How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

3. CONTEMPLATING THE SAGE

As a young man, Marcus Aurelius frequently became very angry, often struggling to avoid losing his temper. Later in life he would thank the gods that he had been able to restrain himself from doing something in those moments that he might otherwise have regretted. He’d seen the damage caused by Hadrian’s temper. During one infamous tantrum, the emperor had poked out the eye of some poor slave with the point of an iron stylus, presumably to the horror of onlookers. Once he’d come back to his senses, Hadrian apologetically asked the man if there was anything he could do to make it up to him. “All I want is my eye back,” came the reply.¹

His successor, Antoninus, was famously gentle and even-tempered, quite the opposite of Hadrian. In the first book of The Meditations, Marcus contemplates his adoptive father’s virtues several times, even referring to himself as Antoninus’s disciple, but Marcus makes no mention of any virtues possessed by Hadrian. Marcus clearly viewed Antoninus as the model of an ideal ruler, everything he aspired to become himself. Indeed, over a decade after Antoninus’s death, Marcus was still carefully meditating on his example.

The Stoics taught Marcus that anger is nothing but temporary madness and that its consequences are often irreparable, as in the case of the slave’s eye. They also provided him with the psychological concepts and set of tools he needed to master his own feelings of aggression. Marcus clearly wanted to be more like the humble, peaceful Antoninus than the arrogant and volatile Hadrian. He needed help achieving this, though. Ironically, he credits the man who most frequently provoked his anger with teaching him how to control it. Marcus’s Stoic mentor Junius Rusticus often infuriated him, but also showed him how to recover his normal frame of mind. As we’ll see, the Stoics had many specific techniques for anger management. One of them is to wait until our feelings have naturally abated and then calmly consider what someone wise would do in a similar situation. Marcus also learned from Rusticus how to be reconciled with others as soon as they were willing to make amends. Perhaps that was how Rusticus conducted himself when he detected that Marcus was becoming angry, providing an example of gracious behavior that Marcus studied and emulated.

Whereas Apollonius was a professional philosophy lecturer, Rusticus, also an expert on Stoicism, probably acted more as a mentor or private tutor. A Roman statesman of consular rank, Rusticus was roughly twenty years Marcus’s senior. He appears to have been the grandson of a famous Stoic called Arulenus Rusticus, a friend and follower of Thrasea, the leader of the Stoic Opposition—a political hero to Epictetus and his students. Rusticus himself was a highly esteemed man, both in private and public life. He was also intensely loyal to Marcus. Fronto, with typical hyperbole, says in his private letters that Rusticus “would gladly surrender and sacrifice his life” to preserve Marcus’s little finger. Marcus clearly revered Rusticus, soon came to view himself as the Stoic’s disciple, and remained devoted to him for decades, even after becoming emperor. For example, it was the custom in the imperial court for the emperor to greet his praetorian prefect with a kiss on the lips, but Marcus broke with this convention by always kissing Rusticus first when they met, as if he were greeting his own brother. This gesture made it clear to everyone that the philosopher occupied a special position at court. If Antoninus was Marcus’s role model as an emperor, Rusticus undoubtedly provided the main example he sought to follow as a Stoic. As Marcus said elsewhere, philosophy was his mother, the court merely his stepmother.²

There’s no doubt that Rusticus was the central figure in Marcus’s development as a philosopher. However, Marcus makes it clear that one of the most important events in their relationship was when his tutor presented him with a set of notes on the lectures of Epictetus from his own personal library. Marcus probably meant the Discourses recorded by Arrian, which he quotes several times in The Meditations. As we’ve seen, Arrian was a student of Epictetus who transcribed eight volumes of his philosophical discussions, only four of which survive. We also have his shorter summary of Epictetus’s sayings, the Handbook, or Enchiridion. Arrian was a prolific author in his own right and a highly accomplished Roman general and statesman. Hadrian made him a senator and later appointed him suffect consul for 131 AD, and he then served for six years as governor of Cappadocia, one of the most important military posts in the empire. During the reign of Antoninus, he retired to Athens, where he later served as archon, ruler and chief magistrate, before dying around the start of Marcus’s reign. It’s possible that Arrian is the missing link that connects Marcus and Rusticus to Epictetus.

Arrian was about a decade older than Rusticus, and they likely knew each other. Indeed, Themistius, a Roman philosopher of the fourth century, speaks of them together. Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus, he says, “pulled Arrian and Rusticus away from their books, refusing to let them be mere pen-and-ink philosophers.”³ The emperors didn’t let Arrian and Rusticus write about courage while remaining safely at home, composing legal treatises while avoiding public life, or pondering the best form of administration while abstaining from participation in the government of Rome, we’re told. Instead, they were escorted from the study of Stoic philosophy “to the general’s tent and to the speaker’s platform.” Themistius adds that while serving as Roman generals, Arrian and Rusticus “passed through the Caspian Gates, drove the Alani out of Armenia, and established boundaries for the Iberians and the Albani.” In reward for these military achievements, the two were appointed consuls, and they governed the great city of Rome and presided over the Senate. The examples of men like these who went before Marcus—statesmen and military commanders inspired by Stoicism—encouraged him to believe he could be both an emperor and a philosopher.

