The Daily Stoic - How To Be Content - The Search For The Good Life pt. 2

Episode Date: December 4, 2022

Nobody wrote about the “good life” more beautifully than Horace (65-8 BCE). In numerous writings, the Roman poet shared his wisdom on how to use virtue as a key to unlocking contentment and, therefore, happiness in our daily lives. Today, Ryan presents a selection of Horace’s ideas in the second half of the “The Search For the Good Life” chapter in the How to Be Content installment of Princeton University Press’s Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, translated by Stephen Harrison.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, from the Stoic texts, audio books that you like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. We were talking recently about this, what makes you happy? Is it accomplishing stuff? Is it doing stuff? Or is it contentment? And then the older you get, the more you realize that contentment is really where it's at. And no one talks about contentment more beautifully than the poet Horace, the Roman poet.

He had this beautiful country place, which he talks about beautifully. I actually quote him, I believe at the end of Stillness is the key as well. And he wasn't just a writer about the beauty of the world, but he's a writer about how we get to the good life. How virtue gets us to the place of the good life. Virtue gets us to a place of the good life, virtue gets us to a

place of contentment. And we're going to finish up this series of excerpts from the audio book of how to be content published by the Princeton University Press, Ancient Wisdom for Modern Reader series. I love this. This is translated by Stephen Harrison, but it's just a wonderful series. And this is a great introduction to the poems of Horace, which you see pop up in the Stoic writings from time to time. And I'm excited to bring this to you. Thanks to the Princeton University Press for allowing us to excerpt this. You can get physical copies of the painted porch. I'll link to them in today's show notes.

You can grab the audiobook anywhere. Audio books are sold. But let's dive into some Horus here. Let's dive into some horse here. He who longs only for what is enough is not stirred to fear by the seas tumult or by the fierce force of the falling northern star or of the rising kid or by the vines beaten down by hail

and the disappointing farm where the trees blame now the rainwaters, now the constellations that roast the fields, now the hostile winters. Fish feel the seas shrunk as piles are driven into the deep. Down there the constant contractor with his slave crew consigns his rubble, together with the master who scorns dry land. But fear and threats can climb as high as the master, and dark care stays on the copper sheathed tri-ream and takes her seat behind the horsemen.

But if neither frigion marble or the wearing of purple that surpasses the brightness of stars, cannot relieve the sick man, or falanian wine, or rointment from the Persian East. Why should I labor to build a hall with doorposts to attract envy, setting a new fashion for height? Why should I exchange my Sabine Valley for riches that bring bigger burdens. Oads Book 3, Poem 1, Lines 25-48 By seeking only a material sufficiency rather than great riches argues Horace. The good man is insured against distress and disappointment. Appropriate indifference to storms at sea and unsatisfactory agricultural productivity

again locate the argument vividly in the world of the Roman elite, where maritime trading and farm ownership and their associated risks were widespread. The poem then focuses specifically on excessive modern building projects and the driving of piles into the sea, in order to support massive villas that obliterate the natural difference between sea and land. In the Roman world, this points to the luxurious shoreside residences of the Bay of Naples. But for us, finds an echo in the ocean encroaching beach houses of Los Angeles's Malibu, or the bizarre

multi-story basements of London's Kensington, while the copper sheathed, tri-ream, a warship adapted to private use, is an opposite match for the billionaire's super yacht or private jet as a symbol of superfluity. The point of unnatural excess is an effective one, along with the idea that wealth cannot bring happiness. If one is truly ill in spirit, one cannot be healed by ownership of prestige consumer items, whether in building materials, for-frigian-read-corraram-marble, dress, for-purple-dye-forkutur, wine, chateau petrus, or party ointment, DKNY golden delicious million dollar fragrance bottle.

Striving to outdo others in luxury creates only envy and trouble. Better far to remain content with the modest say-by-n-estate and its meditative tranquility. The overall psychological message is that great riches bring anxiety rather than an escape from it. The striking image of fear and threats clinging tightly behind the elite horseback rider, however fast he goes, expresses this brilliantly. This image was the favorite Horatian quotation of the great Victorian novelist W. M. Thackery. Much the same point about the disquiet brought by great possessions and the superiority of a modest sufficiency is made in Epistle's book I, Epistle II.

