The Daily Stoic - Don’t Ignore the Smell

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

"From 165 to 180 AD, Rome was hit by a plague. The “Antonine Plague,” also known as the Plague of Galen, would kill literally millions of people during Marcus Aurelius’s reign. It was horrible and terrifying. No one knew what caused this awful disease, or what had brought it on. Had the gods cursed the empire? Was it punishment for their sins? How could they stop the contagion, which could kill a person in two miserable weeks?"Find out how Marcus dealt with his plague—and how we can do the same—on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has

guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystowach.com. Don't Ignore the Smell. From 165 to 180 AD, Rome was hit by a plague. The Antenine plague, also known as the plague of Galen, would literally kill millions of people during Marcus Aurelius' reign. It was horrible and terrifying. No one knew what caused this awful disease or what had brought it on. Had the gods cursed the Empire?

Was it punishment for their sins? How could they stop the contagion? Which could kill a person in two miserable weeks? In his book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, Donald Robertson tells us that the Romans believed that the burning of incense would protect a family from falling ill. Marcus Aurelius, who bravely refused to flee Rome

as other leaders had, would wake up each day to a surreal smelling city, a mixture of the putrid smell of dead bodies and the sweet aroma of incense. As Donald writes for over a decade, the scent of smoke of incense was a reminder to Marcus that he was living under the shadow of death and that survival from one day to the next could never be taken for granted.

Until very recently, most of us in the first world had no sense of what that horrible smell that hung over Rome was like. Almost no one alive remembered the Spanish flu, which killed something like 50 million people between 1918 and 1920. The AIDS epidemic, which was a horrifying, terrible, medical crisis had receded into the distance.

Ebola and SARS and swine flu and Zika were mercifully less awful than predicted. And then suddenly COVID-19 changed everything. Suddenly, we were reminded that we remain beneath the same shadow of death and that life should never be taken for granted. Life is short, nature is brutal, and epidemics are unsparing. We are still for all our medical advancements, just pagans, hoping, praying with our silly devices that we may be skipped, and maybe we will, but maybe we won't. Which is why we have to live now, which is why we must

seize the day while we can. Hey, just wanted to remind you if you want to take your practices to this and the next level, if you want some physical reminders of the ideas we talk about here, check out the Daily Stoic store and go to DailyStoic.com slash store. These products are what help us keep the lights on here at Daily Stoic. They help grow the business. Let us spread the message to more and more people. So if you want to support us, check that out. Go to DailyStoic.com slash store. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music,

download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as

entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wonder yet.