erupted shortly after he and Marcus ascended the throne. And he was younger than Marcus, so probably more fit as well. Marcus had some health problems throughout his life. He brought with him in his entourage gymnasts, musicians, actors, and he was a playboy. He had this affair with this, you know, a spectacularly gorgeous, talented woman. And he did not travel to the front lines at all. He set himself up in a very cushy city miles from where the warfare was unfolding. The battles were unfolding.

And so he entrusted all the military conduct to his generals. He was suited to be emperor if the emperor is in the posture of leisure and entertainment. those aspects of being wealthy and powerful suited Lucius Ferris well. But in terms of the nitty-gritty of governing, of administering the daily decisions and management of matters in Rome and throughout the provinces, Lucius Ferris was never good at that. He was never interested in that, so far as we can tell. I mean, going back to your previous point about Lucius Ferris leaving the military matters to his generals, I don't think that's a bad thing if he didn't have any experience to be fair. But we'll get to that point in the moment. And because, William, you did

reveal almost that next big part in the story of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Ferris, which is very soon after they ascend the throne. And is, is it 160, 161 that they become the new emperors? That's correct. 161. It's not long after that date that war erupts again. I mean, how long after that date is it that this Parthian threat emerges in the east? I believe it was just within a year and a half or so? A year and a half. So Antoninus Pius really does get off lucky with that rain that he has with no major wars. And almost as soon as he dies, you have this big threat in the east.

I mean, how does Marcus Aurelius deal with this threat once he's seen Lucius Ferris go off east? You know, his co-ruler has already left his side from Rome to go and fight this big war. How does he cope being left in Rome? Well, he has to govern the rest of the emptier effectively, right? So this is an advantage of having a co-emperor that one of them can go to the front and lead the campaign tactically allowing the generals to make those decisions, while the other can stay in Rome and keep matters stable there and deal with other small uprisings, whatever they might be, or the plague, which is going to erupt when the legionnaires. back from the East. So the Parthian War is really kind of a watershed, isn't it, right? Because that's the first of decades of warfare that they're going to have to deal with. And also it introduces the plague from the East throughout the empire. The soldiers are going to bring it back with them.

So how did Marcus deal with that? Well, I mean, he's, as I said, he's still governing Rome itself and dealing with the provincial governors, right? So, in collaboration with the slow-moving information that he can get from Lucius Ferris, from Parthia, right? Because there's no email. There are no airplanes. There are no automobiles that can go 60 miles an hour. So everything is by ship or horse or foot. And so communication is extremely slow. And that meant that Lucius really had to make decisions on his own and could occasionally send messengers back and inform Marcus what was going on. But Marcus had very little direct influence on the Parthian War as it unfolded. That really was up to Lucius. And do we see any

worries by Marcus Aurelius in his memoranda at this point? Do you think there are any passages that point to this time in the rain, you know, when he is in Rome? And he realizes that he needs to focus on doing that. He needs to kind of prioritize his stoic way of thinking to dealing with these important matters of state, whilst his co-ruler is hundreds, thousands of miles further to the east? No, unfortunately, since Marcus probably wrote the memoranda during the Northern Wars, what other scholars call the Markomanic Wars. I don't like calling it that because the Marco Mani only one of dozens of different tribes. So I prefer to call them the Northern Wars or the Danubian Wars, if you will. That was years, years later. So the entire Parthian War unfolded

years before Marcus started writing the memoranda. And so have we got any sense then about how Marcus Aurelius would have gone about his day-to-day life as emperor when he is still in the capital, when he's looking after these provinces? Do we have an idea of how he would have put forward his stoic way of thinking to governing the empire? If we use the memoranda as a source, we get a sense of his describing, dealing with people wanting things from him and applause. He talks about that a lot in the memoranda, that applause is noise, the clacking of tongues, right?

The striking of hands together. It's just noise. So non-stoics are going to think that applause means approval. Applaus means popularity. Applaus means you're doing great, you're a great person. You're to be celebrated. You are being celebrated. And that's where Marcus has to use the stoicism to rain.

himself in, right? His job, his part in the whole, his role in the empire, is to govern. It's to lead. It's to delegate responsibilities. It's to make good appointments, to make wise promotions of his underlings, right? And to model fairness and reasonableness. And nothing dramatic. Nothing glorified, right? But the daily grind of getting things done and managing a population of millions and all the problems and all the crises that erupt during his years. So we do get a flavor of that in a memoranda, I think. Who declared himself the King of Haiti and fought both French and American revolutionaries? And what does shopping, voting and finding your romantic partner have in common?