We know that Rusticus was appointed consul for the second time the year after Marcus was acclaimed emperor. He also served as urban prefect from 162 to 168 AD, effectively making him Marcus’s right-hand man at Rome during the first phase of his reign. Rusticus died shortly after this period, perhaps another victim of the plague, and Marcus asked the Senate to erect several statues in his honor. As with his other tutors, Marcus kept a statuette of Rusticus in his personal shrine and offered sacrifices to his memory. So that leaves us with an odd question: What exactly did Rusticus do to irritate the future emperor so badly?

The answer may lie in the nature of their relationship. Marcus tells himself in The Meditations that when learning to read and write you cannot be a teacher without having first been a student, and that this is even truer for the art of living.⁴ Students of Stoicism benefited from the wisdom of their teachers by treating them both as models, whose behavior they sought to emulate, and mentors, to whose advice they could listen. Rusticus certainly provided a living example of wisdom and virtue to Marcus. In The Meditations he mentions that Rusticus was one of three tutors, along with Apollonius of Chalcedon and Sextus of Chaeronea, who exemplified Stoicism for him as a way of life. He was also there to counsel him, though, offering guidance and moral correction. Indeed, Marcus said that it was Rusticus who showed him that he was in need of moral training and Stoic psychological therapy (therapeia). This may explain the tension in their relationship. Marcus clearly loved Rusticus dearly as a friend and looked up to him as a teacher, but he also found him exasperating at times, presumably because he frequently drew the young Caesar’s attention to flaws in his character.

We can perhaps infer which aspects of Marcus’s character Rusticus challenged based upon comments in The Meditations. For example, Rusticus taught him not to be pretentious, encouraging him to dress like a normal citizen when possible. He also taught Marcus to be a careful and patient student of philosophy, to read attentively rather than just skimming things, and not to be swayed too easily by speakers who have a silver tongue. Epictetus likewise told his students repeatedly that they should not speak about philosophy lightly, like the Sophists, but rather show its fruits in their very character and actions. In typically blunt fashion he told them that sheep don’t vomit up grass to show the shepherds how much they’ve eaten but rather digest their food inwardly and produce good wool and milk outwardly.⁵

The most important change Rusticus brought about, however, was that he persuaded Marcus to sideline the formal study of Latin rhetoric, expected of a Roman noble, in favor of a greater commitment to Stoic philosophy as a way of life. Rusticus the philosopher and Fronto the rhetorician, Marcus’s two most important tutors, appear to have vied for his attention for nearly a decade, but Rusticus finally won. Scholars date this “conversion” to around 146 AD, when Marcus was twenty-five. He confesses in a letter to Fronto that he has been unable to concentrate on his studies in Latin rhetoric. He is overcome with a mixture of joy and anguish after reading some books by a philosopher named Aristo. Most scholars believe this must have been Aristo of Chios, a student of Zeno’s who had rebelled against his teachings and adopted a simpler and more austere version of Stoicism resembling Cynicism. Perhaps Rusticus or one of his other Stoic tutors shared these writings with Marcus. Aristo rejected the study of logic and metaphysics, arguing that the primary concern of philosophers should be the study of ethics, an attitude we can find echoed in The Meditations.

Marcus told Fronto that Aristo’s writings tormented him, making him conscious of how far his own character fell short of virtue. “Your pupil blushes over and over again and grows angry with himself because, at the age of twenty-five, I have not yet absorbed any of these excellent teachings and purer principles into my soul.”⁶ The young Caesar was genuinely in turmoil. He felt depressed and angry and lost his appetite. He also mentions feeling envious of others, perhaps meaning that he yearned to dedicate himself to Stoicism and become like the philosophers he admired. It was around this time that Marcus began to distance himself from Sophists like Fronto and Herodes Atticus.

What was the process of being mentored by a Stoic philosopher actually like, though? Why did it have such a profound and lasting impact on Marcus? The Stoics wrote several books describing their psychotherapy of the passions, including one by Chrysippus, the third head of the school, titled The Therapeutics. Unfortunately, these are all lost to us today. However, a treatise titled On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s Passions survives, written by Marcus’s celebrated physician, Galen. A polymath with an eclectic taste in philosophy, Galen had initially studied under a Stoic called Philopater, and he drew upon early Stoic philosophy, quoting Zeno, in his own account of diagnosing and curing unhealthy passions. This may give us some clues about the nature of the Stoic “therapy” Marcus went through with Rusticus.

As a young man, Galen wondered why the Delphic Oracle’s maxim to “know thyself” should be held in such high regard. Doesn’t everyone already know himself? He gradually came to realize, though, that only the very wisest among us ever truly know ourselves. The rest of us, as Galen observed, tend to fall into the trap of supposing either that we are completely without fault or that our flaws are few, mild, and infrequent. Indeed, those who assume that they have the fewest flaws are often the ones most deeply flawed in the eyes of others. This is illustrated by one of Aesop’s fables, which says that each of us is born with two sacks suspended from our neck: one filled with the faults of others that hangs within our view and one hidden behind our back filled with our own faults. We see the flaws of others quite clearly, in other words, but we have a blind spot for our own. The New Testament likewise asks why we look at the tiny splinter of wood in our brother’s eye yet pay no attention to the great plank of wood obscuring our own view (Matthew 7:3–5). Galen says that Plato explained this well when he said that lovers are typically blind regarding the one they love. As we, in a sense, loves ourselves most of all, we are also most blind with regard to our own faults. The majority of us therefore struggle to attain the self-awareness required to improve our lives.

