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

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The Stoic Sage, or wise man, needs nothing but uses everything well; the fool believes himself to “need” countless things, but he uses them all badly. They are natural reflex reactions, our first reactions before we escalate them into full-blown passions.

Only Pompeianus, the oldest among his advisors, confronts him, warning him that to leave the war unfinished would be both disgraceful and dangerous. Marcus begins The Meditations with a chapter written in a completely different style from the rest of the book: a catalogue of the virtues, the traits he most admired in his family and teachers. As soon as my sixteenth birthday came around, I was marched briskly down to the headmaster’s office and given two choices: either leave voluntarily or be expelled.In addition to believing that humans are essentially thinking creatures capable of reason, the Stoics also believed that human nature is inherently social. Since then he has rehearsed his Stoic exercises daily, trained his mind and body to obey reason, and progressively transformed himself, both as a man and a ruler, into something approaching the Stoic ideal. Life is preferable to death, wealth is preferable to poverty, health is preferable to sickness, friends are preferable to enemies, and so on.

Over the course of his life, he increasingly turned to the ancient precepts of Stoicism as a way of coping when those closest to him were taken. Let’s see if we can accompany him on the journey he made as he transformed himself, day by day, into a fully-fledged Stoic.While having a mentor is important, most of us do not personally know a Stoic master who is available 24/7 to critique our attitudes and behavior. Young rulers, such as the Emperor Nero, tend to be easily corrupted, and Marcus can see that his son is already falling in with bad company. Nevertheless, some external things are preferable to others, and wisdom consists precisely in our ability to make these sorts of value judgments. Now lying in pain and discomfort, nearing the end, he gently reminds himself that he has already died many times along the way. Marcus no doubt would have preferred health, wealth, and peace, and did what he could to attain them, but he did not waste time in grief or anxiety for things not within his direct control, nor did he waste time in pursuit of material objects or fleeting pleasures at the expense of his philosophical development.

He exhibits courage and self-control precisely by accepting these feelings, rising above them, and asserting his capacity for reason. Far removed from the logical hair splitting of academic philosophy, Stoicism is about living well, with an emphasis on ethics and the attainment of true contentment and excellence of character. As another long and difficult winter draws to a close on the northern frontier, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius lies dying in bed at his military camp in Vindobona (modern-day Vienna).They believed that mastering this attitude required lifelong moral and psychological training in the voluntary endurance of hardship and renunciation of certain desires. When he was a young man, his best friend had passed away, leaving my father a farm in his will, to everyone’s surprise. Robertson has an interesting way of leading readers through a journey of how Stoic philosophy works, how it was utilized effectively by Marcus Aurelius, and suggests practical exercises to utilize these methods in the reader’s own life.