Find out the answers and more about the three books chosen as finalists for the 2025 Cundell History Prize. Stay tuned to discover which book will win the $75,000 prize announced on Thursday, October the 30th. Find out more at condylprise.com. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and on not just the Tudors from History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry the 7th to the death of Henry the 8th, from Ambelin to her daughter, Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches.

Clues in the title, really. So follow not just the Tudors from a history hit wherever you get your podcasts. So how do we go from this Parthian threat in the east to the next big problem that seems to really cover much of Marcus Aurelius's reign from this point onwards, which is plague? How do we go from the Parthians to plague? Right. So historians are not absolutely sure,

but it seems that in one of the major cities in the east, there was a disease which erupted. Now, we have to remember that in the ancient world, their standards of cleanliness were far below what ours are today. So they did not have public sewer systems. And their understanding of pathogens was primitive, extremely primitive. And so it's surprising that plagues didn't happen more often than they did. especially in close quarters. But with thousands of troops moving about in these cities, they contracted

this disease, and they carried it with them back from the east, back throughout the empire. Because these troops were deployed from various provinces. They didn't all come from Rome. They were spread across the provinces of the empire, especially in Europe, southern Europe. So they returned most of them to where they were originally stationed. prior to the Parthian War, and that was in Pannonia, and that was in Noracum, in the different provinces northwest, northeast, and north of Italy, and Rome. And so some of them returned to Rome as well. And so you've got disease-carrying troops spreading throughout the empire with virtually no understanding of how to control epidemics. And medicine was, again, very, very primitive by our

standards. And so it was natural and inevitable, really, that the plague would spread throughout the empire. And it did. As this plague starts to spread and surely it quickly affects figures like Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus themselves, do people start pointing the blame at people? What happens next? So what happens next in antiquity is what's disturbed is the Pax de Orum. This is peace with the gods. So the Romans were military people and they were a deeply religious people. They were pagans, as we would say, from our perspective. They were polytheists. And the belief was that in order to maintain a peaceful good relationship with the gods, you had to give them their due. And so you would offer sacrifices

and you would worship them through festivals and rituals. And this would keep the gods happy. This is the non-philosophical understanding of the gods. This is a non-philosophical understanding of religion. This is popular religion for the Romans. So it's not so much a matter of belief as it is practice, orthopraxy, right? What's the right way to show reverence for the gods to keep them happy? Why keep them happy? Because if they don't, volcanoes erupt.

Earthquakes occur and disease breaks out. lightning strikes start fires you have storms and pestilence and everything else right so what the romans believe that people throughout the empire believed was that the gods were unhappy why else would there be a plague sent to the worshippers who were trying to appease the gods and keep them happy so the peace with the gods was disturbed that's how they read that's how they interpreted the outbreak of disease wherever it occurred or any kind of natural calamity and so And so as Emperor, Marcus, in the years that would follow, he took all the steps he could to try to, from the Roman's perspective, reestablish this peace with the gods by making sure

that the ritual practices and the religious festivals and ceremonies were practiced by all the citizens regularly. And so the gods were blamed, in a sense, for the plague. but of course Marcus had to manage the disposal of corpses in Rome and the provincial governors had to do the same in their cities and this was exceedingly difficult because they didn't have the right kind of medicine or the right kind of doctors or the right kind of treatment

because they didn't have the right kind of understanding of how to deal with epidemiology. Is this where we get the writings of that famous Dr. Galen who serves with Marcus Aurelius, isn't it? And he's just trying to figure out what this disease is and how devastating it's proving. And so Marcus was fortunate that he had the foremost medical mind of the age as his physician. And Galen treated Marcus himself for his own maladies.

And Galen was trying to understand the disease and how that happened. But epidemiology wasn't Galen's strength. His strength was anatomy because he did various experiments of dissection. And he was learning about the different tissues and bones and nerves throughout the human body in the experiments and the demonstrations that he would do as a surgeon. So Galen had his own kind of theories about, or guesses, really, we should say, to be accurate, about what was causing the pathogen. But Galen himself knew enough to stay away from cities where there were reports of an outbreak.