Galen’s solution to this problem is for us to find a suitable mentor in whose wisdom and experience we can genuinely trust. Anyone can tell when a singer is truly dreadful, but it takes an expert to notice very subtle flaws in a performance. Likewise, it takes a person of moral wisdom to discern slight defects in another person’s character. We all know that someone is angry when their face turns red and they start yelling, but a true expert on human nature would be able to tell when someone is just on the verge of getting angry, perhaps before they even realize it themselves. We should therefore make the effort to acquire an older and wiser friend: one renowned for honesty and plain speaking, who has mastered the same passions with which we need help, who can properly identify our vices and tell us frankly where we’re going astray in life. What Galen is describing sounds somewhat like the relationship between a modern-day counselor or psychotherapist and their client. However, a better comparison would probably be with the mentoring or “sponsorship” provided by recovering drug or alcohol addicts to those who are in recovery and struggling with similar habits—the help of a more experienced fellow patient, as Seneca puts it. Of course, finding an appropriate mentor is still easier said than done.

Marcus wrote that anyone who truly wants to achieve wisdom through Stoicism will make it his priority in life to cultivate his own character and seek help from others who share similar values.⁷ That seems like the role Junius Rusticus played for him. We should ask that person if they notice any unhealthy passions in us, says Galen, assuring them that we’re not going to be offended if they speak frankly. Galen also explains that the novice is bound to feel that some of his mentor’s observations are unfair, but he must learn to listen patiently and take criticism on the chin without becoming irritated. From what Marcus says, that was probably quite challenging for him at first, although Rusticus was good at smoothing things over.

Marcus had another Stoic tutor, called Cinna Catulus, about whom we know very little. Marcus observed that Catulus was a man who paid attention to his friends when they found fault in his character; even if they did so unjustly, he would always try to address matters and restore their friendship.⁸ Through their own behavior, therefore, Rusticus and Catulus both showed Marcus that a wise man should welcome criticism from his friends.

The Stoics clearly inherited their love of plain speaking from their predecessors the Cynics, who were renowned for speaking very bluntly and criticizing even powerful rulers. In a sense, it was the duty, and privilege, of a true philosopher to speak truth to power. One of the most famous legends about Diogenes the Cynic tells how Alexander the Great sought out the philosopher. It’s a juxtaposition of opposites: Diogenes lived like a beggar, and Alexander was the most powerful man in the known world. However, when Alexander asked Diogenes if there was anything he could do for him, the Cynic is supposed to have replied that he could step aside, as he was blocking the sun. Diogenes could speak to Alexander as if they were equals because he was indifferent to wealth and power. Alexander is said to have walked off and returned to his conquests, apparently without having gained much wisdom.

As was often the case, the Stoics adopted a more moderate approach, and they were concerned that their speech should not only be honest and simple but also appropriate to the needs of the hearer. There’s no point in speaking plainly to people if it doesn’t benefit them. Throughout The Meditations, Marcus makes many references to the value he places on speaking the truth, but he also consistently recognizes the importance of communicating it appropriately. For instance, Alexander of Cotiaeum, his childhood grammarian, made a lifelong impression on Marcus by the tactful way he would correct those making a verbal error.⁹ If someone used a word incorrectly, Alexander would not overtly criticize the speaker. He never interrupted them or challenged them on the spot. Instead, the grammarian had a more artful and indirect way of steering them in the right direction. Marcus noticed that Alexander would subtly drop in the correct expression while replying or discussing some other topic. If the real goal for Stoics is wisdom, then sometimes just blurting out the truth isn’t enough. We have to put more effort into communicating with others effectively.

Diplomacy was, of course, particularly important to Marcus. His duties as Caesar and later as emperor involved handling highly sensitive discussions, such as negotiations over peace treaties with foreign enemies. We can clearly see from his personal correspondence that he was a charming and tactful man with an impressive ability to resolve conflicts between his friends. Indeed, Fronto waxes lyrical about this, extolling his young student’s ability to unite all his friends together in harmony, something the rhetorician compares to the mythic power of Orpheus to tame savage beasts through the music of his lyre. Throughout Marcus’s reign, he doubtlessly averted many serious problems through his patient diplomacy and sensitive use of language. Indeed, he even reminds himself that he should always be tactful and honest with whoever he’s speaking to, especially in the Senate.¹⁰

