His dictum in life and in leadership was simple and straightforward: “Do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.” No better expression or embodiment of Stoicism is found in his line (and his living of that line) than: “Waste no more time talking about what a good man is like. Be one.”
Yet there is, in studying Marcus’s life, an impression that he was somehow different, made of special stock that made his many difficult decisions easier. The common perception of Stoicism only compounds this—that somehow the Stoics were beyond pain, beyond material desire, beyond bodily desires.
But Marcus would not have accepted this explanation, for it sells short the training and the struggle he experienced as he worked to get better. “Alone of the emperors,” the historian Herodian would write of Marcus Aurelius, “he gave proof of his learning not by mere words or knowledge of philosophical doctrines but by his blameless character and temperate way of life.”
And underneath this learning and character, he was still a human being.
We know that Marcus Aurelius was brought to tears like one, that he felt the same pain and losses and frustrations that everyone feels. We’re told quite vividly by the Historia Augusta that Marcus wept when he was told that his favorite tutor had passed away. We know that he cried one day in court, when he was overseeing a case and the attorney mentioned the countless souls who perished in the plague still ravaging Rome.
We can imagine Marcus cried many other times. This was a man who was betrayed by one of his most trusted generals. This was a man who one day lost his wife of thirty-five years. This was a man who lost eight children, including all but one of his sons.
Marcus didn’t weep because he was weak. He didn’t weep because he was un-Stoic. He cried because he was human. Because these very painful experiences made him sad. “Neither philosophy nor empire,” Antoninus said sympathetically as he let his son sob, “takes away natural feeling.”
So Marcus Aurelius must have lost his temper on occasion, or he never would have had cause to write in his Meditations—which was never intended for publication—about the need to keep it under control. We know that he lusted, we know that he feared, we know that he fantasized about his rivals disappearing.
It was not all emotions he worked on domesticating, but the harmful ones, the ones that would make him betray what he believed. “Start praying like this and you’ll see,” he wrote to himself. “Not ‘some way to sleep with her’—but a way to stop wanting to. Not ‘some way to get rid of him’—but a way to stop trying. Not ‘some way to save my child’—but a way to lose your fear.”*
The wife of George Marshall, another great man of equal stature, in describing her husband would capture what made Marcus Aurelius so truly impressive:
In many of the articles and interviews I have read about General Marshall the writers speak of his retiring nature and his modesty. . . . No, I do not think I would call my husband retiring or overly modest. I think he is well aware of his powers, but I also think this knowledge is tempered by a sense of humility and selflessness such as I have seen in few strong men.
If Marcus had naturally been perfect, there would be little to admire. That he wasn’t is the whole point. He worked his way there, as we all can.
It should be noted that Marcus himself would not want us to be shamed by his example but be reminded of our own capacities. “Recognize that if it’s humanly possible,” he said both to us and to himself, “you can do it too.”
Marcus Aurelius managed to not be corrupted by power, managed to not be afraid as he faced a terrible epidemic, managed to not be too angered by betrayal, nor utterly broken by unfathomable personal tragedy. What does that mean? It means you can do the same.
At the core of Marcus Aurelius’s power as a philosopher and a philosopher king seems to be a pretty simple exercise that he must have read about in Seneca’s writings and then in Epictetus’s: the morning or evening review. “Every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand,” Epictetus had said. “Write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them.”
So much of what we know about Marcus Aurelius’s philosophical thinking comes from the fact that for years he did that. He was constantly jotting down reminders and aphorisms of Stoic thinking to himself. Indeed, his only known work, Meditations, is filled with quotes from Chrysippus, allusions to themes from the writings of Panaetius and Zeno, stories about Socrates, poems from Aristophanes, exercises from Epictetus as well as all sorts of original interpretations of Stoic wisdom. The title of Meditations, which dates to 167 AD, translates from ta eis heauton, “to himself.” This captures the essence of the book perfectly, for Marcus truly was writing for himself, as anyone who has read Meditations can easily feel.
How else can we understand notes that reference, without explanation, “the way [Antoninus Pius] accepted the customs agent’s apology at Tusculum,” or even more obliquely, speaking of moments of divine intervention, when he writes only, “the one at Caiteta.” These were moments far too insignificant to have made the historical record but that influenced the author, the man, enough that he remembered them decades later and was still mulling them over.
Meditations is not a book for the reader, it was a book for the author. Yet this is what makes it such an impressive piece of writing, one of the great literary feats of all time. Somehow in writing exclusively to and for himself, Marcus Aurelius managed to produce a book that has not only survived through the centuries, but is still teaching and helping people today. As the philosopher Brand Blanshard would observe in 1984:
Few care now about the marches and countermarches of the Roman commanders. What the centuries have clung to is a notebook of thoughts by a man whose real life was largely unknown who put down in the midnight dimness not the events of the day or the plans of the morrow, but something of far more permanent interest, the ideals and aspirations that a rare spirit lived by.
The opening pages of Meditations reveal that spirit quite well, for the book begins with a section entitled “Debts and Lessons.” Across seventeen entries and some twenty-one hundred words (a full ten percent of the book), Marcus takes the time to acknowledge and codify the lessons he had learned from the important people in his life. In the privacy of these pages, he recognized his grandfather for his courtesy and serenity of temper; his father for manliness without ostentation; his mother for piety and generosity; his tutor for instilling a positive work ethic; the gods for surrounding him with good people. He even thanks—not to put too fine a point on it—Rusticus for teaching him “not to write treatises on abstract questions, or deliver moralizing little sermons, or compose imaginary descriptions of The Simple Life or The Man Who Lives Only for Others.”
Why was he writing this if it would never be seen? If the people would never fully know what they meant to him? Marcus explains:
When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them. It’s good to keep this in mind.
What Marcus was using this writing for, then, is for the true intended purpose of Stoicism—for getting better, for preparing himself for what life had in store. In Book Two, he opens by noting that the people he will meet in the course of the upcoming day will be surly and rude and selfish and stupid. Was this to excuse himself from good behavior? Or to justify despair? No, Marcus wrote, “no one can implicate me in ugliness,” nor could they hurt him or make him angry. He had to love people—the people. He had to be ready . . . and be good.