A hundred years before Zeno, in what is now known as Pericles’s “Funeral Oration,” the great Athenian statesman set out to mourn the loss of so many thousands of his brave countrymen. As he struggled to find the words to express their sacrifice and heroism, he reminded the grieving people of Athens that the glory of the dead was not in their accomplishments or in the monuments that would be erected in their honor, but in the legacy of what they had done for their country. It was their memory, what they inspired, which was “woven into the lives of others.” Many centuries later, Jackie Robinson would express the idea even more succinctly. “A life is not important,” his tombstone reads, “except in the impact it has on other lives.”
So it goes for the Stoics whose lives we have just detailed, men and women whose influence not only continues to this day, but shaped the lives of the other men and women in this book.
Zeno, driven by shipwreck to philosophy, and thus creating a school that has stood for nearly twenty-five hundred years . . .
Cleanthes, whose hard work and frugality quite literally supported Zeno and his studies . . .
Chrysippus, who cleaned up and codified so many of the early Stoic theories . . .
Cato, whose martyrdom did not save the Republic but inspired Seneca, Thrasea, and Agrippinus when they faced their own deaths, and eventually and most powerfully inspired the American revolutionaries to create their own republic in his image . . .
Porcia, who encouraged her husband to strike a blow against tyranny . . .
Rusticus, who passed that copy of Epictetus to Marcus Aurelius . . .
Musonius Rufus, who taught Epictetus in the first place . . .
Epictetus, whose worldview gave Toussaint Louverture and James Stockdale the strength they needed in their dank prison cells . . .
In some cases, their influence came directly through writing, but more often than not, their influence came by action. How they lived. What they did.
The Stoics had learned this from Socrates. Plutarch, who was the source for so much of the material in this book, observed that “Socrates did not set up desks for his students, sit in a teacher’s chair, or reserve a prearranged time for lecturing and walking with his pupils.” On the contrary. “He practiced philosophy while joking around,” Plutarch said, “and drinking and serving on military campaigns and hanging around the marketplace with some of his students, and finally, even while under arrest and drinking the hemlock. He was the first to demonstrate that our lives are open to philosophy at all times and in every aspect, while experiencing every emotion, and in each and every activity.”
Beautiful.
But more beautiful is the impact that example had on Marcus Aurelius, on Zeno, on Musonius Rufus, on Thrasea, and on Rutilius.
The Stoics too served on military campaigns. They hung out in the marketplace. They too, fairly or unfairly, faced arrest and were forced to commit suicide. In this, they proved they were philosophers. In those actions, those choices, they wrote their best work—sometimes in their own blood.
“There is no role so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now,” Marcus Aurelius would write. He probably meant the role of emperor, but the meaning can easily be extended: The role of parent. The role of spouse. The role of a person waiting in line. The role of a person who has just been given bad news. The role of a person who is rich. The role of a person sent into exile or delivered into bankruptcy. The role of a person who finds themselves enslaved, literally or otherwise.
All of this was philosophy. All of this was what made someone a Stoic.
How we do those jobs, how we play those roles, that’s what matters. Epictetus, who actually was a slave before he was a philosopher, would tell his students to go out in the world and “eat like a human being, drink like a human being, dress up, marry, have children, get politically active—suffer abuse, bear with a headstrong brother, father, son, neighbor, or companion. Show us these things so we can see that you truly have learned from the philosophers.”
By and large, the Stoics showed what they learned from the insights of Zeno, from the five hundred lines that Chrysippus wrote each day, from the some fifty books written by Cleanthes, from the lectures of Epictetus, and from the meditations that Marcus Aurelius penned. They showed what they learned from the example of Cato, from the effortless courage of Agrippinus, and from the cautionary tales of Seneca and Cicero and Diotimus.
Did many of the Stoics fall short? Absolutely. They were tempted by wealth and made embarrassing compromises as they groped for fame. They lost their temper. They lied. They eliminated rivals . . . or looked the other way while someone else did. They were silent when they should have spoken up. They enforced laws that they ought to have questioned. They were not always happy; they did not always bear adversity with the dignity one would expect.
The history of Rome is a story of outsized ambition and drive, a tale of power and excess and often brutality. Most of Rome’s leaders were monsters, memorable only because of their misdeeds. Even for all the Stoics’ flaws, their restraint and goodness stand in stark relief to most of their contemporaries. “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been,” the great C. S. Lewis once observed, “how gloriously different the saints.”
