Ryan Holiday of Daily Stoic on the Fascinating Life of Marcus Aurelius

I knew I didn't want to be a person who's just like taking a percentage of what other people do. I wanted to make stuff. Like I wanted to actually produce and create things. So I knew I wanted to be a writer and when I first read the Stoics, I was just like, shit, this is it. Like when I read Meditations for the first time, I was 19, I was sitting in my college apartment, and I was just like, not only have I never read anything like this, I've never even heard of anything like this. Because you have the most powerful man in the world writing notes to himself that he never thinks are going to be published. Pretty much every other book ever written was like a writer writing to an audience. And Meditations was never intended to be published. You'd probably be mortified that we even have it. And so it was just a kind of philosophy and a way of thinking that I hadn't heard in any school, in any class, from any adult in my life. And I was like, I want to tell people about this. Marcus Aurelius, one of the more interesting things about this stuff that he writes is how relevant it is today. Like when you read it, you wouldn't imagine that this is being written by a man. Like how many years ago was that? 1900, 2000 years ago. He's writing in like the mid 150s, 160s AD. It's very relevant. Like the way he writes, the language is incredibly familiar. It's the same. You know, it's one of the things about, you know, we would always make fun of the way people talked a long time ago. You know, wherefore thou? There's a way of talking that we don't communicate like today. But when Marcus Aurelius writes and you read Meditations, it seems very current. Well, it does depend on the translation, right? Because like if you are reading, and people do this, and I'll recommend Marcus Aurelius, and they'll just get what's free on the internet or whatever. If you're reading a translation from the 1850s or the 1600s, it's going to be in Shakespearean English because they're translating it into their parts. And so the right translation is key. Do you remember which one you read? I don't. I like that there's a Gregory Hayes translation for the Modern Library, which I think is the most lyrical and beautiful of all of them. That's the one that I randomly bought on Amazon and had no idea that it was going to be the one that would hit me. So were the original ones in Latin? So this is what's crazy about Marcus. So Marcus lives in Rome. The Romans speak Latin. But the philosophical language at that time was Greek. So Marcus was writing to himself in Greek. So it gives it like when you read those passages or you listen to them and you're just like, that is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Like there's this one passage where he's like he talks about a stock of grain bending low under its own weight, the way all of you know, falls to the ground. He talks about the way that when you put bread in the oven, it breaks open on top. And we don't know why that happens. It's just this like beautiful, inadvertent act of nature. He's just like writing like a poet, like a great writer. And again, he's writing in his non-native tongue to himself, never expecting anyone would see it. How fucking talented. It'd be like finding out that's like a comedian is like funny in their diary. You're just like, wow, you're just naturally that. You're not turning it on or off. Right. It's just like intuitively part of you. Yeah. But I think your point about how it feels timeless, that actually does feel like a thing I've heard comedians say, which is that like the specific is universal. I don't think he was trying to talk to the audience. I think he was trying. He was so unflinchingly honest with himself that he was touching something universally human. And that's why because like we should not be able to relate to his experience at all. Right. I mean, he's literally there is literally a cult of the emperor that worshipped the emperor and their spouse as living deities. And he controlled the largest army in the world. He had unlimited wealth. He could kill or murder or torture or exile anyone he wanted. People cheered him as he walked in the streets. There's no way we should be able to be like this passage was talking about struggling to get out of bed in the morning. And you want to huddle under the warm covers. Like how? How? Because I guess people are people no matter where you get in life. People are people and not everyone gives in to the temptations of being in that position. And in his case, I think it made him more more apt to reflect upon his thoughts and find the source of why he believed what he believed and why he thought what he thought. Yeah, he says in meditations, he says, be careful not to be caesarified. Don't be dyed purple because the emperor wore a purple cloak and purple purple. Now we're just like the color purple to get purple. It was this complicated process of different merchants. Actually, the founder of stoicism was a merchant in Tyrion purple. But like the slaves would smash up sea slugs or sea snails, dry them on rocks, and this dust would eventually become like the source of purple. So he's like, don't be stained purple. So he was acting like when he becomes emperor, he's like, this will change you if you're not careful and you have to actively work to make sure that doesn't happen. So he was aware of that. That was the character in Gladiator, right? Wasn't that Marcus Aurelius? Was it based on him roughly, loosely? Well, it's I think one of the great movies of all time. Great movie. Peter O'Toole? Yes. He's the one that Joaquin Phoenix's character kills at the beginning. And then a lot of the sort of things that Maximus says are sort of very stoic inspired. The irony of that movie is that Joaquin Phoenix probably underplays how bad Marcus Aurelius's son was in real life. Really? He really did get killed by a gladiator. He was a psychopath, immediately destroys all of Marcus's work. It's one of the tragedies of Marcus that he has a like a POS son. I've always wondered like how that seemed like it's Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Like that is a very common thing. Yeah. Why is that like it's an archetype? It is. There's another great Eastern emperor, Cyrus the Great, and he