So do you think this plague outbreak, in the center of the Roman Empire as well, could we say it's the first big test that Marcus Aurelius, personally faces with historic style of leadership, of emperorship, where, as you highlighted earlier, like, you've got to take your mind away from the philosophical type of thinking, for instance, with religion, and you actually just have to do the popular type of religion, doing all these offerings to the gods, appeasing the gods, and so on.

Do you think this is one of the first big challenges for Marcus Aurelius and his way of thinking? Yes, we could say that. And Marcus was very conservative when it came to these sorts of religious value, and religious practices. We have a bit of art that shows Marcus performing a sacrifice of a bull, right? And this is consistent. This is congruent with the literary sources about how Marcus took religious orthopraxy very seriously. And this was not a contradiction given his own philosophical theology, his own kind of stoic monism in terms of what the gods are and how they operate.

that they're only a source of good things. So Marcus himself, qua philosopher, would never believe that the gods did anything to harm any human being. This would be contrary to their nature as perfectly virtuous beings, right? But he recognized that for the popular religion, most people are not philosophers. They don't have that understanding of the gods. And so the rituals and the ceremonies and festivals that needed to be practiced provided a kind of social cement, a kind of societal gloom. that held people and communities together and allowed them to collaborate, to the extent they could, to deal with the practical challenges of disease. How does this put Marcus Aurelius into conflict with Christianity?

Right. Well, so as I said, yeah, exactly. So you have this new, what the Romans called, superstition. It wasn't established because it was a new belief system, right? New practices, new rituals about this Jew who had been crucified in the eastern edge of the empire who most people didn't know anything about during Marcus's time. Christianity was such a newfangled belief system that the Romans regarded as a superstition. And so they were looking for scapegoats. So who isn't keeping the Paxta orim? Who is not practicing the polytheistic rituals to keep the gods happy? Well, these new strange monotheists who deny that the emperor is divine, who deny that Jupiter and Juno and Apollo and Mars are gods and refuse to sacrifice to them. So the kind of social threat, the destabilizing impact that these private, secret, weird, superstitious folks called Christians were perpetrating was seen as a threat by the Orthodox Roman polytheists pagans, right?

And so they were scapegoated from time to time. And they were seen as a destabilizing factor and contributing to or perhaps responsible for. the plague and other natural calamities. But this is the biggest one during Marcus's reign was the plague. And so does he oversee a persecution, Marcus already is? No. If you ask me, did Marcus persecute the Christians? My answer would be no. If you ask me, were Christians persecuted during Marcus's reign? The answer is absolutely yes. Right. Okay. But again, Marcus was aware of the Christians. There's some evidence that there might have been a couple Christians in the palace who were members of the staff, but we don't have any indication that Marcus had conversations with them or learned details about their beliefs. And so instead, what the historical record suggests is that sometimes events separated by several years in various, several different cities during Marcus's reign, experienced unrest.

in which the local population decided that the Christians locally were messing things up with the gods. They were disrupting the social harmony and peace with the gods. They weren't participating in the festivals. They weren't making the sacrifices. And therefore, they were the ones to blame for the plague. And so they were scapegoated. And the locals would then pressure the governor of, that province, of the city officials of those cities, to round up the Christians. And Christianity

was illegal within the empire. So anyone who avowed being a Christian was guilty of a crime, but deserved a trial. And they were given the opportunity to disavow being Christians. So they would be asked directly, are you a Christian? And if they said no and then made the proper sacrifice to the pagan gods, then they were let go. But if they refused to make the sacrifice, and if they insisted that they were indeed Christians, then they were punished, and they were punished brutally, and they were executed. Well, let's move on to the next topic now, William, as we get towards the end of the 160s, how's our friend Lucius doing at the moment? How's Lucius Ferris doing? Well, he took the credit, all of the credit, for the successful campaign in the

Parthian Wars. Oh, from his lovely, lovely base in the East, is it? That's right. That's right. I believe it was Antioch, where he decided to situate himself with his troop and entourage of performers and entertainers. So he took credit for that, and Marcus was fine, you know, giving him credit for that because the generals did win the war for Lucius in the East, and they put down the rebellion. And so he received various titles. This was very common. Marcus would also receive titles because he was managing the war from a great distance back in Rome. Lucius was doing fine, but the problem was when the plague broke out, he really didn't offer Marcus any help at all in terms of administering matters within the empire.

