Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

Cato may have been Rome’s Iron Man, but in the end he was challenged by only one emperor. Thrasea was utterly fearless, but his friend Gaius Musonius Rufus was also unafraid, and, as it happens, endured a life so challenging as to make Thrasea’s ordeal under Nero seem fun.

Born a member of the equestrian class, in Volsinii, Etruria, during the reign of Tiberius, Musonius Rufus quickly made his reputation as a philosopher and as a teacher. Even in a time and after a long history of brilliant Stoics, Musonius was considered above the rest. Among his contemporaries, he was the “Roman Socrates,” a man of wisdom, courage, self-control, and a marrow-deep commitment to what was right. It was fame that transcended his times, and we find Musonius mentioned admiringly by everyone from Christians like Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria to Marcus Aurelius.

But unlike Seneca and Cicero, who relished their places at the top of the heap of Roman society, Musonius was a far more humble figure. He was not born to the senatorial rank or to great wealth. He did not marry into a well-connected family. He did not seek out fame or power. Nor, it seems, did he think these things were particularly important.

He believed that praise and applause were wastes of time—for both the audience and the philosopher. “When a philosopher,” he said, “is exhorting, persuading, rebuking, or discussing some aspect of philosophy, if the audience pour forth trite and commonplace words of praise in their enthusiasm and unrestraint, if they even shout, if they gesticulate, if they are moved and aroused, and swayed by the charm of his words, by the rhythm of his phrases, and by certain rhetorical repetitions, then you may know that both the speaker and his audience are wasting their time, and that they are not hearing a philosopher speaking but a flute player performing.”

To Musonius, the sign of a successful philosopher was not the loud cheering of supporters. It was silence. Because it meant the audience was actually thinking—it meant they were wrestling with the difficult ideas that the speaker was getting across.

And so we can imagine this Roman Socrates drawing large crowds—not because of his showmanship, but through the reputation of his teachings—who sat in respectful silence, even as he challenged their most deeply held assumptions.

His most provocative belief in first-century Rome? That women deserved an education as much as men. Two of Musonius’s twenty-one surviving lectures (That Women Too Should Study Philosophy and Should Daughters Receive the Same Education as Sons?) come down strongly in favor of treating women well and of their capabilities as philosophers.

This was not a conventional view, but then again, the right thing rarely is.

It should not surprise us that Musonius held it or that he had the courage to argue it at a time when most believed that women were no more than property. A core precept of Stoic training is independent thinking, and here Musonius was illustrating an ability to see what was just, outside the context of his times. “It is not men alone who possess eagerness and a natural inclination towards virtue,” he wrote, “but women also. Women are pleased no less than men by noble and just deeds, and reject the opposite of such actions. Since that is so, why is it appropriate for men to seek out and examine how they might live well, that is, to practice philosophy, but not women.”*

Even his view of marriage was modern, calling for the “perfect companionship and mutual love of husband and wife, both in health and in sickness and under all conditions.” A good marriage, he believed, was one where a couple strove to outdo each other in devotion. He spoke of the kind of “beautiful union” that Brutus and Porcia had, where two souls stick with each other through the adversity of life and inspire each other to greater virtue. What was Musonius’s marriage like? We don’t know—but it would be incredible to think that a man who wrote so movingly about the benefits of this kind of marriage would not be speaking from experience, and more impossible still that Musonius could have endured the adversity he was soon to face without a life partner of courage and virtue.

At the core of Musonius’s teachings was a belief in the importance of hard work and endurance. He was a man cut from the same cloth as Cleanthes, who centuries before had supported his philosophical studies with manual labor. In a lecture entitled What Means of Livelihood Is Appropriate for the Philosopher, Musonius would speak highly of that kind of hard work, believing very little was beneath our dignity, if done well and with the right work ethic.

