The Daily Stoic - The Life Of Agrippinus The Different

Episode Date: September 17, 2023

Agrippinus marched to the beat of his own drum. Today, Ryan reads from his book Lives Of The Stoics to explain just what that meant for one of the most eccentric and interesting Stoic philosophers, Paconius Agrippinus, who was heralded by Epictetus as a pillar of Stoicism, and who was willing to die to be himself. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check 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.

I'm Rob Briden and welcome to my podcast, Briden and we are now in our third series. Among those still to come is some Michael Paling, the comedy duo Egg and Robbie Williams. The list goes on so do sit back and enjoy Briden and on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bosch Legacy returns, now streaming. Maddie's been taken. Oh God. His daughter. Maddie!

He's in the hands of a madman. What are the police have been looking for me? But nothing can stop a father. We want to find her just as much as you do. I doubt that very much. From doing what the law can't. And we have to do this the very way. You have to. I don't.

Bosch Legacy, watch the new season, now streaming exclusively on Freevy. season now streaming exclusively on FreeV. 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 recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing. We can. 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 Holiday. Welcome to another Sunday episode of The Daily Stoic podcast. Some of these stoics have difficult names to pronounce. Some of them are funny if you're a little juvenile, right? Epic teetis. But today's episode is about actually one of the stoics I find to be the most interesting. I you hear about them through Epic teetis largely. Also a little bit of Tacitus. But how do you say his name? I'll tell you I'm not going to call him Agrippinus. I'm going to call him Agrippinus. And he is a guy that marches to the beat of his own drum. One of his most beautiful metaphors. We'll talk about in today's episode. He says we should be the person that stands out. And he wasn't just saying, oh, it's good to be different. I mean, he was, as you'll see, quite literally willing to die, to be different, to be himself, to be his own man. This episode is an excerpt from Agrippinus' episode in

Lies of the Stoics, the art of living from Xeno to Marx's Realist, where I do biographies of the great Stoics, not just what they talked about, but how they lived, what they did. And we really don't know that much about what a Gryppinus wrote about. None of his works survived. All we have are a few of his deeds and the quips that preceded those deeds. And that's what I'm going to bring you in today's episode. Do check out lives of the Stoics. You can grab a sign copy in the daily Stoics store or here at the Painted Porch. It's a book I'm very proud of when I sign it to to people, I write, act a nonverba, deeds, not words.

And I think you'll see that today's episode is about a guy who did precisely that. A grippiness, the different, born, unknown, died, unknown, origin, unknown. We don't know much about Puccinius, a Gryppinus besides the fact that his father was executed by the Emperor, Tiberius, the successor of Augustus, untrumped up charges of treason. We don't know what a grip in us wrote or where he was born, or even when he was born, and when he died. We know that he lived in the age of Tiberius' successors

to corrupt in violent emperors, Claudius, in Nero, but where he went to school or how he entered government service remains a mystery to us. Yet for all the unknowns about Agrippinus, he leaps out from the historical record as a kind of swashbuckling and distinctive figure, one who stood out even among the bravest and best known stoics of his time. This was no accident because in a Roman Empire that had by the time of Claudius and Nero, given itself over fully to averis and corruption, anyone who truly lived by stoic philosophy, by stoic principles, as Agrippinus us did would stand out. According to a grip and us, we are all threads in a garment,

which means that most people are indistinguishable from each other, one thread among countless others. Most people are happy, conforming, being anonymous, handling their own tiny, unsung role in the fabric. Who can blame them? Under a tyrant, the best strategy is usually to keep a low profile, to blend in so one does not catch the attention of the capricious and cruel

ruler who holds the power of life and death. But to agrippinus, even having lost his father under such circumstances, this kind of compromise was inconceivable. I want to be the red, he said, that small and brilliant portion which causes the rest to appear comely and beautiful. Be like the majority of people, and if I do that, how shall I any longer be read? Years later, there would be a song by the band Alice and Shane's, which would say in a

nutshell, what a grippinous believed in his heart. If I can't be my own, I'd feel better dead. Individuality and autonomy, these are the things many people pay lip service to. In fact, it's become almost a new form of conformity. We talk about being our unique selves, about letting our colors shine. But deep down we know this is just talk. Under pressure when it really counts, we want the same things as everyone else. We do the same things as everyone else.