So all of the dirty work, the day-to-day. duties of making decisions and writing rescripts and that sort of thing. Communicating with the different provincial governors and so forth, Lucius had no taste for that at all. And how does this ultimately end up with both emperors having to leave Rome and march towards a new barbarian threat near the aforementioned Danube River? That's right. So there they are with Galen and they have to go engage in the northern wars. And Lucius fell sick. Galen warned them that there was a town where there was an outbreak and they traveled through that area. And some historians think that Lucius actually died of the plague. But we know that he fell sick and after several days,

he died. And he was younger than Marcus. He was not an old man. So that's a pretty plausible explanation of his death. And so Marcus lost his adoptive brother and co-emperor, probably to the plague. And so having gotten some on-the-job training in military tactics and strategy, at least a little bit from the Parthian War, even though he wasn't a very hands-on leader in that regard, his adoptive brother died. And so Marcus was all alone marching off to the north to deal with the barbarian invasions. Just to stress, because this almost feels a bit of an anomaly in the whole story of Roman history when there are two almost competing figures at the top that normally if one of

them dies and they're younger than the other, that straightaway someone might suggest that there's been some foul play there or something like that, or the other one has done away with them. But it seems like there is no hint, no suggestion at all that Marcus Aurelius could have been involved in Lucius Ferris' demise, that, like, his character doesn't seem to stack up with that at all. No, there's absolutely no evidence that suggests that Marcus would want Lucius Ferris to die. The evidence is that Marcus believed that it was his responsibility to try to coax Lucius into taking his responsibilities as co-emper seriously. Marcus wanted to share rule with Lucius from the

beginning. He insisted that Lucius be his co-emperor. If he had ever wanted Lucius dead, it just wouldn't have made any sense for him to have done that initially. Now, could he have developed antipathy to Lucius later in life? Well, I suppose it's possible, but again, we have no evidence of that at all. Lucius, even if he didn't help very much, he did help with the victory of the Parthian War. He's the one who traveled out there. Marcus stayed in Rome, right? So the evidence suggests that he was only grateful to Lucius for doing his part as imperfectly as he did in leading the Parthian campaign and would want to benefit from his experience in that recent campaign when they go to the north to deal with the Kwadi and the Markomanian and Iazagi Usen.

Well, let's go to that now. So Lucius is now dead. Marcus Aurelius has taken control of the army. He marches north to confront this new northern barbarian Germanic threat. How active a role does Marcus Aurelius take in this war? So recognizing his own limitations and his lack of military tactics, experience in military tactics, he did rely upon his generals, as Lucius Varus had done. But Marcus was not hanging out miles behind the front. So he was close to the front. he allowed his generals to conduct the actual tactics of the forays that they had and the defense maneuvers that they had. And Marcus was learning about military tactics. So he was involved

with his generals. He consulted with them closely. But the obvious concrete management of the battles he left to the experts. But he was very good, so far as we can tell, at recognizing military intellect, right? He picked generals who were experienced. The historians who write about Marcus say that he was very good at recognizing expertise. And so he promoted those very experienced veteran military officers to hire posts. And he needed them. And he recognized that he would be relying on them. And so that kind of administrative decision and management, Marcus, was pretty good at, and people appreciated his recognizing their merits. He affirmed meritocracy to that extent. And what sorts of things does he think about when he's near the front up in the north,

near the Danube River? What types of thoughts do we have surviving from his memoranda, from his meditations at around this time? That are really worth mentioning. Right. So this one that's really very graphic. He talks about a severed hand or a severed foot. When you visit a battlefield, after battle has just occurred, you see just such things. You see people with limbs missing, with feet that have been hacked off. So Marcus saw these things with his own eyes. He was not miles away from the battlefield. He was there close up.

