The Daily Stoic - The Right Time Is Right Now | The Virtue That Made Marcus Aurelius So Great

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

We know what we want to do–or need to do. We need to quit that job. We need to have that hard conversation. We need to be more active in our community. We need to stop smoking or start eating healthy. We need to tell our crush we like them.But when? That’s the question. Or at least, we tell ourselves that it is a question.---Today, Ryan recounts one of the greatest stories in human history and talks about how Antoninus Pius taught Marcus Aurelius the most important virtue of all.✉️  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.

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. on music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual

lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. We know what we want to do or need to do. We need to quit that job. We need to have that hard conversation. We need to be more active in our community. We need to stop smoking or start eating healthy. But when, that's the question, or at least, we tell ourselves that we need to be able to do what we want to do or need to do. We need to quit that job.

We need to have that hard conversation. We need to be more active in our community. We need to stop smoking or start eating healthy. But when that's the question, or at least we tell ourselves, that is a question. The stokes, of course, would disagree. The time they would say is now. They'd agree with Martin Luther King who said that the time is always right to do what is right. In fact, Marcus Aurelius, a king of a different sort, and more than a name with a much different set of incentives and interests and doing what was right

said something similar many times. Waste no more time talking about what a good man is like he said, be one. You could be good today instead. You choose tomorrow. The right time is right now, not later, not when it's easier or cost less. Not after you finish this or that. But now, now, now. For nearly 25 years, a Roman named Antonin

has said, Claude fought his way to the very top of Rome's political system. There was only one man above him. This was the Emperor Hadrian who'd ruled for years with wisdom but certainly an authoritarianism. And there was an issue. Hadrian does not have a male heir. So he makes the surprise decision to name Antoninus his heir. They have no blood relations. What is he see in Antoninus? All we know one anecdote is that Hadrian supposedly sees Antoninus helping his elderly father-in-law up a flight

of stairs. In a time when people would have killed their own father to get ahead, this idea of a powerful important Roman helping an elderly frail old man, it strikes Hadrian that there is an inherent goodness in him. Hadrian says, I have found you an emperor, no-go-mile, obedient, sensible. He says, not headstrong or too young or careless, through old age, Anteninus are realius. And so this is what Anteninus has wanted his whole life, a thing that almost no one in history ever has or ever will be given again Absolute power handed to you because you earned it through who you were and yet this was a cruel trick Because for everything that Hadrian had seen in Antoninus

He saw something else even better even even more decent, and a young boy named Marcus Carvilius. He finds that Marcus has this remarkable ability to tell the truth. He's like the little boy in the story of the Emperor's new clothes. He speaks truth to Hadrian when no one else will. Hadrian comes to nickname him Verismus. When Hadrian adopts Antoninus, so he can succeed him as emperor, it comes on the condition that he in turn adopt Marcus Aurelius.

And that really all Antoninus is, is a glorified throne-warmer. Now, we know from history how something like this will go, right? And Hadrian will die. And the first thing Antoninus do, Antoninus will do will be to eliminate all of his rivals, to get rid of this boy who he's not related to, who he shouldn't even care about, who's really just an impediment to Antoninus' legacy and his family line being passed on and on. We see this today in sports. Brett Farb, doesn't want to train Aaron Rogers. Aaron Rogers doesn't want to prepare and train and mentor the replacement for him,

and that's in sports where there's so much less at stake. And yet, again, give an absolute power, and to not just do anything he wants, what does he do? Go for the next 23 years. He grooms Marcus Aurelius to succeed him, to not just take power, but more importantly, to be worthy of power, to be one of the greatest emperors in history. There's this story we hear about an exchange between Antoninus and his wife. She's sort of thinking about all the things they can afford now. And he says, I'm sorry, we have even less now than we did before. He believed in that his wealth and his power and his obligations that now lay to the Roman people and to the boy he was to trade. The one North star for Marcus Realis' whole life is the example of Antoninus. The root word of discipline actually comes to us from the word pupil, meaning you're a student of something. Conversely, that you have someone who's a

pupil of you. And I think this is what's so key about Marcus Aurelius' and Antoninus' relationship. Marcus writes that he had the ability to both refrain from and enjoy the things that most people are too weak to refrain from and too inclined to enjoy. Of course, life hands Antoninus power and success and good looks at all these things, but what strikes Marcus Aurelius about his mentor, how gracefully Antoninus takes these things. He says, if they were there, Antoninus took advantage of them, and if not, he didn't miss them. They never let go of an issue, a topic, a decision before he was sure that he understood it perfectly.