Not a gripiness. He was willing to stand out to be bright red, even if it meant being beheaded or exiled. Nor was this desire driven by ego or love of attention, as it unfortunately is even among those rare men and women who reject convention. It is right to praise a gripiness, Epic Titus tells us, because although he was a man of the very highest worth, he never praised himself, but used to blush even if someone else praised him, it was standing on principle that brought fame to a grippiness. And yet, if you could have taken his private without attracting attention he would have. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort, journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking long ship with thoughtful service, destination

focused dining, and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. With a variety of voyages and sailing dates to choose from, now is the time to explore Europe's waterways. Learn more at Viking.com. What he drew his fame from was his able service as the governor of Crete and Cyrene, surprising many with his dedication as an administrator, while others were using the same positions to line their pockets. Tacitus tells us that a grip on us had inherited his father's hatred towards emperors, after

the injustice he had seen done to his guiltless father. It was an injustice indeed for not only was his father likely innocent, his actual death sentence was finally executed after the highly sensitive emperor was teased by a palace dwarf for having waffled on the issue. It's remarkable this absurd mockery of the courts did nothing to diminish Agrippinus' commitment to the law and to applying it fairly and earnestly when the duty later fell to him. When Agrippinus was governor,

Epictetus would recount admiringly, he used to try to persuade the persons whom he sentenced that it was proper for them to be sentenced. For, he would say, it is not as an enemy or as a brigand that I record my vote against them, but as a curator and a guardian, just as also the physician encourages the man upon whom he is operating and persuades him to submit to the operation.

This commitment was increasingly unusual in an empire where averis was rewarded and principles were baggage. It does not seem to have occurred to Agrippinus, however, to be anything other than pure and committed in clear-eyed. In a famous exchange, which is preserved to us by Epictetus, Agrippinus was approached by a philosopher who was wrestling with whether he should attend and perform at some banquet thrown by Nero, one that we can imagine Ceneca had prepared a speech for. A grippinus told the man he should go, but why the man asked, because you were even thinking

about it. For me, a grippinus said, it's not even a question. To a grippinus, there should be no hemming and hawing about the right thing. There should be no weighing of options. He who once sets himself about such considerations, depicted as said about agrippinus, and goes to calculating the worth of external things and approaches very near to those who forget their own character. Character is fate is how Heraclitus, one of the Stoic's favorite influences, put it. That was true for agrippinus as it had been for Aristotel long ago and Kato too.

He believed that only character decided difficult matters and did so clearly and cleanly. No calculating, no consideration was necessary, the right thing was obvious. When Agrippinus was eventually accused of conspiracy against Nero, he found himself brought up on charges just like his father.

I hope it may turn out well, he said to a friend as his trial began, and then noting the hour reminded himself that it was time for their daily exercise. As the Senate decided his fate and his life hung in the balance, Agrippinus worked out and then relaxed in a cold bath. Just as Cato had enjoyed one final dinner before his demise, so Agrippinus took a nice steam before the news was brought to him. You have been condemned. A normal person might have fallen on their knees or cursed the injustice. Agrippinus betrayed neither anxiety nor fear about his fate. He had only practical questions, banishment or death.

Exile, his friends told him, did they confiscate my property? No, thank God they told him. Very well, he said, we shall take our lunch in Eritrea. Eritrea was the first stop on the road out of Rome. Meaning we might as well get this exile show underway. No use bemoaning or weeping about it. Hey, is anyone else hungry? Certainly, many people, including his fellow stoics, have responded to better circumstances with worse, but that's who Agrippinus was. He was different.

I am not a hindrance to myself, Epictetus quotes him as saying. He did not add to his troubles by bemoaning them. He would not compromise his dignity or his composure for matters big or small, whether it was a meaningless party or a cruel miscarriage of justice. His character was such said epictetus

that when any hardship befell him, he would compose a eulogy on it, on fever if he had a fever, on disrepute if he suffered from disrepute, on exile if he went into exile. He saw life for what it was, exile for what it was, the cruelty of emperors for what it was, accepted it and moved on. And for what was a grip in us sent packing what crime had he committed and on what evidence was he convicted, Tacitus comes up empty, but provides a clue when he explains that at the same time,

Nero had also driven from Rome a young, viseless, and venomless poet, simply because the man was too talented. So it was for Agrippinus. He had dared to be different. He had been the bright red in an empire where Nero deemed himself the only one worthy of standing out. Because that's the other expression that a Gryppinus had either missed or decided he

refused to be intimidated by. Yes, the beauty of the garment is made by the threads that stand out, but it's equally true that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. To a man like a Gryppinus and his father before him, this was a cost worth paying. Indeed, they did not even consider the alternative. Thanks for listening to The Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized.

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