So he saw what warfare was like with the sword and the spear and the arrow. And he reflects on how these limbs, these parts of the body, cannot function. obviously. Once a hand or a foot is dismembered, it cannot function. They cannot function as a hand or a foot. But our role, this is the philosophical lesson that he draws. Our role is to fulfill our part within the whole. We are like fingers on a hand, each one of us. And in order for us to do our job as fingers, we have to coordinate with the other fingers on the same hand. And we have to coordinate with the other hand and the other arm. And This is how human society ought to work. Parts contributing to the proper operation of the whole. And this is a theme throughout the memoranda. And this is part of Marcus's political philosophy, if you will. We are bees that occupy the same hive. We have our jobs to do for the greater good of the whole. And this is his view of Roman citizens' responsibility in relation to the whole empire and his responsibility as king bee. The ancients didn't believe in queen bees.

They believe that the ruler of the hive was male, of course. So king bees. That leads us in nicely for me to ask, do we know much about his relationship with his wife? Because I know he's got quite a prominent wife, doesn't he? And I think her name's Faustina. Faustina, that's correct. Faustina the younger. Of course, there's also a fastina the older. My apologies, William. Thank you. Yes. So Faustina, the younger, was the daughter of Antonius Pius. And so in that sense, Marcus married into being the emperor. So first of all, we have to say, Marcus was devoted to his wife. In the evidence in the memoranda and other sources, Marcus appreciated her as supportive and loving and caring and a wonderful mother and a wonderful wife. So he had only good things to say about her. However, others spread a rumor that Faustina was having an affair when Marcus was conducting the Northern Wars and away from Rome for years at a time, for years at a time. The rumor was that she was having an affair or affairs back in Rome and possibly with gladiators. This is before the birth of Cometus.

So as a historian, you have to decide how much stock you want to put in these rumors. It makes for, you know, nice titillating story, but it might not be true. Some even speculate that Comedus' father was not Marcus Aurelius, was some gladiator. We don't know that this is true. That feels more like an added addition later when they know how bad an emperor Comedus becomes right. So they want to steer away Marcus Aurelius from any negative connotations there. Yes, that's right. But we do know that as the campaigns in the North dragged on, as the casualties from the plague piled up, as the casualties from the battles piled up, there was a real shortage of manpower.

There was a decrease in mining, which is how they generated wealth. You can't print coins. You can't stamp coins if you don't have the metal. And so there was a tremendous labor shortage. It was very hard to get gladiators. to entertain the citizens in Rome. And so the financial affairs of the empire were really very bad. And so what Marcus decided he had to do was collect together his personal possessions and Faustina's personal possessions from the palace and hold an auction.

Wow. They auctioned off their own personal possessions. Their art, their statuary, their fine flatware dishes, jewels, fancy clothes. They sold these on auction. And Faustina wasn't happy about it, but she recognized, you know, my husband, the emperor thinks it's necessary, so I got to go along with it, right? So this is a kind of an interesting window into the exigencies of the coffers, the treasury of the empire that Marcus felt compelled to do this in order to pay the bills.

Do we get any sense of that in his writings as well? Does he have thoughts towards getting rid of what they might consider luxuries? I don't want to use the word of setting because that's way too far. But do you think this auction alongside the clear strains on the empire did align with his stoic philosophical beliefs? He mentions wealth. He talks about wealth in the mamaranda. So consider the purple rope, right? So fancy clothing, fancy expensive clothing. Why was it expensive? Well, because it was purple. So where did they get purple dye? They got purple dye from the Murex shell, right, from a shellfish. And it had this kind of purplish blood. And you can't get a lot of blood out of each one of these little Murex crustaceans, right?

So it took a lot of them to get even a small amount of purple dye. So the purple dye, this teary in purple, as it was called, was extremely expensive. And that's why it was only the highest ranking officials that ever wore purple, including the emperor. And so what is an emperor's purple robe? Well, it looks glorious. It looks gorgeous. It looks so fancy, right? So in one of his entries in the memoranda, Marcus says, it's sheep's wool dyed in shellfish blood. And when you describe it that way, it takes all the glamour out of it, doesn't it? Right. And what about fancy roasted, roast pig and roast mutton or lamb or whatever it is, beef, whatever it is, whatever the roasted meat is. He says, it's a dead pig on a plate. It's the corpse of an animal. And what is gold?