Let those who possess enough wish for nothing more ample. No house or farm, no mound of bronze and gold, will fend fever from their alling owners physique or cares from their mind. A proprietor needs to be in proper health if he plans to make real use of the goods he's amassed. The person who suffers from longing or fear is as little pleased by house or wealth, as paintings please the purve-lined, hot compresses those with gout, or the music of liars please ears that ache from dirty deposits. If the vessel is not clean, whatever you pour in, goes sour.

Epistles book 1, epistle 2, lines 46 through 54. Here again, material goods cannot guarantee their owner's welfare, either physical or psychological. As often in Horus' moral thought, bodily and mental well-being are seen as analogous, illustrating the unseen inner distemper psychological imbalance by the visible outward signs of corporeal disease, porcite, gout, and earache. Once again, the details look to the lifestyle of the Roman elite, but also fit our modern context. A fine city house, a delightful country residence, deep monetary holdings, or an extensive art collection, cannot help those who are fundamentally unhealthy in soul, just as they cannot alleviate their bodily pain.

The opening of the passage again contains the key solution in memorable one-liner form. He who has enough need not strive for more. Quad Satis Isthkui Kuntingyet, Neil Amplius Optet Let those who possess enough wish for nothing more ample. While its end states its moral truths in down to earth, even crude imagery about bodily and domestic hygiene, the kind of tactic associated with stoic ethics. The futility of vast possessions in comparison with psychic well-being and the superiority of a modest competence can be linked with another strand in Horus' moral thought, the need

to be unimpressed by merely material things. This is well articulated at the start of Episoles Book 1 Episoles 16. To be daunted by nothing is the one and only thing Numeq's that can make and keep you happy. There are some who can look on the sun and stars and the seasons yielding at fixed times, untinged with fear. How, with what feelings and features, do you think we should look on the gifts of the earth, or those of the sea that enriches the far distant Arabs and the Indians, or the shows, the applause and the gifts of our citizen body in friendly mode.

He who fears the opposite of these is as good as daunted, desiring them by the same token. Both kinds of awe are disturbing. In both cases, the unexpected sight brings terror. Joy or sorrow, longing or fear. What point is there if whatever someone sees that is over or under expectation leads to fixed eyes and freezing in mind and body? May the wise man bear the name of fool the just of wrongdoer, if he pursues even virtue itself beyond what is sufficient. Epistles Book 1 Epistle 6 lines 1 through 16.

Here, to be daunted by nothing is a reformulation of the striving for equanimity and mental tranquility generally shared by the major philosophies of Horus' own time, but it is specifically framed in a very Roman context of material possessions and public success. Arabia, the object of a military expedition in the previous decade, and India, linked with Rome through trade and diplomacy at this time, are seen as exotic, rich sources of jewels and spices, and the sweet applause of the Roman people evokes contemporary spectacular shows given by magistrates and members of the Imperial family to increase their popularity.

These conventionally desirable elements of material wealth and political prosperity should be treated within difference, just like their opposites. That way the good man is insured against mental distress. Again, the key idea is that of sufficiency and moderation. Even the pursuit of virtue beyond what suffices becomes a form of madness and wrongdoing, and modest aims and attainments are the best, alongside the capacity to tolerate any outcome, good or bad. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast

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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 Wondering-A. Resisting travel and riches Horus's emphasis on a quiet and moderate country life presents a firm contrast with the energetic expansion of the Roman Empire during his lifetime. The life of contemplation at home for him surpasses in personal fulfillment the opportunities

offered to his friends to traverse the Mediterranean world in search of pleasure, conquest, or riches. This comes out clearly in Episodes 1, Epistle 11, where he writes to his friend, Bulazius, who is traveled to what is now the Western coast of Turkey. How did Kaya seem to you, Bulazius, and famous Lesbos, and pretty Samus, and the Palace of Cresus at Sardis? What of Smyrna and Colophone? Better or worse than their fame. Or are they all as dirt beside the campus and the Tiber's stream? Or does one of the cities of Atalus surface in your prayers? Or do you commend Lebedos now sick

of sea and travel? You know what Lebedos is, a mere village, emptier than Gabby or Fideini, yet there I'd like to live, and for getting my friends to be forgotten by them, watch Neptune raging at safe distance from the shore. But he who makes for Rome from Kapua, spattered with rain and mud, would not want actually to live in and in, and even he who is caught a cold does not praise stoves and hot baths as the only purveyors of the truly happy life. Nor would you, if a strong south-wind should toss you on the deep, sell off your ship across the Aegean as a consequence.