Marcus notes how he was able to defer to experts, to listen to them, but also to have a strong sense of his own capacities, not just when to listen to them, but when to ignore them. He didn't go on tangents. He didn't bore people, even though people would have put up with endless amounts from him, he never indulged that. He tolerated being questioned. He liked the back and forth. There's something striking about Antoninus that he never tours the expanse of the Roman Empire. It's not because he didn't like to travel. It wasn't because he had business. He understood even that imperial baggage train was in imposition and he didn't want to impose on people. And one thing Marcus never notices, he never sees it once despite all the stress of the job, he never once sees Antoninus loose his temper.

Hadrian at one point loses his temper with a secretary and he stabs the man in the eye with a pen. Something the emperor then could get away with, there's no repercussions. And yet Marcus says of Antoninus that he never exhibited rudeness, he never lost control of himself, he never turned violent. A fravity without errors. He was a man of immense self-control. When Senaqa says that he is most powerful who is under his own power, that's what Antoninus was. And you really couldn't imagine then a better teacher for someone like Marcus Aurelis, right?

If you think of Marcus Aurelis and someone like Nero, they had very similar paths. They lose their parents at a very young age. They're thrust into power. They have stoic teachers, Senaqa teaches Nero. Julius Rousticus teaches Marcus Aurelis, but what's the difference than why is Nero so awful and Marcus so great? The answer is Antoninus. In 161 AD, Antoninus

comes to the end of his life. Adrian probably thought he would rule for a few years. Antoninus was an old man. That was the idea of Marx was too young. Antoninus was too old, but he does come to the end. His final words equanimitas, or equanimity. This is what he's passing along to Marcus really. It's now his turn to wear the purple, to carry the load, to be the man that Adrian saw in him. Marcus is supposedly so terrified at this thought at first that he goes to bed weeping, but he has a dream that night. I think you could imagine Antoninus visiting him in this dream. Marcus sees in the dream that he has shoulders of ivory. This is him realizing that he is strong enough to carry the load, and in fact,

he has to carry the load, fulfilling the designated Adrian had set out for him all those years ago. Now Antoninus had been blessed with wonderful, peaceful times. Antoninus does not have to spill a single drop of blood. Marcus Aurelius' reign is marked by floods and war, invasions, a terrible plague. One thing after another, one ancient historian says, Marcus Aurelius does not meet with the good fortune that he deserved.

In fact, his whole reign is marked by a series of trouble. And yet the same historian says that he comes to admire Markus for the very reason that these troubles don't break him. In fact, Markus never loses command of himself, never loses control of himself. He survives and so does the Empire. But as cursed as he was in that sense, you would argue he was blessed with the example and the guidance and those long years of apprenticeship under Antoninus. And now it's Marcus Aurelius' time to bring those ideas into practice.

Now, the first thing that Marcus does is write out of Antoninus' playbook, right? Part of a quirk of Hadrian's odd, you know, unprecedented succession plan, there's this other guy, the son of someone that Hadrian had one's thought could succeed him, man named Lucius Ferris. Now, Marcus Aurelius is the same age roughly as Lucius Ferris, and although it's very clear to Antoninus who deserves to be emperor,

it's kind of not clear what to do with Lucius Ferris. Again, Marcus Aurelius could have been the bloodthirsty Machiavellian absolute tyrant that many emperors were. He could have assassinated gotten rid of his rival. Instead, he appoints Lucius Ferris his stepbrother only on paper to be co-emperor the first thing Marcus really does with absolute power It's give half of it away the next thing he does is give Antoninus Ennic me he names him Antoninus pious he deifies his stepfather and it puts down in the record Just how truly great and holy and humble this man was. And then Marcus really has to get to work solving one problem after another, which he does, with the same kind of calmness and self-control

and poise and dignity and goodness that he learned from Antoninus. Marcus really points out how trivial the ambitions of most emperors and powerful people actually are. He says how much more philosophical it is to take what we've been given and show uprightness and self-control and obedience to God without making a production of it. In the depths of Rome's Antenine plague, what does Marcus do? He sells off the palisht furnishings. He doesn't spend the treasuries money like it's his. He protects it. He reaches into his own pocket, so other people don't have to suffer.