In addition to having this innate talent, Marcus learned a great deal from the Stoics about how a wise man should try to communicate with others. Apollonius of Chalcedon, for instance, was not a man to hold back his words, yet he balanced his self-confidence with open-mindedness. Marcus describes how another of his most beloved teachers, Sextus of Chaeronea, came across as both very serious and plainspoken, yet he was exceptionally patient with the unlearned, and even the opinionated. Correcting someone else’s vices, Marcus says, is like pointing out that they have bad breath—it requires considerable tact. However, he noticed that Sextus won the respect of all sorts of people by skillfully adapting his conversation so that it seemed more charming than any flattery, even while he was speaking frankly or disagreeing with them. Clearly, Stoics like Marcus placed a lot more value on manners and civility than the Cynics did. The Stoics realized that to communicate wisely, we must phrase things appropriately. Indeed, according to Epictetus, the most striking characteristic of Socrates was that he never became irritated during an argument. He was always polite and refrained from speaking harshly even when others insulted him. He patiently endured much abuse and yet was able to put an end to most quarrels in a calm and rational manner.¹¹

We can imagine that when Rusticus challenged Marcus over his behavior, his remarks, though sometimes provocative and close to the bone, were probably judicious enough that his young student benefited from them without feeling humiliated. How can we find mentors with such tact, though? Galen admits that you’re not likely to meet many people like Diogenes the Cynic, who was brave enough even to speak plainly to Alexander the Great. What’s required first is a more general openness to criticism: we should give everyone we meet permission to tell us what our faults are, according to Galen, and resolve not to be angry with any of them. Indeed, Marcus tells himself both to enter into every man’s mind, to study their judgments and values, and to let every man enter into his.¹² If anyone gives him a valid reason to believe that he’s going astray in terms of either thought or action, he says he will gladly change his ways. Marcus sought to make it his priority in life to get to the truth of matters, reminding himself that nobody has ever really been harmed in this way but that those who cling to error and ignorance harm themselves.¹³ We’re told this advice goes back to Zeno. Most men are eager to point out their neighbors’ flaws, he said, whether we ask them to or not. So instead of resenting it, we should welcome criticism from others as one of life’s inevitabilities and turn it to our advantage by making all men into our teachers. Galen therefore says that if we desire to learn wisdom, we must be ready to listen to anyone we encounter and show gratitude “not to those who flatter us but to those who rebuke us.”¹⁴

This doesn’t mean we should trust all opinions equally, of course. Marcus makes it clear that we must train ourselves to discriminate good advice from bad and learn not to preoccupy ourselves with the opinions of foolish people. It’s prudent to listen carefully to most of the people we meet in life but not to give equal weight to all opinions. Rather, by welcoming criticism and accepting it dispassionately, we can gradually learn to sort through it rationally and discern good advice from bad. Sometimes, indeed, we learn most from the mistakes of others. However, as Galen observes, we should place more trust in the counsel of individuals who provide us with consistent evidence of their wisdom and virtue. Nevertheless, if we exercise caution we can learn from all people while we look for someone like Rusticus, a friend whose wisdom we can trust implicitly.

For a relationship of this kind to work, though, the student must be scrupulously honest with their mentor. In one passage, Marcus imagines a wise teacher instructing someone to think of nothing he would be unwilling to say aloud, uncensored, as soon as it comes into his mind. Marcus doubts that the majority of us could really endure this for even a single day because we foolishly put more value on other people’s opinions than on our own. And yet he aspired to this level of transparency. He says that we should imagine someone asking “What’s going on right now in your mind?” without warning and that we should be able to answer truthfully without feeling the need to blush. Marcus says he wants his soul to be naked and simple, more visible even than the body that surrounds it. Elsewhere he goes even further and, like a Cynic, says we should never crave anything in life that requires walls or curtains. On one hand, these are expressions of Marcus’s desire to work toward a lofty moral ideal: being so pure of heart that he has nothing to hide from anyone. However, he’s also alluding to a very powerful therapeutic strategy. Being observed can help us develop greater self-awareness and correct our behavior, especially if we’re in the presence of someone we admire, such as a trusted mentor. Even in the absence of your own Rusticus, however, just imagining that you’re being observed by someone wise and benevolent can potentially have similar benefits, especially if you pretend that your innermost thoughts and feelings are somehow visible to them.¹⁵

If we wish to improve ourselves, Galen says that we must never relax our vigilance, not even for a single hour. How on earth do we do that? He explains that Zeno of Citium taught that “we should act carefully in all things—just as if we were going to answer for it to our teachers shortly thereafter.”¹⁶ That’s a rather clever mind trick that turns Stoic mentoring into a kind of mindfulness practice. Imagining that we’re being observed helps us to pay more attention to our own character and behavior. A Stoic-in-training, like the young Marcus, would have been advised always to exercise self-awareness by monitoring his own thoughts, actions, and feelings, perhaps as if his mentor, Rusticus, were continually observing him. Epictetus told his students that, just as someone who walks barefoot is cautious not to step on a nail or twist his ankle, they should be careful throughout the day not to harm their own character by lapsing into errors of moral judgment.¹⁷ In modern therapy, it’s common for clients who are making progress to wonder between sessions what their therapist might say about the thoughts they have. For example, they might be worrying about something and suddenly imagine the voice of their therapist challenging them with questions like “Where’s the evidence for those fears being true?” or “How’s worrying like this actually working out for you?” The very notion of someone else observing your thoughts and feelings can be enough to make you pause and consider them. Of course, if you occasionally talk to a mentor or therapist about your experiences, it’s much easier to imagine their presence when they’re not around. Even if you don’t have someone like this in your life, you can still envision that you’re being observed by a wise and supportive friend. If you read about Marcus Aurelius enough, for instance, you may experiment by imagining that he’s your companion as you perform some challenging task or face a difficult situation. How would you behave differently just knowing he was by your side? What do you think he might say about your behavior? If he could read your mind, how would he comment on your thoughts and feelings? You can pick your own mentor, of course, but you get the idea.

