This Is What Will Happen To Your Accomplishments

Marcus Aurelius spent 14 years at war with the Marcomanni. It was a brutal, grinding campaign which he eventually won at great cost and risk. His victory was celebrated as a triumph, immortalized in a 97 foot tall marble tower which winds upward, showing in brilliant detail, "the heroic emotion and despair of Roman soldiers along with the unwavering leadership of Marcus Aurelius."And some 19 centuries later, this monument to his accomplishments still stands, disproving, you might say, Marcus Aurelius’s reminders to himself in Meditations that posthumous fame doesn’t last, that no one would remember him. Except it’s more complicated than that. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  This is what will happen to your accomplishments. Marcus Aurelius spent 14 years at war. It was a brutal grinding campaign, which he eventually won at great cost and risk. His victory was celebrated as a triumph, immortalized in a 97-foot-tall marble tower, which winds upward, showing in brilliant detail the heroic emotion and despair of Roman soldiers with the unwavering leadership of Marcus Aurelius. And some 19 centuries later, this monument to his accomplishments still stands. "Disproving," you might say, Marcus Aurelius's reminders to himself in meditations that posthumous fame doesn't last and that no one would remember him.

• 1:14Ryan Holiday?

  Except it's a little more complicated than that. Because if you've been to Rome and seen this column, you'll notice that there is a statue on top of it, and it's not of Marcus. In fact, it's St. Paul. In the 16th century, Pope Sixtus V decided to take this monument to Marcus and reuse it for his own purposes. Small world, Seneca's brother freed St. Paul in the year 51 AD, and Paul himself came from Tarsus, one of the centers of Greek Stoicism. "Like the cult of the emperor, which worshipped a statue with a replaceable head," because so many emperors had short reigns, "in the end, that's what Marcus's greatest trophy was." turned into a pedestal for a Christian saint.

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  And that's what history does to everyone, even those famous enough to be remembered. It remixes, it reuses, it perverts, it undermines, it contradicts, it absorbs us for its own purposes. And on a long enough timeline, everyone's will and testament is ignored. Their graves lost and obscured, their memory written over. Accomplishments are turned into cautionary tales, existences reduced to punchlines. If they can do it to kings and conquerors, they can do it to you too. Remember that before it's too late.