The Daily Stoic - You Don’t Need Your Books | 9 Stoic Lessons From Roman Politics

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Marcus Aurelius loved to read and tried to always have a text from a philosopher or a playwright or a historian with him. But, as it is for all of us, we don’t always get our way—sometimes life intervenes.Turn the words into works 👉 Read to Lead: A Daily Stoic Reading Challenge | Ryan Holiday walks you through not only the system he's used for writing his bestselling books, but also the reading practice he uses in his life every day—to help him be a better professional, a better parent, and a better person: https://challenge.dailystoic.com/readtolead📚 Get Read to Lead: A Daily Stoic Reading Challenge & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here |  https://www.dailystoiclive.com/🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail--Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are.--Wealthfront’s high-yield cash account: https://www.wealthfront.com/stoicThis experience may not be representative of other Wealthfront clients, and there is no guarantee of future performance or success. Experiences will vary. Ryan Holiday, who’s a client of Wealthfront, receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage for paid testimonials in his podcast, creating a conflict of interest. More details available via the referral link. The Direct Deposit Plus Investing Program from Wealthfront Advisers LLC and Wealthfront Brokerage LLC provides eligible clients a 0.25% APY increase above the base APY on eligible Cash Account balances (up to an overall boosted rate of 4.30% for a limited time when including the three month 0.75% APY boost for new clients) when you direct deposit $1,000 a month, plus open, fund, and maintain an investing account. Wealthfront may change or end the program at any time and determine eligibility at its discretion. Terms apply. Full details at wealthfront.com/promo-terms.The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of January 30, 2026, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. References to the APY for the Wealthfront Cash Account, including any APY increase, are to the APY paid by insured depository institutions that participate in our cash sweep program (the "Program Banks”). Wealthfront Brokerage does not pay interest. Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable APY.Instant and same-day withdrawals use the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network or FedNow service. Transfers may be limited by your receiving institution, daily caps, or participating entities. New Cash Account deposits have a 2–4 day hold before transfer. Wealthfront does not charge fees for these services, but receiving institutions may impose an RTP or FedNow Fee. Processing times may vary.. Fees & Eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features.Investment advisory services are provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Securities investments are not bank deposits, bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. You don't need your books. You might think that Mark Shrelius was never far from his books. And considering he was sometimes spotted reading at the Coliseum as the gladiator games raged below, this is not far from the mark. He loved to read, and he tried always to have a text from a philosopher or a truce. dramatist or a historian with him. But as it is for all of us, we don't always get our way. Sometimes

life intervenes. And it clearly did for Marcus Aurelius. He spent years in dusty Roman army camps. He spent months on horseback over the course of his life. There would have been times, as there are for all of us, that he was in a rut and just hadn't found it in good recently. And so he laid there, staring at the ceiling or sinking or having a conversation. And perhaps that's what he's referencing in this interesting passage in meditations where he says, A philosopher without clothes and one without books, I have nothing to eat, he says, as he stands there half naked. But I subsist on the logos. And with nothing to read, Marcus says, I subsist on it too. He is saying that there is more to reading than just books. We have to

process what we read. Think about it, digest it, pull it apart. To sit with the ideas. We have to understand them. We have to do this before moving on to the next thing, before consuming more and more. To be a great reader, it's not enough that you read, it's how you read. And the best thinkers and leaders like Marcus Rios have a specific reading practice to get the most from every book that they open. From Cato to Epictetus and Marcus and James Stockdale, leaders know how to turn these words into works, as Seneca wrote. And that's what we are talking about all month in the Read to Lead challenge we're doing here with Daily Stoic, where we're trying to help you not just become a better reader, but put what you read into practice to change your life. You're going to do it

at your own pace, but we're going to be doing it together. I'm going to be recommending books. We're doing a Q&A together. And the idea is we want to help you get more out of your reading, find books that will change your life, how to digest and understand books above your level, so to speak and how to put what you read into practice. You'll put these skills to use, not just in the challenge, but hopefully for the rest of your life. If you sign up by September 22nd, you can join the live Q&A with me and thousands of other Stoics

all over the world in the Read to Lead challenge. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com slash read to lead. And remember, if you join Daily Stoic Life, you get this challenge and all our challenges for free. That's daily stoiclife.com. You think what's happening in our government right now is bad, You have no idea. The line, the corruption, the ego, the incompetence, the evil.