I think it’s possible that this is, in part, what Marcus was doing by writing The Meditations. Rusticus probably died around 170 AD, while Marcus was away commanding the legions on the northern frontier during the First Marcomannic War. There is some evidence to suggest he may have started work on The Meditations around the same time. It’s tempting then to wonder if he did so in response to the loss of his friend and tutor. As we’ve seen, Marcus described being surrounded by people who opposed his views and even wished him gone. It sounds as though he really felt the absence at this time of a friend like Rusticus who shared his philosophical beliefs and most cherished values.

If Marcus did start creating these notes for himself shortly after the loss of his Stoic mentor, his purpose may have been to assume responsibility for mentoring himself. Even today, writing exercises such as keeping a therapy journal are a popular form of self-help. However, in addition to aphorisms crafted by Marcus and sayings he quoted from famous poets and philosophers, The Meditations contains little snippets of dialogue. These could be quotations from lecture notes, such as the copy of Epictetus’s Discourses that Rusticus gave him. Or they could be fictional dialogues invented by Marcus, using his imagination to conjure up an inner mentor. Perhaps they were even fragments of remembered conversations Marcus may have had with his tutors many years earlier. For example, one of them can be paraphrased as follows:

TEACHER: Piece by piece, one action after another, you must build up your life and be content if each individual act, as far as Fate permits, achieves its goal.

STUDENT: But what if there is some external obstacle that prevents me from achieving my goal?

TEACHER: There can be no obstacle to a man’s efforts to approach things wisely, justly, and with self-awareness.

STUDENT: But what if some outward aspect of my behavior is hindered?

TEACHER: Well, then a cheerful acceptance of that hindrance is required, along with a tactful shift to doing what circumstances allow. This will enable you to substitute another course of action, one in keeping with the overall scheme of life that we’re talking about.¹⁸

Galen suggested that imitating a role model is more appropriate in our youth. Later in life, as we take more responsibility for our own character, it becomes important to follow specific philosophical principles and practice living by them. Over the years, with more experience, we should develop more self-awareness and become able to spot our own errors without needing the help of a mentor. Moreover, we gradually learn to weaken passions such as anger through disciplined practice and checking their expression at an early stage. Doing this frequently will eventually make us less prone to experiencing such feelings in the first place. Marcus had trained in philosophy for over three decades by the time Rusticus passed away. So as he began writing The Meditations, he was probably well prepared to enter the next phase in his psychological development as a Stoic. HOW TO FOLLOW YOUR VALUES

The term “mentor” comes from Homer’s Odyssey. Athena, the goddess of wisdom and virtue, disguises herself as a friend of Odysseus named Mentor so that she can counsel his son Telemachus, who is in grave danger. She remains by their side during the ultimate battle against Odysseus’s enemies, encouraging the hero toward victory. Marcus said that even aspiring Stoics should not be ashamed to seek the help of others, just as an injured soldier besieging a fortress does not blush to accept a leg up from his comrades in mounting the battlements.¹⁹ Not everyone has a Rusticus to get them over the ramparts, however. If you can find someone in whom you can trust, like Galen describes, that’s great. In truth, though, most people will probably have to rely on other modeling strategies, as Marcus perhaps did after the death of Rusticus. These fall into two main categories: writing and imagining.

Even if you don’t have a real-life mentor following you around, you can still benefit from the concept by using your imagination. Marcus, like other ancient philosophers, conjured the images of various advisors and role models in his mind. He also believed it was important to consider the character and actions of famous historical philosophers. At one point he says that the writings of “the Ephesians,” possibly meaning the followers of Heraclitus, contained the advice to think constantly of individuals from previous generations who demonstrated exemplary virtue. As we’ve seen, the story of Zeno begins with him being given the cryptic advice to “take on the color of dead men” by studying the wisdom of previous generations. Marcus tells himself to focus his attention on the minds of wise men, particularly their underlying principles, and carefully consider what these men avoid and what they pursue in life. In The Meditations, he names the philosophers he most admires: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, Chrysippus, and Epictetus. Of course, you might even choose Marcus himself as a role model if you’re studying his life and philosophy.²⁰

Your first step is to write down the virtues exhibited by someone you respect. Listing the qualities you most admire in another person, just as Marcus does in the first book of The Meditations, is a simple and powerful exercise. He explains in a later chapter that he contemplates the virtues of those who lived with him in order to raise his spirits: the energy of one, the modesty of another, the generosity of a third, and so on.²¹ Nothing cheers our soul, he says, like the people close to us exhibiting virtue in their lives, and for that very reason we should treasure these examples and keep the memory of them fresh. Writing things down will often make the image more vivid and memorable. Stoics considered this a healthy source of joy. Writing down your ideas about what makes another person admirable, mulling them over, and revising them gives you an opportunity to process them. With practice, you will be able to visualize the character traits you’re describing more easily.