Well, gold, it glitters. It's fabulous. It's coveted and people fight and kill for it. What is gold? It's dirt from the ground. What is fine marble? It's another kind of, you know, rock from the ground. So he has this tendency, this practice really, the stoic practice of de-glamorizing things, common possessions that ordinary people covet and they value highly. And he just sucks the air out of it by seeing it very plainly, almost at a molecular level. It's not that fancy. It's not worth coveting, right? It's not important compared to being a virtuous person and a decent, father and husband and brother. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb,

and on not just the Tudors from history hit, we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry the 7th to the death of Henry VIII, from Amberlin to her daughter, Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches. Pleasing the title, really. So follow not just the Tudors from a history hit wherever you get your podcasts.

In the themes of his musings, his philosophical. In the themes of his musings, his philosophical thinking. One that seems so big in stoicism today, especially with everything going on around us in the world and our access to global news at the click of a button on the internet. This idea of not losing sleep over things that you cannot control, this idea that you need to focus on what you can control and lead the best life that you can. And things that upset you but you can't control, you need to almost draw a line there so that it doesn't affect your mental well-being too far. Is that an idea that he puts forward a lot?

Yes. Yeah, and that, of course, he learned from Epictetus. Epictetus is the ancient Roman Stoic who most emphasized that dichotomy, that distinction between what is up to us and what is not up to us, and how it is just insanity to allow yourself to become obsessed with events, other people's actions, their beliefs, the weather, the economy, all of these things are not up to us. We don't control them. We don't even control everything that goes on inside our own bodies. So we don't control getting ill. Who chooses to become ill? Who chooses to become

injured? No one. But what is up to us is how we respond to our injuries, how we respond to our illness, our attitudes, our choices, our outlook, our decisions, our judgments, the beliefs that we accept, the beliefs that we reject, the knowledge that we pursue, or the ignorance that we cling to, these are the things that are up to us. And so Marcus is always rehearsing that lesson in his stoic reflections, right? He can't control what other citizens, other Roman citizens do, but he can love them. He can dedicate himself to doing the best job that he can as emperor, as a Roman and as a man, as a husband and as a father, doing the best he can. So what do we know about Marcus Aurelius' final years on the throne? Does he really try hard to improve the situation in the Roman Empire after all the hardships it suffers during his reign?

The evidence suggests that he did. He legislated measures to, protect widows and orphans who were extremely vulnerable at the time in terms of inheritance. Marcus exercised mercy for his defeated foes instead of executing them. For example, those who were involved in the rebellion, led by Evidius Cassius. Oh, that's a rebellion, is it? Ah. Yes. So there was a usurper.

He had a very trusted general of Phiddeus Cassius, who was largely responsible for the successes during the Parthian War. Marcus relied on him for maintaining stability and keeping the peace for that whole eastern portion sector of the empire. But years later, there was a rumor that Marcus was sick and was about to die. And there was also a rumor that Faustina wrote to Avidius Cassius and urged him, to rebel, to usurp the throne, because he was hugely popular with his troops, and this often happened in Roman history, that if a general became very, very popular, his troops would say, hey, you should be emperor, we're going to support and fight for you. You can overthrow this guy on the throne.

And then they had to make kind of a momentous decision, right? They had decided, okay, do I do it? Do I risk it? Do I try to take over the empire? It's a big call, isn't it? It's a big risk. Going back, yeah. It's a big risk because, you know, these are the troops who fight for you.

So you don't, you want to keep them happy. You don't want to squash their hopes and dreams, right? But you might end up with your head on a pike. And so whether Faustina urged, maybe she thought Marcus was going to die. Because remember, she later joined Marcus in the Northern Wars, where he was encamped. But for years, she was back in Rome. So anyway, whether she wrote and urged Evides Casas to launch this rebellion or not, he did. And he tried to usurp the throne.

And so Marcus sent troops, he was shocked. He was totally taken off guard. He didn't think this could happen, but it did. So he had to send several different legions east to face Havidius Cassius. Well, when word came out that Marcus wasn't dying and he wasn't dead and he was sending troops to put down Cassius' revolt, Cassius' own men killed him. And so Marcus didn't have to deal with punishment there. But there were others who had supported Avidius Cassius. And Marcus made sure that his correspondence was burned because he was not going to go headhunting to try to find people to execute.