All of that existed in the ancient world, all of that went on right here in the Roman Forum 2. And the Stoics were in the thick of it. Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Cato, they were all politicians. They all held public office. Seneca said that's the difference between the Epicureans and the Stoics. The Epicureans only got involved in public life and politics if they had to. He said the Stoics get involved unless something prevents us.

The Stoics were not theorists. They were not outsiders. They were not academics. They were involved. They were in the fray. They were in the arena, literally and figuratively, as we have to be. Because if wise people, if good people, if people who try to live and act with virtue, if they don't seek public office, if they don't participate in public life,

if they don't vote, if they don't speak out, you know what is happening? They're seeding that floor to the people who are not. Okay, so you might think that Stoic philosophers are impossibly idealistic or impossibly theoretical or impractical. And that they might have made for bad politicians. They might have been frustrating to deal with. And to a certain extent, this is right. Cato is one of the towering stoics. He's incredibly idealistic and committed and principled.

And this causes one of the major political problems for him. I'm here in the Roman Forum. And it was probably here that Cato is approached by people. Pompey as Rome's political system is breaking down. And Pompey proposes that they become political allies and that their families intermarried and Cato's incensed. He says, I will not be bought by way of women's apartments. Even though actually it turns out his daughter was actually interested in the marriage match, he thinks that this isn't how politics should be done. Well, what Plutarch tells us is that this actually spells the end of the Roman Republic because what Pompey does instead is he

becomes allies with Caesar, who then does overthrow the Roman Republic. Pompey later breaks with Caesar, but the point is, there was this chance for Cato's principles and Pompey's political power to come together to preserve the Roman Republic. They could have collaborated, they could have done some compromise. And by the way, that's what politics is. It's about compromise and collaboration. Cicero, criticizing Cato would say that problem with Cato is that Cato thought he lived in Plato's Republic. In fact, he lived in the dregs of Romulus. He lived here in the real world.

And so this is somewhere where Marcus Aurelius adds to the political philosophy, right? Marcus Aureus actually writes explicitly in meditations. Remember, you do not live in Plato's Republic. He tried to be pragmatic. He tried to compromise. He tried to work with people who were not always amazing, right? He tried to get good out of bad people, which is something, for instance, that Lincoln was famously good at. Politics is an art.

And we have to understand that this philosophy, although it is, in many ways, impossibly idealistic, discipline, justice, wisdom. Those things also require moderation and collaboration and connection. Ultimately, they are only good insofar as you can bring them into the real world. Marks Realis talks about, he says, look, if there's brambles in the path, go around. He says, if a cucumber is bitter, throw it out. He tried to be pragmatic and realistic. He tried to get real things done in the real world. If your political philosophy, if your personal philosophy doesn't allow you to do that, what good is it? Now, there's not. no question that the Cato was an incredibly impressive and brave and principled figure.

The problem is that at times this made him not a very good politician and it made him incredibly difficult to work with. Rome's political system was janky and creaky and falling apart. It was in desperate need of updating and moderation. So Cato's sort of lowercase seat conservatism made him so resistant to change. He missed many opportunities to save the thing he was so committed The great Stoics manage to merge these two things together as we have to be able to merge them together in our own lives. Right down behind me are the ruins of Mamertine Prison, which isn't a super well-known historical site, but it should be a much better known one. In 65 BC, when Caesar wins the election of consul, there's a loser in that election. There's this sort of faux populist named Catalene.

He's from an old money family. He can't wrap his head around losing to someone like Cicero. And so he attempts a coup, he alleges, electoral fraud and all this stuff. Maybe this is sounding a little bit familiar to you. But basically, he tries to overthrow an election. And this coup attempt almost succeeds. But he's stopped the last second by Cicero. And ultimately, he's thrown in this prison,

and Cicero and Cato, two Stoics, put him on trial, and eventually he's executed. It is a narrow one thing. The Roman Republic is almost overthrown here, and it is saved by these two Stoics. I tell this story, because it is an important lesson. The Stoics were not just in the mix. They were willing to sacrifice and save and fight for their country. They did not want to be complicit. I think we can contrast

