It was there that Musonius sat, some seven hundred miles from home, wondering if he would need to follow his own advice and courageously wait for death.
Why didn’t he kill himself? As he had suggested to Thrasea? He had reminded Thrasea that there is no reason to choose a heavier misfortune if we can make do with the one in front of us. We can train ourselves to be satisfied with the difficulties fortune has chosen to give us. Besides, Musonius believed he still had living to do. “One who by living is of use to many,” he said, “has not the right to choose to die unless by dying he may be of use to more.”
So he lived and studied—as we must—as long as it was in his control to keep doing so well and for the greater good.
Gyara is a very dry, harsh island that today is unpopulated, but Musonius seized every opportunity he could to live by his teachings and to be of use to people around him.* According to one source, he discovered an underground spring on the island, earning him the eternal gratitude of his fellow residents, most of whom were also political exiles. It’s clear that he believed that exile was not an evil or a hardship, but merely a kind of test—a chance to move closer to virtue if one so chose. So he did, rededicating himself to teaching and writing, playing advisor to the philosophers and dignitaries who visited him from across the Mediterranean.
A testament to Musonius’s growing fame and the inspirational example he cast in those dark times is seen in the fictional letters of a man named Apollonius of Tyana. In one exchange, Apollonius says he dreams of boldly rescuing Musonius from Gyara. Musonius writes back to say that he won’t need it, because a true man undertakes to prove his own innocence and therefore has control of his own liberation. Apollonius replies that he worries that Musonius will die like Socrates. Musonius has no intention of going so quietly. “Socrates died because he was not prepared to defend himself,” he supposedly says, “but I will.”
Another exchange captures Musonius’s fighting spirit. We are told that Demetrius the Cynic—who had been with Thrasea during his last moments—encountered Musonius, bound in chains and digging with a pickaxe on a chain gang for one of Nero’s canals. “Does it pain you, Demetrius,” Musonius was said to reply, “if I dig the Isthmus for the sake of Greece? What would you have felt if you had seen me playing the lyre like Nero?” The dates on this encounter make it hard to trust, as the canal was being constructed during the time of his confinement to Gyara, but these stories nonetheless give us an insight into the reputation of Musonius’s character.
Whether he was providing for thirsty islanders or digging a canal for the benefit of Greece, the hardship of exile was not enough to break the will of a true philosopher. But what of all the comforts he was deprived of? Musonius chose to think about what he still had access to—the sun, water, air. When he missed the amenities of Rome, friends, or the freedom to travel, he reminded himself and his fellow exiles that “when we were home, we did not enjoy the whole earth, nor did we have contact with all men.” And then he got back to spending his time in Gyara doing what he did best—finding opportunities to do good.
Because for a Stoic, this chance is always there. Even in the worst of circumstances. As bad as exile—or any adversity—is, it can make you better, if you so choose.
“Exile transformed Diogenes from an ordinary person into a philosopher,” he said later, speaking not of the Stoic but of the famous Cynic from before Zeno’s time. “Instead of sitting around in Sinope, he spent his time in Greece, and in his practice of virtue he surpassed the other philosophers. Exile strengthened others who were unhealthy because of soft living and luxury: it forced them to follow a more manly lifestyle. We know that some were cured of chronic illnesses in exile. . . . They say that others who indulged in soft living were cured of gout, even though they previously had been laid low by it. Exile, by accustoming them to live more austerely, restored their health. Thus, by improving people, exile helps them more than it hurts them with respect to both body and soul.”
Musonius would have never been so conceited as to claim he was improved by his own exile, but the fact of the matter is that he was.
Where did this incredible strength and skill come from? Musonius Rufus believed that we were like doctors, treating ourselves with reason. The power to think clearly, to get to the truth of a matter, that was what nursed that rock-hard, unbreakable citadel of a soul that he had. He was not interested in shortcuts, he said, or smelling salts that “revive . . . but do not cure the disease.”
And he was a serious proponent of the “manly” life that exile necessitated. When he was in Rome, even at the height of his powers, Musonius sought out cold, heat, thirst, hunger, and hard beds. He familiarized himself with the uncomfortable feelings these conditions brought about and taught himself to be patient, even happy, while experiencing them. By this training, he said, “the body is strengthened and becomes capable of enduring hardship, sturdy and ready for any task.” Exile did come, and he was ready body and soul. Good times returned as well, and for this he was ready too.
When Galba succeeded Nero in 68 AD, Musonius was allowed to return to Rome and resume his teaching. His stature would grow over the next decade, and eventually Epictetus, a long-suffering former slave of one of Nero’s secretaries, would be added to the ranks of his students. Could a teacher who had experienced less adversity, who was less determined and self-sufficient, have reached a student like that—who had had such a difficult life?
When the student is ready, the teacher appears . . . and sometimes the perfect student is exactly what’s needed to bring out the best in a teacher.
Musonius had a habit of turning away students to test their resolve. We can imagine him trying this tactic on Epictetus, who, after three decades of being told what he could and could not do, would have risen to the challenge. “A stone, because of its makeup, will return to earth if you throw it up in the air,” Epictetus recounts Musonius telling him. “Likewise, the more one pushes the intelligent person away from the life he was born for, the more he inclines towards it.”
Like Epictetus, he had cultivated a distinct distaste for the rich and the corruptions of their money. So he liked to taunt them. We’re told by one witness that Musonius once awarded a thousand sesterces to a charlatan posing as a philosopher. When someone stepped in to say that this man was a liar and unworthy of such a gift, Musonius was amused. “Money,” he replied, “is exactly what he deserves.”
One might think that after two painful exiles, Musonius would spend some time lying low. That’s certainly how Seneca or Cicero would have played it. Rome was in a state of flux and fear—three more emperors would follow Galba within months—but Musonius made no effort to hide what he thought was the proper way to live and act.
In fact, his entire approach was to be indifferent to who was in power.
In the waning days of Vitellius’s reign, with the looming threat of Vespasian’s armies marching on Rome, Musonius agreed to serve as an emissary to forestall the conflict. His partner in the mission, Arulenus Rusticus—whom Thrasea had advised with some of his last words to consider what kind of politician he would be—was badly wounded in a scuffle. Tacitus tells us that Musonius threw his own body into the fray and was nearly trampled to death by the troops he was attempting to warn against engaging in civil strife.
Musonius’s calls went unheeded—in fact he was heckled—and soon blood flowed in the streets. Vitellius was torn limb from limb by an angry mob not far from where his predecessor, Galba, had died. Now Vespasian was the emperor and Rome was yet again under the command of a strongman.