Teachers of rhetoric, the formal study of the language used in giving speeches and part of any young aristocrat’s curriculum in those days, were known as Sophists, reviving a Greek tradition that went back to the time of Socrates. They often included moral lessons, bits of philosophy, and other aspects of intellectual culture in their lessons. Hence our word “sophistication,” which is loosely what they sought to impart. As Socrates had long ago observed, although Sophists often sounded like they were doing philosophy, their underlying goal was to win praise by displaying verbal eloquence rather than attaining virtue for its own sake. Put simply, while they spoke a lot about wisdom and virtue, they didn’t necessarily live in accord with those values. They were usually more concerned with competing against one another to win public applause for their knowledge and eloquence. The appearance of wisdom therefore became more important to many Romans than wisdom itself. Even the emperor himself indulged in this. The Historia Augusta, one of our most important sources, says that although Hadrian was a somewhat talented writer of prose and verse in his own right, he often sought to ridicule and humiliate the teachers of these and other arts in an attempt to show he was more cultured and intelligent than them. He would get into pretentious arguments with certain teachers and philosophers, with each side issuing pamphlets and poems against the other—the ancient Roman equivalent of internet flaming or trolling.
For instance, the Sophist Favorinus of Arelate was renowned throughout the empire as one of its very finest intellectuals. He was well versed in the Skeptical philosophy of the Academy and won widespread acclaim for his rhetorical eloquence. He shamelessly buckled, though, in response to the Emperor Hadrian’s dubious assertions about the correct usage of some word. “You’re urging me down the wrong path,” Favorinus told his friends, “if you don’t allow me to regard the most learned of men as being the one who owns thirty legions.”2 Hadrian didn’t like being wrong. Worse, he carried out merciless vendettas against intellectuals who disagreed with him. Indeed, when Favorinus eventually incurred Hadrian’s disapproval, he was exiled to the Greek island of Chios. Nevertheless, for some reason Hadrian came to admire above all the integrity and plain speaking of a rather grave young noble, his Verissimus, who loved real wisdom more than the cultivated appearance of wisdom.
Hadrian was a talented, passionate, and mercurial man, the sort of person you’d describe as very clever, but not necessarily wise. Perhaps surprisingly, we’re told he was a friend of Epictetus, the most important teacher of Stoicism in the Roman Empire. We might struggle to imagine the famous Stoic putting up with Hadrian’s relentless one-upmanship. However, the emperor was clearly on very good terms with Epictetus’s most famous student, Arrian, who wrote down and edited The Discourses and Handbook. As we’ll see, Arrian rose to prominence during Hadrian’s reign. Hadrian was no philosopher, though—he viewed philosophy in the same superficial manner as the Sophists did: a source for material to show off one’s learning.
By contrast, Epictetus, in typical Stoic fashion, continually warned his students not to confuse academic learning with wisdom and to avoid petty arguments, hairsplitting, or wasting time on abstract, academic topics. He emphasized the fundamental difference between a Sophist and a Stoic: the former speaks to win praise from his audience, the latter to improve them by helping them to achieve wisdom and virtue.3 Rhetoricians thrive on praise, which is vanity; philosophers love truth and embrace humility. Rhetoric is a form of entertainment, pleasant to hear; philosophy is a moral and psychological therapy, often painful to hear because it forces us to admit our own faults in order to remedy them—sometimes the truth hurts. Epictetus’s own teacher, the Stoic Musonius Rufus, used to tell his students, “If you have leisure to praise me, I am speaking to no purpose.” Hence, the philosopher’s school, said Epictetus, is a doctor’s clinic: you should not go there expecting pleasure but rather pain.
As the years passed, Marcus would grow increasingly aware of his disillusionment with the values of the Sophists and his natural affinity with those of the Stoics. We can probably thank his mother for this to some extent. Domitia Lucilla was a remarkable woman who, like Marcus’s father, came from a distinguished Roman patrician family. She was also immensely wealthy, having inherited a vast fortune, including an important brick-and-tile factory situated near Rome. However, Marcus would later say that he was particularly influenced by the simplicity and unpretentiousness of her way of life, “far removed from that of the rich.”4
This love of simple living and distaste for the ostentatious impressed her son. Several decades later, Marcus revealed his distaste for the pretense and corruption of court life in The Meditations. He promised himself, though, that he would never again waste his time dwelling negatively on it. He added that it was only through recourse to philosophy that life at court even seemed bearable to him, and he bearable to those at court. He reminded himself that wherever it is possible to live, it is possible to live well, to live wisely, even at Rome, where he clearly felt it was a struggle to stay in tune with Stoic virtue. He found the insincerity of life at court a constant frustration, and he came to rely on Stoicism as a way of coping.5
Marcus also learned generosity from his mother. When his only sister married, Marcus gave her the inheritance his father had left him. Throughout his life, he received numerous other inheritances, and we’re told he would typically give them to the deceased’s next of kin. Decades later, during his reign as emperor at the outset of the First Marcomannic War, Marcus found that the state treasury was exhausted. He responded by holding a public auction, lasting two months, in which countless imperial treasures were sold off to raise funds for the war effort. His indifference toward wealth and the trappings of the imperial court turned out to be of great value, therefore, in responding to a serious financial crisis.
Marcus’s mother was a lover of Greek culture, and she may have introduced her son to some of the intellectuals who later became his friends and teachers. Marcus mentions that his Stoic mentor, Junius Rusticus, taught him to write letters in a very simple and unaffected style, like one in particular that Rusticus sent Marcus’s mother from Sinuessa, on the Italian coast.6 Perhaps Rusticus and Marcus’s mother had been friends for many years. Along with his mother’s love of Greek culture, some of the old-fashioned Roman values instilled in Marcus during his upbringing doubtless paved the way for his later interest in Stoic philosophy. Indeed, that may be why he reminds himself of them in the opening passages of The Meditations.
Marcus began to build on these values by training in philosophy from an exceptionally young age. The Historia Augusta says that he was already wholly dedicated to Stoic philosophy while Hadrian was alive. However, he seems to have learned about philosophy first as a practical way of life when he was still a young boy living in his mother’s house, long before he began studying philosophical theory under several eminent tutors. He first taught himself to endure physical discomfort and overcome unhealthy habits. He learned to tolerate other people’s criticisms and to avoid being easily swayed by fine words or flattery.
Mastering our passions in this way is the first stage of training in Stoicism. Epictetus called it the “Discipline of Desire,” although it encompasses both our desires and our fears or aversions. As we’ve seen, the Stoics were very much influenced by the Cynic philosophers who preceded them. Epictetus taught a form of Stoicism that held aspects of Cynicism in particularly high regard. It’s said he was known for the slogan “endure and renounce” (or “bear and forbear”). Marcus seems to recall this saying in The Meditations when he tells himself that he must aim to bear with other people’s flaws and forbear from any wrongdoing against them, while calmly accepting things outside of his direct control.7