this with a couple generations later. Seneca gets this job tutoring the future emperor, a boy named Nero. And at first, Nero seems like he's going to be a good leader. The first five years of Nero known as the Quinquineum Neronus. The five good years of Nero, but the five good years don't last. And they'll give way to bad year. Nero starts to lose his mind. He becomes corrupt, he becomes deranged, he becomes cruel, he becomes an egomaniac. And Seneca turns on him eventually, inevitably, but for far too long he is complicit. He tells himself he's the adult in the room. He tells himself that he's getting good things out of a bad person. He tells himself that if he quits he'll be replaced by someone worse, all of which continues to enable Nero, to be a bad

ruler, to do bad things to people. And there are other Stoics who choose a different path, the Stoic opposition who we've talked about before, they fight back against it. Thrasia gives his life. Eventually Nero does come for Seneca. That's the irony. That's why you shouldn't be complicit. That's why you have to stand up. That's why you have to speak up. It's going to come for you eventually inevitably anyway. So you might as well do the right thing while you can. You might as well try to stop it while it still might make a difference. I'm standing here where Marcus Aurelius lived, the Emperor of Rome, in an enormous imperial palace, hundreds of rooms, slaves and soldiers, every imaginable luxury. But he said something

really interesting about it. He said, it's possible to live well even in a palace. And he might go, of course it's easy to live well in a palace. You have every amenity you could possibly imagine. That was sort of his point. He thought that these things were corruptive, thought that these things would change you. And so that's what he was trying to do in meditations. He was trying to fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. Not the soft person that the palace wanted to make him that his predecessors had been, but someone that was still within all this luxury, within all this power, within all this responsibility, still good, still decent, still humble, still hardworking, still doing his job. So that's the idea that it's possible to live well

even in a palace. It has been insanely hot here in Texas and we live in an old house and the AC cannot handle it. It just can't keep up. But you know what? Can keep up? What is always cool? My bed, thanks to my eight-sleep pod. The pod is this smart mattress cover. It cools both sides of the bed independently. My wife's at one temperature. I'm at another one.

It even gently vibrates me awake in the morning instead of an alarm. It's got built-in sensors that monitor sleep stages, heart rate, respiratory rate. It tracks your sleep, gives you sleep suggestions. And that's why pod users report up to 32% improvement in sleep quality and up to 30% more deep sleep. Use my code DailyStoic at 8Sleep.com slash daily stoic for up to $350 off and you can get 30 days to try it at home

and return it if you don't love it. One of the cool things about the internet is how it makes things that are far away close, right? It collapses some of the barriers, impediments, the artificial distinctions between us and others. There's something, I think, Kind of impersonal about shopping online. You know, it's like, here, buy this stuff.

This is what it costs. But with What Not, it's totally different. I don't know if you've tried it yet, but What Not is this live shopping app that's just really fun to use. What Not is the largest dedicated live shopping platform, beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies. Sellers are building real, thriving businesses. Anyone can sell.

Your business can be big or small can be just starting. And people selling on Whatnot. sell 10 times more than on other marketplaces because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. Whatnot users spend something like an hour a day on the app. They're not just browsing. They're engaged. They're buying. They're coming back. You go live. You show up products in real time and you turn what you love into real income. Search Whatnot. W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the app store. Download and start selling right away. So right behind me here was Augustus's house, the first emperor.

But Augustus has two Stoic teachers, Athena Doris and Arias Didomus. Okay, so what did these Stoic teachers teach first emperor of Rome? Well, they taught him when his name was Octavian. The first one was this idea that before you get angry, you should count all 24 letters of the alphabet, the Latin alphabet having only 24 letters then. Athena Doris tells Octavian that before he gets upset, he should count all of these letters. The idea in Stoicism is the pause and the reflection before you take the action, putting the impression, putting the feeling, putting the emotion to the test. It's not that we don't have the emotions, that we try not to act on the emotion in the heat of it, right?

Because this is so often when we do the thing that we regret, when we make the mistakes that cause problems for people. And then the second, this is Octavian's favorite saying, Faustina Lente, make haste slowly. Stoicism is deliberation. It's a discipline. It's not too fast, not too slow, the virtues being a midpoint between two vices. It was remarkable in the ancient world, and it's remarkable now. When Antoninus Pius becomes emperor, this is the temple dedicated to him and his wife. His wife was ecstatic. She thought, you know, we finally made it. Right. And he says, not only have we not

made it, we have lost even what we've had before. His point was that this job was going to be not just very difficult. It was going to be expensive and it was going to require them to live and operate by even stricter standards before. He was disciplined before. He was honest before, but now that he was the emperor, he would have to be even more scrupulous, even more strict, even more above reproach. I think this is the example that Marcus Aurelius was thinking of when in the depths of the Antonine plague, he sells off the palace furnishings to pay down Rome's debts.