For one in good health, roads in fair Middle-Eaney do the same as a cloak in mid-summer, a light tunic in snowy blasts, a tibour dip in mid-winter, a furnace in the month of August. While you can and fortune keeps our features kind, let's, Samus and Kiosk and Rhodes be praised at Rome for their distance. Grasp every hour God has kindly bestowed on you with grateful hand, and don't postpone pleasure for another season. This way you can say that wherever you were, you lived most gladly. For if reason and good sense, not a place that commands a widespread of ocean, banish cares. Those who speed across the sea

change their climate, not their temper. Our energetic slobth gives us a workout. By ship and chariot we seek for the good life. But what you seek is here, here at Ulubri, if you have sufficient steady mind. The poem begins with a travelogue of the glamorous Greek cities and islands of Ionia, which for the poet Horus all have particular literary associations that the cultivated Bolatius may share. Kios is the birthplace according to some of Homer. Lesbos of Sappho,

Samus of Epicurus, Smirna of the Minor Poet Bayon, Colophone of the Minor Poet Nycander, while the Palace of Cresus at Sardis recalls Araratus, father of Greek history, who set a famous anecdote about Solon there. But the key point is that these attractive places actually do nothing for the sick mind. Given the choice of locations in the region, Horus would actually rather choose the distinctly unglamorous peninsula of Lebedos, which he had probably visited

when with Brutus in 43-42 BCE. Satire's book I Satire 7 narrates an incident that he witnessed at nearby Closomini. This tiny place, 190 yards long with an isthmus 220 yards wide, is a kind of overseas say-by-nestate, where the poet could imagine living his quiet and secluded epicurean existence without material distractions. This epicurean angle is reinforced by the picture of watching storms at sea from the safety of the shore, which draws on the famous opening of Book Two of Lucretius' great epicurean poem De Rehrum Natura. In general, Horus suggests in another brilliantly memorable one-liner,

travel does not broaden the mind, but merely relocates its anxieties. Kaalum non animum mutant, qui trans mare courunt. Those who speed across the sea change their climate, not their temper. This again recalls Lucretius' poem, this time the end of book three, where the poet presents troubled elite Romans trying and vain to run away from their troubles, rushing from Rome to the country with their smart carriages. Once again we find a commendation of living in and for the present, however mundane that present may be.

There is no need to seek peace of mind via distant journeying. It is reason and good sense that banish cares, not expensive cruises, and the ideal steady mind can be attained without extensive travel. It can be found at Ulubri, a humble wayside community 25 miles south of Rome on the Via Apia and the edge of the unhealthy Pompteen Marges, where Cicero was once serenaded by a chorus of frogs. Even in this unpromising environment, the poet argues, the truly wise person can feel content and at home. The last twelve Latin words of this poem are inscribed above the entrance of the neoclassical Aachenlake House in Scotland, the ancestral home of Dr. Johnson's biographer James Boswell.

The person of balanced mind is content anywhere, whether in an elegant country mansion, in an insolubrious local village, or in a small place on another continent, and has no need to range the world in search of tranquility. Once again, the poet advocates a kind of mindfulness of appreciating and meditating on one's actual situation. The very next letter in the epistles, Book 1 Epistle 12, takes up a similar theme, writing to Iqus, who is serving Augustus's deputy Agrippa in Sicily. Iqus, if you have proper enjoyment of the Sicilian yields you collect for Agrippa in Sicily. EQS.