Over a decade after Antoninus’s death, for example, Marcus was still reminding himself to remain a faithful disciple to him in all areas of life.²² Although not a philosopher himself, Antoninus seems to have naturally possessed many of the virtues praised by the Stoics. In The Meditations, Marcus said that it was Antoninus who showed him that an emperor could win the respect of his subjects without bodyguards, expensive robes, precious ornaments, statues, and all other such trappings of his station in life. His adoptive father taught Marcus that it was possible for him, despite his status as Caesar, to live in a manner close to that of a private citizen, without losing status or neglecting his responsibilities. Following the example of Antoninus, he therefore reminds himself not to be “stained purple” and turned into a Caesar.²³ Rather Marcus sought to dye his mind deeply with the same virtues he observed in others, striving, as he put it, to remain the person philosophy sought to make him.

Marcus contemplates Antoninus’s vigorous commitment to reason, his simple piety, his unshakable inner peace and calm demeanor. Marcus even says that his father was like Socrates in his ability to abstain from things that the majority are too weak to do without and to enjoy things in moderation that most people cannot enjoy without going to excess. He tells himself that if he can emulate all of these virtues, then he will be able to meet his own final hour with the same equanimity and clear conscience that Antoninus showed on his deathbed.

In addition to the virtues of real people, the Stoics were also known for contemplating the hypothetical character of an ideal Sage, or wise person. There are several passages where Marcus appears to be doing this. These descriptions inevitably seem a bit more abstract and grandiose. For example, he says that the perfect wise man is like a true priest of the gods, at one with the divine element of reason within himself. He is neither corrupted by pleasure nor injured by pain, and he remains untouched by insults. The true Sage is like a fighter in the noblest of fights, dyed deep with justice. With his whole being, he accepts everything that befalls him, as assigned to him by Fate. He seldom concerns himself with what others say or do unless it’s for the common good. He naturally cares for all rational beings, as though they were his brothers and sisters. He is not swayed by the opinions of just anyone, but he gives special heed to the wise who live in agreement with Nature.²⁴ Marcus is trying here to describe human perfection to himself and to envisage an ideal Sage who completely embodies the Stoic goals of life.

In addition to asking ourselves what qualities the ideal wise person might have, we can ask what qualities we might hope to possess in the distant future. For instance, what sort of person would you hope to be after having trained in Stoicism for ten or twenty years? At one point, Marcus seems to be describing the long-term goals of the Stoic therapy process he went through with Rusticus. He says that in the mind of one who has been chastened and thoroughly purified there is no festering sore beneath the surface, and nothing that would not bear examination or would hide from the light. There is no longer anything servile or phony about someone who has achieved this, he adds, and they are neither dependent on others nor alienated from them.²⁵ Those are both therapy goals for Stoics and the goals of life.

Writing down the virtues possessed by a hypothetical wise man or woman, or those we aspire to ourselves, is usually a very beneficial exercise. It may also be useful for you to formulate descriptions of two or three specific individuals and compare these to a more general description of an ideal. These could be real acquaintances from your life, historical figures, or even fictional characters. The important thing is to process the information by reflecting on it and revising it where necessary. Allow some time to pass and then come back to review and improve your descriptions. Consider how specific virtues, such as wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation, might be exhibited by role models you’ve chosen. In general, thinking things over and looking at these ideas from different perspectives—however you choose to do it—can be helpful in terms of self-improvement. Having spent some time on writing exercises, you will more easily be able to picture things in your mind’s eye. The best way to do this is to imagine a role model whose strengths you’ve identified coping with a challenging situation. The Stoics asked themselves, “What would Socrates or Zeno do?” Marcus likely asked himself how Rusticus and his other teachers would cope with the difficult situations he faced in life. He undoubtedly asked himself what Antoninus would do. Psychologists call this “modeling” someone’s behavior. We’ve already touched upon it briefly in our discussion of decatastrophizing in cognitive therapy. You might want to ask yourself, for example, “What would Marcus do?”

In addition to visualizing people to model their behavior, we can also model their attitudes. Stoics might ask themselves, “What would Socrates or Zeno say about this?” You can imagine your personal role model—or even a whole panel of Stoic Sages—giving you advice. What would they tell you to do? What advice would they give? What would they have to say about how you’re currently handling a problem? Pose these types of questions to yourself as you picture them in your imagination and try to formulate what the response would be. Turn it into a longer discussion if that helps. Again, if you’re modeling Marcus Aurelius, ask “What would Marcus say?”

Modeling is typically followed by the “mental rehearsal” of behavior change: picturing yourself acting more like your role models or imagining yourself following their advice. This often takes several attempts. Think of it as trial-and-error learning. Imagine yourself coping with the challenges you expect to face and exhibiting the virtues you want to learn. You’ll probably find it more helpful to picture yourself improving in small increments rather than immediately mastering the whole situation. That’s known as the benefit of “coping imagery” over “mastery imagery.” Don’t try to run before you can walk by setting unrealistic goals. Just rehearse a few simple changes in your behavior to get started. Small changes can often have big consequences anyway.

