As soon as Commodus has gone, Marcus beckons the young officer of the night watch to lean in close and whispers something hoarsely in his ear. Then he wearily covers his head with a sheet and lapses into sleep, passing away quietly during the seventh night of his illness. In the morning, his physicians pronounce the emperor dead, and the camp is thrown into a state of anguished confusion. As news quickly reaches them, the soldiers and the people fill the streets, weeping. According to Herodian, a Roman historian who witnessed firsthand the reign of Commodus, the whole empire cried out as if in a single chorus when word spread of Marcus’s death. They grieved for the loss of him as their “Kind Father,” “Noble Emperor,” “Brave General,” and “Wise, Moderate Ruler,” and, in Herodian’s opinion, “every man spoke the truth.”
As the hubbub outside grows louder, the nervous guards ask their tribune, “What did he say?” The officer looks like he’s about to speak but then pauses for a moment. He furrows his brow in puzzlement as he relays the dead emperor’s message: “Go to the rising sun,” he said, “for I am already setting.”5 THE STORY OF STOICISM
Marcus Aurelius was the last famous Stoic of the ancient world. However, the story of Stoicism began almost five hundred years prior to his death, with a shipwreck. A wealthy young Phoenician merchant from the island of Cyprus named Zeno of Citium was transporting his cargo of purple dye across the Mediterranean. Many thousands of fermented shellfish had to be painstakingly dissected by hand to extract just a few grams of this priceless commodity, known as imperial or royal purple because it was used to dye the robes of emperors and kings. The ship was caught in a violent storm. Zeno narrowly escaped with his life and washed ashore at the Greek port of Piraeus. He watched helplessly from the beach as his precious cargo sank beneath the waves and dissolved back into the ocean from which it came.
According to one story, Zeno lost everything in this shipwreck. Devastated, he found himself living as a beggar after making his way to nearby Athens: a penniless immigrant in a foreign city. Searching for guidance about the best way to live, he trudged for miles to the Oracle of Delphi, where the god Apollo, speaking through his priestess, announced that Zeno should take on the color not of dead shellfish but of dead men. He must have been fairly bemused by this cryptic advice. Feeling completely at a loss, Zeno made his way back to Athens and collapsed in a heap at a bookseller’s stall. There he started reading what, by chance, turned out to be a series of anecdotes about Socrates, written by Xenophon, one of his most distinguished students. The words Zeno read struck him like a thunderbolt and completely transformed his life.
Greek aristocrats traditionally believed that virtue was associated with noble birth. Socrates, however, argued that classical virtues like justice, courage, and temperance were all just forms of moral wisdom, which could potentially be learned by anyone. He taught Xenophon that people should train themselves to acquire wisdom and virtue through self-discipline. After Socrates was executed, Xenophon faithfully wrote down many recollections of Socrates’s conversations about philosophy. Perhaps it was at this moment that Zeno suddenly realized what the Oracle meant: he was to “take on the color of dead men” by thoroughly absorbing the teachings of wise men from previous generations, teachings such as the very philosophical doctrines he was now reading in Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates.
Zeno dropped the book, jumped to his feet, and excitedly asked the bookseller, “Where can I find a man like this today?” It so happened that a famous Cynic philosopher called Crates of Thebes was passing by at that very moment, and the bookseller pointed him out, saying, “Follow yonder man.” Sure enough, Zeno became Crates’s follower, training in the Cynic philosophy founded by Diogenes of Sinope. Stoicism therefore evolved out of Cynicism, and the two traditions remained very closely associated right down to the time of Marcus Aurelius.
When we speak of “cynicism” (lowercase c) today, we mean something like an attitude of negativity and distrust, but that’s only very tenuously related to the meaning of capital-C “Cynicism.” The ancient philosophy of Cynicism focused on cultivating virtue and strength of character through rigorous training that consisted of enduring various forms of “voluntary hardship.” It was an austere and self-disciplined way of life. Zeno’s followers would later call it a shortcut to virtue. Nevertheless, he wasn’t completely satisfied with the Cynic philosophy and apparently found its doctrines lacking in intellectual rigor. He therefore went on to study in the Academic and Megarian schools of philosophy, founded by Plato and Euclid of Megara, respectively, two of Socrates’s most famous students. All of these schools focused on different aspects of philosophy: the Cynics on virtue and self-discipline, the Megarians on logic, and the Academics on metaphysical theories about the underlying nature of reality.
Zeno appears to have been trying to synthesize the best aspects of different Athenian philosophical traditions. However, the Cynic and Academic schools were often seen as representing fundamentally different assumptions about what it means to be a philosopher. The Cynics sneered at the pretentious and bookish nature of Plato’s Academy. The Academics, in turn, thought the doctrines of the Cynics were crude and too extreme—Plato reputedly called Diogenes “Socrates gone mad.” Zeno must have seen his own position as a compromise. His followers believed that studying philosophical theory, or subjects like logic and cosmology, can be good insofar as it makes us more virtuous and improves our character. However, it can also be a bad thing if it becomes so pedantic or overly “academic” that it diverts us from the pursuit of virtue. Marcus learned the same attitude from his Stoic teachers. He repeatedly warned himself not to become distracted by reading too many books—thus wasting time on trifling issues in logic and metaphysics—but instead to remain focused on the practical goal of living wisely.
After studying philosophy in Athens for about two decades, Zeno founded his own school in a public building overlooking the agora known as the Stoa Poikile, or “Painted Porch,” where he used to vigorously pace up and down as he discoursed on philosophy. The students who gathered there were originally known as Zenonians but later called themselves Stoics, after the stoa, or porch. It’s possible the name “Stoic” also hints at the practical, down-to-earth nature of the philosophy. It arose on the streets of Athens, out in public, near the marketplace where Socrates once spent his time discussing wisdom and virtue. The name change from Zenonians to Stoics is significant because unlike other philosophical sects, the founders of Stoicism didn’t claim to be perfectly wise. Zeno’s attitude to his students perhaps resembled the one later described by Seneca, who did not claim to be an expert like a physician but saw his role more like that of a patient describing the progress of his treatment to fellow patients in the hospital beds beside him. This stood in marked contrast to the rival school of Epicureanism, for example, which was named after its founder. Epicurus did claim to be perfectly wise, and his students were required to memorize his sayings, celebrate his birthday, and revere his image.