So that suggests, you know, leniency on Marcus's part. Others, he chose to exile rather than execute. So Marcus's philosophy is cosmopolitanist, you know, seems to manifest itself in those sorts of measures. I'd also like to ask, as he gets older and as his death is nearing, do he get any sense, like, from him? his writings. Are there any very late entries in his life? Do we see a change in tone? Does he start thinking more and more about his own mortality and his own death in his writings and how he views death as it nears? Death is a very common refrain in the memoranda. But I should preface that by saying that for Stoics, reflecting on death, for all Stoics, reflecting on death daily,

is an extremely common practice. So it's not just when you're old that you ought to think about your mortality. It's everyone should think about his or her mortality every day and the mortality of your loved ones and the mortality of your friends and the mortality of every plant and animal. So remember death. Menti Mori, that's the saying, right? So yes, we do see that in the memoranda as well. And Marcus has a number of entries which are very negative descriptions of the human body. Bad breath in a sack of skin. Disgusting veins and blood and bones in a sack of skin. Right. So the body is not glorified rather by Marcus, right? And he recognizes that he's lived a full enough life. He's, you know, 58 years old, going on almost 59, right? But Lucius Veris is

already dead. Avidius Cassius, his trusted general is already dead. He's lost. a dozen of his children to death. Many, many, many of Marcus and Trasina's children did not live to adulthood. Only four of them live to be adults, including Convus. So Marcus does reflect on his own body and its own frailty and his own mortality a lot. And so he knows that he's not going to live forever and he needs to be ready. And so he's grooming his only surviving son, Comedus, to be his successor, and having had his adoptive brother as co-emperor when he was a younger man, he elevates Comedus to be a young co-emperor of his, to prepare for this succession. And this is a step change in its own right, because it's been, you know, more than half a century

since an actual son of an emperor is primed to take over as the next emperor. So this is the next step. And of course, Comedus, famous, or shall we say infamous from Ridley Scott's Gladiator, 2000 movie, Wacking Phoenix, and alike. You know, he gets reputation as one of the most infamous Roman emperors of all time. The big question is, I mean, do you think Marcus Aurelius worried about Comedus when he died? Do you think he saw potential problems with Comedus when he was growing up or not? What do we know about that? It seems like there is some suggestion of that.

There is this putative speech that a subsequent author wrote that is supposed to be is offered as Marcus's final words, his kind of farewell speech to his closest circle, as he's, you know, basically on his deathbed. And he implores, he urgently entreats his trusted advisors and experts, right, to help Commodus, to remind him of his responsibilities and his mortality and his finitude, as Marcus had been reminded by his philosophy teachers, right, by his mentors that he had learned when he was growing up. because Comedus is just a teenager. And so Comedus, he enjoyed the gladiatorial action, the bouts, right? He was kind of more like Lucius Verus in that regard. He liked the games. He liked the entertainments. He liked the gladiatorial action.

And Marcus recognized that that taste for that kind of blood sport is not good in an emperor. So, Marcus, we have to think, right, that he's. saw the character flaws, the weaknesses in his own son, Comedus, and he wanted his trusted advisors to help Comedus steer the wise path and pursue justice and fairness in his rule. But once Marcus was dead, he had no power to control Comedus whatsoever. That was something very, very much not up to him. And there's no inkling, once again, a foul play is there? Is there is this idea that Marcus, he dies of old age or he dies peacefully, relatively peacefully for the time, especially for an emperor? At age 59, he might have died of the plague as well.

Ah, okay, interesting. He had respiratory trouble throughout his life. He took Theriac, this bizarre substance that Galen mixed up for him. And it was addictive because it contained opium and it contained viper flesh and dozens and dozens of other ingredients. and it had been used in Marcus' day and before as prevention against poison, because, of course, emperors could be poisoned and assassinated that way. But Marcus needed it to manage his sleep, and so he suffered from insomnia. So again, this is a very imperfect kind of medicine, if we want to call it that, that Galen was administering to Marcus. And Marcus could very well have contracted the plague, the pathogen. That could very well have been what killed him.