He refuses gifts and money because it would compromise him. In our time of political corruption now, this all seems very quaint, but it is an example we should remember and try to hold our politicians too. It would be wonderful if everyone we encountered in life was honest, if they were on the level, if they were generous, if they were respectful,

if they were decent, but they're not, right? Life is full of cheaters and liars, poor losers and bad winners, and we see this in sports, right? That's why sports is such a great training now for life. Marks, and Meditations talks about, you know, when you're boxing in the ring and someone is biting or gouging or cheating, you have to decide, are you gonna throw in the towel

and quit and leave? Or said, are you gonna keep your distance a little bit, you're gonna learn from it? And then most importantly, he says the best revenge is to not be like that. To be an honest competitor, to be a good competitor, to be a good winner and a good loser. And this is the famous boxer statue. It was 2,500 years ago. Some unknown Greek artist just perfectly captured a guy who's been knocked around.

And he's clearly been gouged, he's bleeding, his cauliflower ear, struggling. One of his feet is raised. You can just see the detail of it. And that's why Marks where this metaphor is so is so vivid and timeless, just like the statue is. You're going to encounter people like that. Seneca talks about being unpleasantly surprised by that makes this blows land heaviest, makes the betrayal feel all the worse. You've got to go in with your eyes open. You've got to be aware.

You've got to accept and embrace the reality of what life is like. And then don't let it affect how you are as a competitor, except to make you better to not do those things that other people do. We know that absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Almost all the Roman emperors were bad, if not evil. We know that they sag under the responsibility, the temptations of their position. So how is this guy? How is he the one exception to that rule?

Well, this book right here is the secret. Here's a guy who is the most powerful person in the world for 20 years. He has to fight wars that he didn't start. He buries half of his children. He has to lead through a plague and natural disasters and coup attempts and personal health issues, everything you could possibly imagine. He doesn't have the good fortune that he deserves, one ancient historian laments. His whole reign is involved in a series of troubles.

So how does Marcus Aurelius get through it? How does he escape being caesarified, stained purple? How does he not break under all the strain and stress he is subjected to? This book is the answer. This book was the reason. It's because here in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius is writing notes to himself. He's practicing philosophy. He's reminding himself who he's supposed to be, what he's supposed to do, what actually matters.

Philosophy then is a practice. The fact that it survives to us as a book is a quirk is an accident. But the real benefit, the real genius of this book is what it was for the guy writing. Mark Surrealis' Meditations is a book for the writer. And then for the reader. the writer benefits from having written it and from its specificity, from the fact that it was intended for an audience of one. It somehow over the centuries had an audience of millions and if you haven't read it, you

are missing out. As they led a Roman Emperor or General through a triumphal arch, the greatest accomplishment and honor that you could receive in the ancient world to march in triumph. Supposedly on the chariot of the great general or the emperor was a person whose job to whisper in their ear. Memento Mori, Memento Mori, remember you are mortal. It wasn't a threat so much as a reminder that ego is the enemy, that you are not a God, that you are not invincible, that you may have achieved this great incredible thing. You are not that special and the rules still apply. And it's a great little whisper, a great little reminder that we can practice in our own lives in our great

moments of accomplishment to remember not just that we are mortal and that life is short, but that the the rules still apply, that ego is the enemy, that gravity is still there, that we are not exempt. It's easy to despair, it's easy to get discouraged. It's easy to wonder why we're doing all this. Why are we staying good in a world that's so bad? Well, there's a passage in Marcus Srealis' Meditations from almost 2,000 years ago that I think is worth remembering, and it's worth remembering that this was said by the most powerful

man in the world. He says, have I done something for the common good? I share in the benefits. He said, try to stay centered on that and not to give up. You do something good. It's good. It's good for you. It's good for the world. Whether you're thanked for it, whether you're appreciated for it, whether it's reciprocated, that's not in your control. Keep doing good. Do good because it's good. Try to stay centered on that and try not to give up. It doesn't matter what other people are getting away with. It doesn't matter what's being recognized or celebrated. What matters is that we accept what's outside of our control. We treat people as they should be treated.

We approach our thoughts with care and try to remain rational in a time of irrational. Irrationality.