The work of Marcus' life is to be like Antoninus. He writes in meditations that he wants to never be swayed by pleasure or pain, he wants to be purposeful when an action free from dishonesty or dissimulation, and it's never dependent on action or inaction from anyone else. He wants to be self-reliant in that true sense. He wants to cultivate a certain kind of indisputable immunity from the dice rolls of fortune. And even as an old man, he continues to learn and study philosophy to try to be the man that Antoninus wanted him to be. There's a

story about Mark's Reuse leaving the palace. Friend stops and he says, Mark, it's where are you going? And he says, I am off to see sex as the philosopher to learn that, which I do not yet know. The man is amazing. This is one of the wisest, most powerful men in the world, and he's taking up his tablets and books and going to school like an ordinary student. But this was the kind of humility and grace that Marx had learned from Antoninus. This was his interest in what other people had to say. This was his interest in experts.

During the depths of the Antonine play, great going back to Antoninus and the ability to defer and listen to experts, the first thing Marcus does is a point one of Rome's great medical minds, his doctor, Galen, to be in charge of the response. He doesn't think he knows everything. He doesn't let politics get in the way. He tries to listen to the people who know

what they're talking about. And there's another passage in meditations that echoes of Antenina's Marxist releases concentrate every moment like a Roman. Right? He says concentrate on the task in front of you like it's the most important thing in your life. Like it's the last thing you're doing in your life.

If you had asked Marcus to define what a Roman was, he would have defined Antoninus. It's one of the most remarkable stories in all of history, two consecutive emperors, not related by blood, who managed to not just be decent and good at their job, but to not be corrupted by the unlimited power in front of them. Now, why haven't you heard of Antoninus? It's a good question. If he was so great, why don't you know who he is? Well, in some ways, Antoninus is really a victim of his own success. First off, he is eclipsed by Marcus Aurelius.

Keith Marx really says so beloved that he overshadows the man who trained and cultivated him and protected him. If that hadn't happened, Antinitis could have been remembered for all of history if that was something that mattered to him. Think of the month's August in July, these are named after Augustus and Julius Caesar. Well, the Senate so loved Antinitis in his own time that they offered him the chance to name a month after him and his wife. This was preposterously egotistical to Aesthoek. It's also utterly meaningless who cares.

But in truth, Antoninus' real legacy was his life. You know, there's that expression that no man is a hero to his valet. Marcus really is closer to Antoninus than his valet. And yet he not just sees him as a hero. He adores him. He loves him. He worships him. He was his hero. Because Antoninus did the hardest thing there is to do in philosophy. He actually lived by what he talked about. He lived up to the standards he set for himself and believed in. And more importantly, he gave Marcus a really as the tools to do the same. And this was true multi-generational impact, tragically impact that Marcus really is not even able to replicate in his own life. We see his

son, Comedis Fall, terribly shamefully short of the standards that Marcus set for himself. Marcus isn't able to be the kind of father, or guardian, or mentor that Antoninus was for him. And what sets Marcus really up to be so great, it's that he had this North Star superior to all the masters and teachers that he was given. The historian Ernest Fernand says, Marcus had a single master whom he revered above all. And that was Antoninus. It was because Marcus really has had by his side the most beautiful model of a perfect life, one whom he understood and loved that he became who he was. You know, when we think of discipline, we

think of discipline as working out, eating well, controlling your temper, and of course it's all these things, but but the deeper most profound level of discipline, the magisterial discipline as I call it in the book is this. It's one thing to not do stuff that you shouldn't really do. But so much of what we don't do or re-judge and others we're not even in a position to do. Marcus Arelius and Antoninus have unlimited power they can put people to death, they can start wars, they can build enormous monuments to themselves, Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus have unlimited power that can put people to death, they can start wars, they can build enormous monuments to themselves, they do none of this. They focus on the job, they focus on doing their best, they focus on being the best people that they could possibly be, and that's their legacy, that's what discipline is really about,

that's what we have to cultivate in our own lives. Ultimately, that's what stoicism is about as well. 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. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast

from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident, not so expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there.

We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.