If you have proper enjoyment of the Sicilian yields you collect for Agrippa, no greater abundance can be given you by Jupiter. Cut, your complaints. No one is poor who has the use of plenty. If all is well with your stomach, your midriff, and your feet, a king's wealth will add nothing more. If you happen to live on a frugal diet of herbs and nettles, though surrounded by ready-made dainties, that way you will lead a smooth course of life, even though fortunes clear streams

suddenly guild you, either because you cannot change your nature, or because you think that everything is inferior to virtue supreme. Epistles Book I Epistle 12 lines 1 through 12 Here, EQS' role as manager of a great man's rich revenues abroad exposes him to a traditional kind of moral temptation. Such provincial appointments often led to unscrupulous

self-enrichment, not least infertile and prosperessously, plundered half a century before by the rapacious governor Veres, famously prosecuted by Cicero. Oris urges his friend, whom we know from an earlier poem, Ode's book Book 1 poem 29, is not without ethical interests, to make proper use of his situation and ignore its enticing seductions by behaving as if you were not in fact surrounded by such material abundance. As in Book 1 epistle 11, the wise man can be at home anywhere with the right mindset and can be indifferent to seductive foreign locations.

As long as Equs is healthy and body in mind, does his job while resisting the corruption of easy wealth and concentrates on philosophy rather than peculation, he will be fine. His situation as the trusted agent of Agrippa will allow him a comfortable life, an idea again expressed in a sparkling one-liner. Pao-per-enim-non-est-que-re-um-supetit-usus. No one is poor who has the use of plenty. Once again, we see the exhortation of indifference to external circumstances. The gods have been kind to IQs and brought

him good fortune, but he should still live a moderate life, just as if that had never happened. One poet to another on the Good Life. I conclude this chapter with Horus' poem to another poet, Albuus, very likely the love of the elogist Albuus Tibulus. Episoles book one, Episol four. Albuus, you kindly critic of my satires. What shall I say you now are doing in the region of Piedhum? Writing something to outperform the pieces of Casios of Parma, room, writing something to outperform the pieces of Casios of Parma, or strolling peacefully amid the health-giving woods, caring for all that is worthy of the man of wisdom and virtue.

You were never a body without a soul. The gods gave you good looks, the gods gave you wealth, and the art of enjoying it. For what more would a fond nurse wish for her beloved charge? To be able to have taste and express his thoughts, to have grace, fame, and health fall to him in abundance, with refined lifestyle and never failing purse. Amid your hopes and cares, amid your fears and passions, believe every day that dawns your last. Sweet is the hour that comes that's not expected. Come and see me, fat and sleek with skin well-curated when you want to laugh at a hog from Epicurus' herd.

Here one poet teases another. Horus notes his friend's relative wealth, where the elogist Tiboulus in an earlier collection had prominently advertised his relative poverty, and the line, amid your hopes and cares, amid your fears and passions, neatly picks up the range of emotions that the lover Tiboulus had expressed in his poems about his tempestuous erotic life. Horus presents his fellow poet as combining love poetry with philosophical meditation in woodlands near his country home not far from Rome. Tbilisi's version of Horus's Seinebina State, and the several epicurian traces in the poem

suggest that here the two are seen as sympathetic to that particular philosophy. Both are presented in the poem as combining ethical interests with material comfort, especially in the final joke about Horace as a hog. Picking up a slur sometimes cast on Epicureans for their supposed mindless hedonism, and perhaps pointing ironically to the poet's regular bouts of luxury living with messinus in Rome. Once again, the key message is that it is pointless to think about the unpredictable future. Tibulus, like Horus, should enjoy the good life of the present while it lasts. Once again, too, this is pithole and memorably expressed, this time in a pair of onliners.

Om Nam krede diyem tibi diluxi se suprémum. Believe every day that dawns your last. Followed immediately by, Gratas suprueñet, kva nonsperabhitor hora. Sweet is the hour that comes that's not expected. These passages taken together give a clear Horatian recipe for the good life. Do not be discontented with your lot. Do not worry pointlessly about the future. Live in and appreciate the moment, especially in association with friends, and seek a tranquil and materially moderate life. These are persuasive and attractive precepts for our own age.

Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything.

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