The Daily Stoic - Letters of Stoic Wisdom | Marcus Aurelius and Fronto

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

Marcus Aurelius' letters to his rhetoric teacher, Fronto, give us a unique look into his life and relationships. As Brigid Delaney said in her recent interview on the Daily Stoic, "if you want to understand Meditations, Letters to Fronto is a really great place to start."Listen to more of Marcus Aurelius’ Letters to Fronto | Apple Podcasts & Spotify These letters were first edited and translated into English by C. R. Haines.🎙️ Listen to Brigid Delaney's interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch it on YouTube📚 Reasons Not to Worry: How to Be Stoic in Chaotic Times by Brigid Delaney 🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour📕 Curious to hear about the prank that Marcus Aurelius pulled on his shepherd? Check out The Boy Who Would Be King ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audiobooks in the car. Instead of having that be dead time, we want to use it to have a live time. We really want to help their imagination soar. And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories,

self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love, maybe you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audio books without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app.

And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing right now on Audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You'll get Right Thing right now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. 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, audiobooks that we like here or 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 your actual life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. When I was in Australia, I interviewed Bridget Delaney.

I brought you that episode not that long ago. One of the things she and I talked about was Mark Surilis' letters. So obviously, Meditations is Mark Surilis' famous work. That's the one we talk about the most, but it is pretty remarkable that a handful of his letters survive. And she spent a year living like a stoic.

She talks about this in her book, Reasons Not to Worry. And one of the things I started the interview off was asking her about these letters because they're not as well known, but they should be. And so I wanted to bring you a chunk of those today. Marcus Surriles is writing to Fronto. Marcus Cornelius Fronto was Marcus Rilius' rhetoric teacher. Some of his letters thrown into the mix, the sort of collection known as Letters to Fronto also

includes some between Lucius Verus and Taninus Pius, that's Marcus' stepfather, some various friends. I'm going to bring you a couple of those letters in today's episode. It was edited and translated by CR Haynes and I'll link to the other episode where we did this. And then just apropos of me interviewing Bridget when I was in Australia, I'm gonna be in Dublin, London, Rotterdam, Vancouver, and Toronto. Here in November, you can buy tickets

at ryanholiday.net slash tour. Excited about that. And I may do some podcasts recording while I'm just looking at, I was just talking to Clara, producer, about maybe doing one when I'm in Vancouver. So it's cool for me to do some of these on the road. And you can tell Marcus Riles was on the road as he recorded some of these.

Look, it's hard to read letters actually in print. It's a little strange, but there is something about hearing these letters that I think makes you get a sense of Marcus Rilius as a human. One of my favorite little stories, Marcus Rilius tells Fronto this story about a prank he pulled on this shepherd, and I referenced that in The Boy Who Would Be King, the kids book I did on stoicism. So let's get into it. Thanks.

Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar, 139 AD. To my Lord, as to the simile, which you say you are puzzling over and for which you call me in as your ally and agitant in finding the clue, you will not take it amiss, will you? If I look for the clue to that fancy within your breast and your father's breast. Just as the island lies in the Ionian or Tyrrhenian sea, or maybe rather in the Adriatic, or if it be some other sea, give it its right name. As then, that sea-girt island itself receives and repels the ocean

waves, and itself bears the whole brunt of attack from fleets, pirates, sea monsters, and storms, yet in a lake within, protects another island safely from all dangers and difficulties, while that other nevertheless shares in all its delights and pleasures. For that island in the inland lake is like the other, washed by the waters, like it catches the health-giving breezes, like it is inhabited, like it looks out on the sea. So your father bears on his shoulders the troubles and difficulties of the Roman Empire, while you he safeguards safely in his own tranquil breast, the partner in his rank and glory, and in all that is his. Accordingly, you can use this simile in a variety of ways

when you return thanks to your father, on which occasion you should be most full and copious. For there is nothing that you can say in all your life with more honor or more truth or more liking than that which concerns the setting forth of your father's praises. Whatever simile I may subsequently suggest will not please you so much as this one which concerns your father. I know this as well as you feel it. Consequently, I will not myself give you any other simile, but