Hardship, he believed, was simply a part of life. “In order to support more easily and more cheerfully those hardships which we may expect to suffer in behalf of virtue and goodness,” he said, “it is useful to recall what hardships people will endure for unworthy ends. Thus for example consider what intemperate lovers undergo for the sake of evil desires, and how much exertion others expend for the sake of making profit, and how much suffering those who are pursuing fame endure, and bear in mind that all of these people submit to all kinds of toil and hardship voluntarily.”

So if we’re going to suffer, ought we not suffer in a way that gets us somewhere worth going?

Suffer and endure toward virtue—that’s the core of Musonius’s teachings. As he said, “And yet would not anyone admit how much better it is, instead of exerting oneself to win someone else’s wife, to exert oneself to discipline one’s desires; instead of enduring hardships for the sake of money, to train oneself to want little; instead of giving oneself trouble about getting notoriety, to give oneself trouble how not to thirst for notoriety; instead of trying to find a way to injure an envied person, to inquire how not to envy anyone; and instead of slaving, as sycophants do, to win false friends, to undergo suffering in order to possess true friends?”

It is fitting that he would write and speak so much on this topic, because he—like many of the Stoics—would find that life had challenges and hardships in store.

Musonius’s first brush with trouble came from his association with the Stoic Opposition, including Gaius Rubellius Plautus, for whom Nero’s paranoid delusions made him a marked man. It was Musonius who would accompany Plautus into exile to Syria in 60 AD. It was Musonius’s first brush with the capriciousness of fate, and by no means his last.

Musonius would advise his dear friend “to have courage and await death,” and was likely there when Plautus fell to Nero’s angry sword. Musonius was allowed to return to Rome, briefly, but in 65 AD when the fallout from the Pisonian conspiracy claimed Seneca, Musonius was banished by Nero to the desolate island of Gyara.

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.

Would Vespasian hold Musonius’s service to Vitellius against him? Would he be exiled once more? Or finally killed for his association with the Stoic threat? None of these considerations had stopped Musonius from trying. None of it would break his commitment to what was right.

This commitment to justice, as it had for Cato, played no favorites. Not long after escaping with his life from the civil conflict between Vitellius and Vespasian, Musonius engaged in civil conflict of his own, in this case against a fellow Stoic. Sometime around 70 AD, he undertook the prosecution of Publius Egnatius Celer, who had been an informant for Nero about other Stoics and contributed to the execution of one named Barea Soranus. It was an epic case that pitted Musonius not only against a Stoic traitor, but also against Demetrius the Cynic, who chose to represent Celer.

It was a hard-won victory for justice, in a time where such a thing had become rare. A remaining fragment from Musonius captures why he would have pursued such a case. “If one accomplishes some good though with toil, the toil passes, but the good remains,” he said. “If one does something dishonorable with pleasure, the pleasure passes, but the dishonor remains.”

We must do the right thing, no matter how difficult, Musonius was saying. A Stoic must avoid doing the wrong thing, even if the reward for it is great.

Musonius must have known that justice against Celer would come at a cost. No matter the verdict, to attack an informant of an emperor—even one as reviled as Nero—was a risky move. Perhaps wishing to be rid of the Stoics entirely, a year or so later Vespasian would issue a blanket banishment to all philosophers. Although Musonius was originally exempted, he would not long after be exiled personally by Vespasian for a term of three years.

The good Musonius had done remained while he himself was sent away.

For what? We do not know, but it is fitting, because Musonius would have shrugged off the reasons anyway. Was he angry? He certainly deserved to be. Now, for the third time, he was being driven away from his home, returning to life as a refugee, and why? Because a despot decreed he must?

Even this, Musonius found a way to be philosophical about. Another surviving fragment gives us a sense of his view: “What indictment can we make against tyrants when we ourselves are much worse than they? For we have the same impulses as theirs but not the same opportunity to indulge them.”

Or perhaps he recalled how his exile had gone before and the good that had come from it. “Do not be irked by difficult circumstances,” he once said, “but reflect on how many things have already happened to you in life in ways that you did not wish, and yet they have turned out for the best.”