has a shitty son too. You know, it doesn't look like Queen Elizabeth's kids were that great. But what's interesting about Marcus is like it's weird that he's such this great man and then most people know nothing about him. But like Marcus's father was not emperor. So there's what they call the five good emperors. So there's basically in all of Roman history there's like five good emperors and they happen in a row. And they happen in a row because each one does not have a male heir. So they don't have sons. So in the Roman tradition, it was much more common to if you didn't have a son, you would adopt a son. And so the emperor Hadrian is old, probably gay, does not have any children. And he adopts. He sees something in Marcus. They're very... Marcus is young, but he sort of starts mentoring this boy. They actually go like hunting together. Like he sees something special in this kid. Marcus's nickname was Verismus or the truthful one. But he's like just a kid. And Hadrian realizes it's too young to name him emperor. So he selects a man named Antoninus Pius, who's the like the great politician of the time and makes him emperor. I'm conditioned that he adopt Marcus Aurelius. So Marcus and then the thinking was Antoninus Pius would live for like five years and then Marcus would be king. And in fact, he lives for like 19 years. So Marcus has like a 20 year apprenticeship in being the emperor under a man who like could have killed him, who could have been corrupted by power, but is this incredible example. And that's why at the beginning of Meditations, Marcus has like a two page thank you letter to Antoninus, his adopted stepfather. Oh, wow. It's fucking crazy. And his son. What was the deal with the wife? Marcus's wife? Yes. So Marcus's wife, Faustina is, I guess it would be, Faustina is Antoninus's daughter. So they're not related, but that's they marry the family together. Marcus loves her. They're married a very long time. There are rumors that she's unfaithful. But as far as we know, Marcus pays, you know, no attention to this, does not believe them. But the tragedy of their marriage is Marcus loses like seven children before they reach adulthood. Can you imagine that? That was very common back then, though, wasn't it? Sevens a lot, though. It is a lot. But isn't that that's one of the reasons why the general age that people live to was so low back then. People think that people died, your age of expected death. It wasn't that. It's just like you died in childbirth. You died when you were young. You died from infection. It wasn't that people didn't live as long. Yes. Like there's lots of old people in Rome. It's just like getting getting old. Like if you made it to 40, maybe you can make it to 80. But like chances are you weren't going to make it to 20. Yeah, that makes sense. But they're all sword fighting and shit. That's also true. I mean, just imagine you could cut your hand and die of an infection. Yeah. And obviously they're shitting in the streets and this fucking horrible disease. Even rich people don't have toilets. Like they know nothing. So that's one of the sort of not rationalizations, but if you're like, how does it go so wrong that this great man leaves the empire to his son? Yeah. Well, he does have a male heir. That's a problem. Unlike all his predecessors. But it's it's the every one of the sons that he wanted to succeed him died. Oh, and there there's some speculation that Marcus's plan. So this is the other crazy thing about Mark. So if I'm nerding out, you can. No, please go. So. Marcus has a stepbrother through this crazy adoption process. He has a stepbrother. And so that he inherits through Hadrian. It's complicated thing. But he has a stepbrother. And so like we know what kings do to their rivals. Like you have to kill them. Right. The first emperor of Rome, Octavian, he's Julius Caesar's nephew. Julius Caesar has a half son with Cleopatra. Or he has a half brother. Whatever. He has a son with Cleopatra, a son out of wedlock. And Octavian has two stoic teachers who instruct him to murder his rival, which he promptly does or have murdered. So the precedent was like you can't have too many Caesars. Like you can't have more than one viable heir. And Marcus, when he he's Antoninus his favorite, Antoninus preps him. He ascends to the throne. The first thing Marcus does is he names his brother, Lucius Faris, co-emperor, which is not only never happened basically before Orsons. It is a nod to how the Republic was. The Republic of Rome before it becomes a monarchy is led by two consuls, like two elected presidents who served together as a check against power. So Marcus, by naming, he can't put it back to a republic, which is the plot of gladiator. He can name himself a co-emperor. And the thinking is that's what he was planning to do with his sons. But they all died. So in the movie, Joaquin Phoenix kind of kills the dad. It kills the dad because Marcus does not know in the movie, not in real life, Marcus Aurelius knows his son cannot be king. But in real life, he passes it to him. So and how did Marcus Aurelius die? Of the plague. Oh, wow. So that's the other crazy thing. Again, time. Marcus was writing in what we now call the Antonine plague. They named it after him. But it's like a global pandemic. It starts in the east, overwhelms Rome. Five, ten million people die. They have no way of stopping it. So Marcus leads through all of that. And then the suspicion is that he catches it at the end, realizes he has it, has to send his son away so he doesn't give it to his son, sets in motion like a series of advisers who should lead his son. And then his son promptly gets rid of all of them and goes bad. So how does a man like that who's so introspective and so thoughtful, particularly for the times, how does a man like that have a son that's such a piece of shit? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, one argument is he's a psychopath and there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do. No blame whatsoever. The other argument, the more likely one is like most great men and talking about history, so it's mostly great men. But again, Queen Elizabeth has crappy kids. Most great men are shitty fathers. Gandhi was a bad father. Winston Churchill was not a good father. Why is that? I think they're busy. They're busy.