When teaching people to employ Stoic practices, I’ve found it helpful to have a simple framework for daily Stoic practices. It involves a “learning cycle” with a beginning, middle, and end, which then repeats each day. In the morning you prepare for the day ahead; throughout the day you try to live consistently in accord with your values; and in the evening you review your progress and prepare to repeat the cycle again the next day. I’ll refer to the Stoic exercises used at the beginning and end of each day as the morning and evening meditations. Having a daily routine like this makes it much easier to be consistent in your practice.

This framework also fits in neatly with our discussion of modeling and mentoring. During your morning meditation, consider what tasks you have to complete and what challenges you must overcome. Ask yourself, “What would my role model do?” and try to imagine them dealing with the same situations you’re about to face. Mentally rehearse the virtues you want to exhibit. Throughout the day, try continually to be self-aware, as if a wise mentor or teacher is observing you. We call this “Stoic mindfulness” today, but the Stoics meant something similar by prosoche, or paying attention to yourself. Keep an eye on how you use your mind and body, particularly the value judgments you make in different situations, and watch out for subtle feelings of anger, fear, sadness, or unhealthy desires, as well as bad habits.

During your evening meditation, review how things actually went, perhaps going over the key events of the day two or three times in your mind’s eye. What would your imaginary mentors say? What advice might they give you about doing things differently next time? This is your opportunity to learn from experience and prepare for the morning, when you’ll plan your behavior and rehearse things again in an ongoing cycle of self-improvement. You might ask yourself, for example, “What would Marcus Aurelius say about how I fared today?”

The ancients did something similar. Galen said that his own daily routine involved contemplating a famous poem about philosophy called “The Golden Verses of Pythagoras.” Seneca and Epictetus mention it as well, and it may have influenced other Stoics. Galen recommends reading its verses twice, first silently and then aloud. He suggests that we call to mind each day the areas for improvement that our mentor has helped us identify. We should do this as frequently as possible but at the very least, he says, “at dawn, before we begin our daily tasks, and toward evening, before we are about to rest.”

Regarding the morning meditation, Galen says that as soon as you rise from bed and begin considering each of the tasks ahead, you should ask yourself two questions:

1. What would the consequences be if you acted as a slave to your passions?

2. How would your day differ if you acted more rationally, exhibiting wisdom and self-discipline?

Marcus discusses how to prepare for the day ahead at least four times in The Meditations. He mentions that the Pythagoreans used to contemplate the stars each morning, thinking of their consistency, purity, and nakedness as symbolic of man living with wisdom, virtue, and simplicity. He likewise tells himself on awakening that he is rising to fulfill his potential for wisdom and not just to be a puppet of bodily sensations, swayed by pleasant feelings or turned aside by discomfort. He tells himself to love his nature and his capacity for reason, and to do his best to live accordingly. As we’ll see later, he also gives himself very specific advice about how to deal with difficult people without becoming frustrated or resentful.²⁶

This famous passage from “The Golden Verses,” which Epictetus quoted to his students, describes the evening meditation:

Allow not sleep to close your wearied eyes,

Until you have reckoned up each daytime deed:

“Where did I go wrong? What did I do? And what duty’s left undone?”

From first to last review your acts and then

Reprove yourself for wretched acts, but rejoice in those done well.²⁷

You can ask yourself these three very simple questions:

1. What did you do badly? Did you allow yourself to be ruled by irrational fears or unhealthy desires? Did you act badly or allow yourself to indulge in irrational thoughts?

2. What did you do well? Did you make progress by acting wisely? Praise yourself and reinforce what you want to repeat.

3. What could you do differently? Did you omit any opportunities to exercise virtue or strength of character? How could you have handled things better?

As we’ve seen, young Stoics being observed or questioned by a trusted mentor became deeply mindful of their thoughts and actions. To some extent, knowing that you are going to cross-examine yourself at the end of the day can have a similar effect. It forces you to pay more attention to your conduct throughout the day. Marcus reminded himself of a pithy saying from Heraclitus: “We ought not to act and speak as if we were asleep.”²⁸ We need to make an effort to awaken our self-awareness, in other words. Following this daily routine, in a sense, helps us to do that by acting like a mentor to ourselves.

This regimen will make you more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. You can also foster self-awareness by questioning yourself regularly throughout the day in the way the Stoics describe. For example, Marcus frequently examines his own character and actions, perhaps posing the sort of questions a Stoic mentor might have asked. He asks himself, in different situations, “What use am I now making of my soul?”²⁹ He probed his own mind, scrutinizing the fundamental values he was taking for granted. “Whose soul do I now have?” he would ask. “Am I behaving like a child, a tyrant, a sheep, a wolf, or am I fulfilling my true potential as a rational being? For what purpose am I currently using my mind? Am I being foolish? Am I alienated from other people? Am I letting myself be dragged off course by fear and desire? What passions are there right now in my mind?” You might also ask yourself, “How’s this actually working out?” Sometimes it’s necessary to interrupt the things you’re doing out of habit so that you can ask yourself whether they’re actually healthy or unhealthy for you in the long run.