Once again in Syria, far away from home, Musonius held court and taught. Once again, he did what a Stoic seeks to always do: make the best of a bad situation.

He might not have been able to reach or help the deranged sovereigns who controlled Rome, but he did find willing royal students abroad. In a lecture, That Kings Also Should Study Philosophy, Musonius refers offhandedly to a Syrian king whom he advised.* Just as comfortable lecturing freed slaves as he was the grandson of Herod the Great, Musonius kept his teachings the same no matter how powerful or powerless his students. As he had learned from his own struggles, there is no position so high or so low that it is not improved by the four virtues: justice, temperance, wisdom, and courage.

“The ruin of the ruler and the citizen alike,” Musonius told him, “is wantonness.” And so he spoke to this king at length about the power of self-control, the danger of excess, and the need for justice. These were things that he had experienced firsthand. In fact, it was these exact deficiencies in the parade of incompetent emperors that had brought him to Syria in the first place, so his lessons must have been convincing and deeply personal. No doubt the king listened with the rapt silence that Musonius had long ago defined as the sign of a student whose mind was being blown. “Is it possible for anyone to be a good king unless he is a good man?” Musonius asked. “No, it is not possible. But given a good man, would he not be entitled to be called a philosopher? Most certainly, since philosophy is the pursuit of ideal good.”

When Musonius wrapped up his lectures, the young king was spellbound, and unlike those Roman emperors who had been so cruel to Musonius, he was grateful. As a thanks, he offered him anything—wealth, power, pleasure—that it was in his power to offer. “The only favor I ask of you,” Musonius replied, “is to remain faithful to this teaching, since you find it commendable, for in this way and no other will you best please me and benefit yourself.”

Eventually, Musonius was recalled from exile by Vespasian’s son Titus in 78 AD. Within a year, Titus was emperor, and within three, he was dead. His successor, Domitian, was another king who could have listened to the lessons Musonius had given the Syrian king. Instead Domitian chose to be violent, ruthless, and paranoid. Musonius persevered—now taking Epictetus on as a student and training him to become an equally formidable Stoic teacher.

Yet once again, an emperor had the Stoics in his sights. Eventually, in 93 AD, Domitian ordered a death sentence for Arulenus Rusticus for his support of Thrasea many years earlier. He murdered the son of Helvidius Priscus. He then killed Epaphroditus, the former slave who had owned Epictetus and helped Nero kill himself twenty-five years earlier. Domitian even banished every philosopher from Rome, including Epictetus.

If Musonius was still alive by this point, it would have marked his fourth exile. Whether he survived until this final trial of fate or had died shortly beforehand, we don’t know. Considering the murderous tyrants he had lived under, it is incredible that he survived this long—into his seventies or eighties. Countless people and situations had conspired to break him, but each had failed. He was repeatedly deprived of his country, he said, but no one would take away his “ability to endure exile.”

No one can take away our ability to remain undaunted. Which is why Musonius was committed to what he believed up until he drew his last breath, wherever he drew it—in Rome or on whatever rock he was sent to.

“Philosophy is nothing else than to search out by reason what is right and proper and by deeds put it into practice.” Rufus had said this, but more important he had lived it. As an exile. As a teacher. As a husband and father, and finally as a dying man. However old he lived to be, simple longevity had never been Musonius’s goal. “Since the Fates have spun out the lot of death for all alike,” one of his fragments explains, “he is blessed who dies not late but well.”

Undoubtedly, whenever the end did come for Musonius, he was ready, and ready to die well. The man who had witnessed the end of so many other Stoics, who had advised them in some cases to go when it was their time and others to hold on because they still had work to do, would have known that eventually his number would come up. He had tried to live that way, saying, “It is not possible to live well today unless one thinks of it as his last.”

Now his number was up and Musonius passed—an inspiration to all of us—from this earth with the same dignity and poise with which he had faced all the adversity in his life.