But to answer your question, in terms of foul play, there's no evidence that Marcus was murdered, although some evidence suggests to some historians that he might have been suffering from an illness that was so devastating and so painful to him that his doctors may have euthanized him. Wow. That's a speculation that some historians indulge in. That's possible, I suppose. I can ask so many more questions, but I'm not.

not going to because we used up so much of your time. And we could do a whole episode on the legacy of Marcus Aurelius and how he's inspired people down to the present day. But I will ask it more as an overarching summary question. Marcus Aurelius dies. He becomes a god, doesn't he, following it, that apotheosis idea that was common of emperors at the time. Do we know what legacy he holds in Rome and then how that legacy endures down through all of the centuries to the present day. During his reign and soon thereafter, Marcus was celebrated. He was championed as, as you mentioned earlier, one of the last good emperor, this historian's column. He has the triumphal column in Rome that was built that has the scenes depicting, spiraling up its exterior, all of his

campaigns in the Northern Wars, including dramatic things like the so-called rain miracle that turned a battle around. A group of trapped Roman soldiers was dying of thirst, and they were surrounded. And then there was this miraculous thunderstorm, and they caught water from their helmets, and they watered their horses in themselves and survived. And later authors would say it was the Christians who deserved the credit because they prayed to their God, and then it rained. But then the polytheists, of course, they know it was the pagan gods who caused the retofall. And then, of course, there's the equestrian statue, the great equestrian statue of Marcus. It's still in Rome. These sorts of monuments to Marcus suggests that his rule, his reign was

celebrated, that he was loved and respected in managing the best he could, the plague, and all of these northern wars. He was even sanctified centuries later. So there's an interesting kind of arc here where in the Middle Ages, Marcus was seen, was embraced by the Christians. for what they saw as his Christian virtues of mercy and decency and justice and selfless rule for the Commonwealth, right, for the good of others. And above all, the inward-looking emphasis on virtues, right, being a good person, being just and courageous and wise. And his piety, in fact, right, even though it's a pagan piety, his adoration of the gods, his veneration of the gods, his veneration of the gods and trying to live in a godly way himself, was embraced and transformed

by Christian authors for centuries. He was sanctified by many, many Christian authors for centuries. And then later, that kind of turned into, but wait a second, what about the persecutions? What about Justin Martyr? What about the people who were Christians who were executed during his regime? And then this later historical moment was turned to blaming Marcus for persecuting the Christians. So then it was kind of went full circle again. And then now these days, I think most people agree with my assessment that Marcus was not directly responsible for persecuting the Christians. It was the provincial governors who were doing the best they could or maybe not doing it for any good job of handling this popular antipathy against the Christians. So that's how his reputation has kind of changed over the centuries, but his philosophy, the memoranda, stronger than ever, embraced by everyone from Anna Kendrick to Rory McElroy, apparently Rory McElroy, the golfer, the excellent golfer, uses Marcus to calm down.

And Bill Clinton, of course, is reputed to have benefited from reading the meditations in Wen Giao-Boh. So there are various people who, Marcus fans these days. Well, and I think there was that trend, wasn't there, a year or so ago, about how often do you think about the Roman Empire? And I think probably quite a few men, you know, who are going into Stoicism. Many of them, the first thing they'll think of won't be Rhodes. It won't be Aqueducts. It will be Marcus Aurelius and his musings.

Because I think it is, I think it's topped Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars and his civil wars that Marcus Aurelius' memorandah are still say meditations, because it's well known, is the most popular book from ancient history down to the present day from the classical world. Is that correct? Yeah, there have been so many different editions, so many different translations, one century after the next, after the next. And you can see why. I mean, he was a philosopher king. I mean, this is the title of my book. He was a philosopher king, but not quite the way that Plato describes Plato. Yeah, that's the Plato way, isn't it? The philosopher king, right? Right. I mean, Marcus is very modest about his own philosophical

abilities, interestingly enough. And yet, he's taught in philosophy classrooms routinely now. And the number of professors who were teaching Marcus to their students, as I did for 30 years, is dwarfed by the number of stoic practitioners who turn to Marcus to try to get their own minds in order and reflect on their own mortality and recognize that they should focus their energies on what's up to them, not what's not up to them. William, that is a lovely way to wrap up this episode. Last but certainly not least, your book all about this Titanic Emperor of Roman History, it is called. Marcus Aurelius, philosopher king. Brilliant. William, just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

Thank you, Tristan. I enjoyed it very much. Well, there you go. There was Professor William Stevens talking you through the life of Marcus Aurelius and his philosophy. I hope you enjoyed the episode. It's about time we covered the story of this famous emperor and his legendary work, The Meditations, or, as maybe we should say, the memoranda. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow the ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us, and you'll be doing us a big favor. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a lovely rating as well, if you enjoyed the episode, then we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also

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