No one in this book managed, in every minute of their life, to live up to those lofty virtues of courage and justice and moderation and wisdom. Yet in their unique struggles and triumphs, they each managed to teach us something, proving, intentionally or not, why the principles they purported to believe were superior to the choices they actually made.
Most of all, the Stoics taught us by the fact that they tried. What matters is what we can learn from their successes and their failures in this lifelong pursuit.
“Show me someone sick and happy,” Epictetus said, “in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I’d like to see a Stoic. But since you can’t show me someone that perfectly formed, at least show me someone actively forming themselves so, inclined in this way. . . . Show me!”
Ultimately, that is the message of this book and what has defined the stories we have told and the figures we have profiled.
We hope these pages contribute to the unbroken chain of influence that these Stoics’ lives have had, an influence that remains active to this day. Indeed, one of the most difficult choices made here was the decision not to profile any so-called “modern Stoics” who are continuing to wrestle with, practice, and exemplify Stoic principles in their own lives.
Whether that’s media titan Arianna Huffington, who carries a laminated note card of a Marcus Aurelius quote in her purse at all times, or General James Mattis, who has carried Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations with him on military campaigns for decades, Stoicism is alive and well in the modern world—with all the same brilliance, boldness, and humanness. There are writers like Tim Ferriss who have helped popularize Stoicism to millions, and Laura Kennedy, whose thoughtful “Coping” column runs in The Irish Times, and Donald Robertson, who specializes in the treatment of anxiety and the use of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
Chrysippus had been an elite athlete and a Stoic, while today Stoicism is a daily practice for stars in the NFL, the NBA, MLB, World Cup rugby and soccer. Michele Tafoya of Sunday Night Football is an active student of the philosophy, which would make Musonius Rufus smile. On the wall of the clubhouse of the Pittsburgh Pirates is a quote from Epictetus: “It’s not things that upset us. It’s our judgement about things.” Zeno and Seneca and Cato and Cicero were Stoics who oversaw enormous fortunes and large business ventures, just as today Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Kevin Rose and Wall Street billionaires like Thomas Kaplan maintain their own Stoic practices alongside their businesses. Right now in Washington, D.C., there are senators who get together each morning in the Capitol building and discuss Stoicism, just as their counterparts did in Rome thousands of years ago and the founding fathers did in 1776. May the spirit of Helvidius Priscus grow in that chamber.
As was true in the ancient world, there are also countless other Stoics with less glamorous occupations, who nevertheless experience trials and tribulations that they endure thanks to the wisdom these philosophers helped discover. They are parents. They are citizens. They are teachers. They are mortals with the same desires and fears, hopes and dreams as everyone who has ever lived.
Like you, like Seneca, like Epictetus, like Posidonius, they are trying to do the best they can. They are trying to be the best version of themselves they can be. They are reading and practicing, trying and failing, getting back up and trying again.
As we all must do.
And they will ultimately and inevitably—as all the Stoics in this book did—come to the end of their life at some point. Every one of us dies, the Stoics said, but too few of us actually live. Too many of us die before our time, living—unthinkingly—the kind of life that Seneca described as hardly being different than death.
The irony of this book is that while it is about the lives of the Stoics, in many cases, the most interesting and significant act in the lives of these men and women was their death.
To the Stoics, all of life was a preparation for death. As Cicero had said, to philosophize is to learn how to die. Seneca, even at the height of his powers, was preparing for the close of life. So was Cato. So was Thrasea. So was Zeno. That’s how they were able to muster—in that terrifying or sad moment—courage and dignity, cleverness and compassion.
Whether a Stoic died at the hands of a tyrant or from laughing too hard at a good joke—as Chrysippus did—they were teaching us, they were applying what they had studied for so long in the most important of settings.
In a way, that is a fitting lesson to conclude with. Many of the Stoics fell short of their philosophy in life, but there are no Stoics in these pages who did not die well.
Except for Cicero, who wavered at the end, who compromised, who fled. And it should be noted—not smugly, but convincingly—that he was the one lover of Stoicism who could not truly commit, who prescribed the medicine but refused to take it himself.
As Epictetus wrote, “Is it possible to be free from error? Not by any means, but it is possible to be a person stretching to avoid error.”
That’s what Stoicism is. It’s stretching. Training. To be better. To get better. To avoid one more mistake, to take one step closer toward that ideal. Not perfection, but progress—that’s what each of these lives was about.
The only question that remains for us, the living heirs to this tradition: Are we doing that work?