The Stoics employed the Socratic method of questioning, the elenchus, which exposes contradictions in the beliefs of the person being questioned—a bit like the cross-examination of a witness in a court of law. They believed above all that the wise man is consistent in both his thoughts and actions. Foolish people, by contrast, vacillate, driven by contradictory passions, which flutter from one thing to another like butterflies. That’s why we often hear the Stoics praising the wise man for remaining “the same” no matter what he faces—even his facial expression and demeanor remain consistent come rain or shine. Marcus quite probably underwent this sort of questioning from Rusticus and his other Stoic tutors as part of the Stoic therapy. One of the main things it tends to highlight is any contradiction between the values we use to guide our own lives, or the things we desire, and the values we use to judge other people, or what we find praiseworthy and blameworthy. Therapists today would call this a “double standard.”

This sort of Socratic questioning forms part of an approach called “values clarification,” which has been around since the 1970s but has recently gone through a resurgence of popularity among therapists and researchers.³⁰ By deeply reflecting on our values each day and attempting to describe them concisely, we can develop a clearer sense of direction in life. You might do this by posing questions to yourself such as:

•  What’s ultimately the most important thing in life to you?

•  What do you really want your life to stand for or represent?

•  What do you want to be remembered for after you’re dead?

•  What sort of person do you most want to be in life?

•  What sort of character do you want to have?

•  What would you want written on your tombstone?

These questions are similar to the well-known therapy technique of imagining the eulogies at your own funeral and asking yourself what, ideally, you would want people to remember you for. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, who has a sort of moral epiphany after the Ghost of Christmas Future confronts him with a troubling vision of people reacting to his death and tombstone.

Another useful values clarification technique for students of Stoicism involves making two short lists in side-by-side columns headed “Desired” and “Admired”:

1. Desired. The things you most desire for yourself in life

2. Admired. The qualities you find most praiseworthy and admirable in other people

These two lists are, at first, virtually never identical. Why are they different, and how would your life change if you desired for yourself the qualities you find admirable in other people? As the Stoics might put it, what would happen if you were to make virtue your number one priority in life? The most important aspect of this values clarification exercise for Stoics would be to grasp the true nature of man’s highest good, to elucidate our most fundamental goal, and to live accordingly. Everything in Stoicism ultimately refers back to the goal of grasping the true nature of the good and living accordingly.

Once you clarify your core values, you can compare them to the Stoic cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. People find it surprisingly helpful to set aside even a few minutes per day to reflect deeply upon their values. Indeed, values clarification has become an integral part of modern evidence-based treatments for clinical depression. Clarifying our values and trying to live more consistently in accord with them can help us gain a greater sense of direction and meaning in life, leading to greater satisfaction and fulfillment. Try brainstorming small ways in which you can do things that satisfy your core values each day. Don’t be too ambitious; just begin with small changes. Then during your evening meditation, you might literally give yourself “marks out of ten for virtue,” or rather for living up to your core values. This will encourage you to think more deeply about ways you can progress toward embodying your values. Remember: the fundamental goal of life for Stoics, the highest good, is to act consistently in accord with reason and virtue.

In this chapter we’ve looked at the role Junius Rusticus played in Marcus’s life as a Stoic tutor and mentor: he persuaded Marcus, as a young Caesar, that he would benefit from moral training and Stoic therapy of the passions. We’ve reconstructed an account of Stoic therapy (therapeia) based on the description given by Marcus’s personal physician, Galen, which draws on Chrysippus’s lost Therapeutics, and combined this account with relevant passages from The Meditations.

We’ve also described how to benefit from similar practices today, whether or not you have a real mentor you can turn to. The mentor’s role can be seen in terms of modeling both behaviors and attitudes. You can use different writing and visualization exercises to simulate the Stoic process of mentoring. We’ve also seen how “The Golden Verses of Pythagoras” provided Galen, Seneca, and Epictetus with a framework for Stoic therapy by dividing the day into three stages: morning meditation, mindfulness during the day, and evening meditation.

We introduced the concept of values clarification from modern therapy. Reflecting upon and clarifying your core values can help combat depression and other emotional problems, especially once you make a consistent effort to live more in accord with your truest values each day. You can compare these values to the Stoic virtues and explore them from different perspectives by following the daily routine. Keep coming back to the question “What’s the most important thing in life?” Or, as the Stoics would say, “What is the true nature of the good?” Even setting aside a few minutes each day to clarify your values and do things that are consistent with them can be very beneficial. Remember: small changes of this kind can often have surprisingly large effects.

The ideas in this chapter will help you apply the many other Stoic concepts and techniques that you’re about to learn by providing you with a framework for your daily practice. This simple “learning cycle” alone, when used properly, will be enough for many people to see improvements in their character and emotional resilience, especially combined with their own reading and study of the Stoic texts. Self-scrutiny of this kind appears to have been an important aspect of training in ancient Stoicism. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”