will shoe you the method of finding them out for yourself. You must send me any similes you search out, and find by the method shunned you for that purpose, that if they prove neat and skillful, I may rejoice and love you. Now, in the first place, you are aware that a simile is used for the purpose of setting off a thing or discrediting it, or comparing, or depreciating, or amplifying it, or of making credible what is scarcely credible. Where nothing of the kind is required, there will be no room for a simile. Hereafter, when you compose a simile for a subject in hand, just

as if you were a painter, you would notice the characteristics of the object you were painting, so must you do in writing. Now the characteristics of a thing you will pick out from many points of view, the likeness of kind, the likeness of form, the whole, the parts, the individual traits, the differences, the contraries, the consequences and the resultants, the names, the accidents, the elements, and generally everything from which arguments are drawn. The points in fact so often dwelt upon when we were dealing with the common places of the arguments of Theodorus. If any of them have slipped your memory, it will not be a miss for us to go over them afresh when time serves. In this simile, which I have sketched out

about your father and you, I have taken one of the accidentals of the subject, the identity of the safety and the enjoyment. Now it remains for you, by those ways and paths which I have pointed out above, to discover how you may most conveniently come at your Inaria. The pain in my elbow is not much better. Farewell, my lord, with all your rare abilities. Give my greetings to my lady, your mother. On another occasion, we will follow out with more care and exactness the whole art of simile making.

Now I have only touched upon the heads of it. Eulogy of Smoke and Dust, 139 AD, fronto to his own Caesar. The majority of readers may perhaps from the heading despise the subject, on the ground that nothing serious could be made of smoke and dust. You, with your excellent abilities, will soon see whether my labor is lost or well laid out. But the subject seems to require a little to be said first on the method of composition, for no writing of this kind of sufficient notes exists in the Roman tongue, except some attempts

by poets in comedies or atalane farces. Anyone who practices this kind of composition will choose out an abundance of thoughts and pack them closely and cleverly interweave them, but will not stuff in superfluously many duplicate words, nor forget to round off every sentence concisely and skillfully. It is different with forensic speeches, where we take a special care that many sentences shall end now and again somewhat roughly and clumsily. But here, on the contrary, pains must be taken that there should be nothing left uncouth and disconnected, but that everything, as in a fine robe, should be woven with borders and trimmed with edgings. Finally, as the last lines in an epigram ought to have some sparkle,

so the sentence should be closed with some sort of fastening or brooch. But the chief thing to be aimed at is to please. For this kind of discourse is not meant as a speech for the defense in a criminal trial, nor to carry a law, nor to harden an army, nor to impassion the multitude, but for pleasantry and amusement. The topic, however, must everywhere be treated as if it were an important and splendid one, and trifling things must be likened and compared to great ones. Finally, the highest merit in this kind of discourse is an attitude

of seriousness. Tales of gods or men must be brought in where appropriate, so too pertinent verses and proverbs that are applicable, and ingenious fictions, provided that the fiction is helped out by some witty reasoning. One of the chief difficulties, however, is to marshal our materials that their order may rest on logical connection. The fault for which Plato blames Lysias in the Phaedrus, that he has mingled his thoughts in such careless confusion that the first could change places with the last and the last with the first without any loss, is one which we can only escape if we arrange our arguments in classes, and so concatenate them, not in a scattered way and indiscriminately piled together like a dish of mixed ingredients, but so that the preceding thought in some sort overlaps the subsequent one and dovetails into it, that the second thoughts may begin where the first left off, for so we seem to step rather than jump from one to the other. But these do not. Variety, even with some sacrifices, more welcome in the discourse than a correct continuity. Merry things must be severely said, brave things with a smile.

Only let that sweetness be untainted and chased of Tuscalen and Ionian strain that is in the style of Cato or Herodotus. In every case, it is easier to master the method of speaking than to possess the power of performing, to wish others well and to pray for their welfare, things which are compassed by voice and mind without aid. Accordingly, the more generously disposed a man shoes himself, the more persons will he praise, nor those only whom others before him checked with praises. But he will choose out gods and men that have been most passed by in the praises of others, and there give proofs of his generous disposition.

Just as a farmer shoes his industry, if he sows a field never before ploughed, and a priest his devotion, if he sacrifices at a desolate and inaccessible shrine. I will therefore praise gods who are indeed not much in evidence in the matter of praises, but are very much in evidence in the experience and life of men. Smoke and dust, without whom neither altars, nor hearths, nor highways as people say, nor paths can be used. But if any caval at this, whether smoke can be counted among gods, let him consider that winds too are held to be gods, and though they can scarcely be distinguished

from smoke, clouds and mists are reckoned goddesses and are seen in the sky, and according to the poets, gods are clad in clouds, and a cloud shielded from onlookers Jove and Juno as they couched. Again, and this is a property peculiar to the divine nature, you cannot grasp smoke in the hand any more than sunlight, nor bind, nor beat, nor keep it in, nor, if there be the slightest chink open, shut it out. I've been traveling a bunch for the tour that I'm on and I brought my kids and my wife with me when I went to Australia, when I'm going to Europe in November, I'm bringing my in-laws also.

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Eulogy of Negligence, 139 AD. Fronto to his own Caesar. For those who are too anxious in the performance of their duties, rely too little on friendship. I have taken upon myself to indict the praises of negligence, and the reason why I have never to this day indicted them, that too, as the subject demands, I neglect to give, is checked by self-control. Generally too is the mildness praised, which readily pardons the sins of men, but unless

you good-naturedly neglect offences, you are not likely to deal over mildly with them. A man may think negligence to be unsafe and exposed to dangers, but my view is clean contrary, that it is diligence which is much much more liable to perils, for there is not one who takes the trouble to lay traps for negligence, judging that even without a trap it would be easy work to take in a negligent man, always and everywhere and at pleasure. Against the diligent, however, and the wide awake and those who watch over their wealth, wiles and deceptions and traps are made ready. So general is it for negligence to be safeguarded by contempt, diligence to be assailed by craft.

Mistakes too committed through negligence are more readily pardoned, and for kindnesses so done a more gracious gratitude is felt. For that a man in all other respects neglectful should not have neglected to do a kindness in season is from its unexpectedness grateful. Now the famous golden age celebrated by the poets, if you think over it, you will find to have been the age of negligence. When the earth neglected, bore rich crops and without trouble taken, provided all the requisites of life to those who neglected it.

These arguments shoo that negligence comes of good lineage, is pleasing to the gods, commended by the wise, has her share of virtues, is the teacher of mildness, shielded from traps, welcomed in well-doing, pardoned in faults, and finally pronounced golden. Who pray prevents us from painting in much color from the paint box of our friend Favrinus? The more a woman relies on her looks, the more easily does she neglect her complexion and her coifer. But with most women it is because they distrust their beauty, that all the alluring devices which care can discover are brought into being that they may particularly adorn themselves. can discover are brought into being that they may particularly adorn themselves. The myrtle and the box and all the other shrubs and bushes that submit to the shears, accustomed

as they are to being most diligently and carefully pruned, watered and trimmed, creep on the ground or raise their tops but little over the soil where they stand. But those unshorn furs and neglected pines hide their aspiring heads amid the clouds. Lions are not so diligent in seeking their food and procuring their prey as ants, while spiders are more diligent in weaving than any Penelope or Andromache, and altogether insignificant abilities.

How small a part, I ask you, of the La Collin. Marcus Aurelius Tefronto 140-143 AD Hail, my best of masters! I know 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 spots where the god who

is invested with that power may the more readily hear. Therefore, I now first climb the citadel of the god Pergamum and beseech Escalapius to bless my master's health and mightily protect it. Thence I pass on to Athens and clasping Minerva 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 frontow. 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. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll

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