The Right Time Is Right Now | The Virtue That Made Marcus Aurelius So Great

We know what we want to do–or need to do. We need to quit that job. We need to have that hard conversation. We need to be more active in our community. We need to stop smoking or start eating healthy. We need to tell our crush we like them. But when? That’s the question. Or at least, we tell ourselves that it is a question.---Today, Ryan recounts one of the greatest stories in human history and talks about how Antoninus Pius taught Marcus Aurelius the most important virtue of all.✉️ 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:25Ryan Holiday?

  The right time is right now.

• 0:31Ryan Holiday?

  We know what we want to do or need to do. We need to quit that job. We need to have that hard conversation. We need to be more active in our community. We need to stop smoking or start eating healthy. But when, that's the question. Or at least, we tell ourselves that is a question. The Stoics, of course, would disagree. The time, they would say, is now. They'd agree with Martin Luther King, who said that "the time is always right to do what is right." In fact, Marcus Aurelius, a king of a different sort, in more than a name, with a much different set of incentives and interests in doing what was right, said something similar many times. "Waste no more time talking about what a good man is like," he said, "be one. You could be good today. Instead, you choose tomorrow." The right time is right now, not later,

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  not when it's easier or costs less, not after you've finished this or that, but now, now, now.

• 1:28Ryan Holiday?

  For nearly 25 years, a Roman named Antoninus had clawed, fought his way to the very top of Rome's political system. There was only one man above him. This was the Emperor Hadrian, who'd ruled for years with wisdom, but certainly an authoritarianism. And there was an issue. Hadrian does not have a male heir. So he makes the surprise decision. To name Antoninus his heir. They have no blood relations. What does he see in Antoninus? All we know, one anecdote is that Hadrian supposedly sees Antoninus helping his elderly father-in-law up a flight of stairs. In a time when people would have killed their own father to get ahead.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  This idea of a powerful, important Roman helping an elderly frail old man. It strikes Hadrian that there is an inherent goodness in him. Hadrian says, "I have found you an emperor noble, mild, obedient, sensible." He says, "Not headstrong, or too young, nor careless through old age, Antoninus Aurelius." And so this is what Antoninus has wanted his whole life. A thing that almost no one in history ever has or ever will be given again. Absolute power handed to you because you earned it through who you were. And yet, this was a cruel trick. Because for everything that Hadrian had seen in Antoninus,

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  he saw something else even better, even more decent in a young boy named Marcus Aurelius. He finds that Marcus has this remarkable ability to tell the truth. He's like the little boy in the story of the emperor's new clothes. He speaks truth to Hadrian when no one else will. Hadrian comes to nickname him Verisimus. When Hadrian adopts Antoninus so he can succeed him as emperor, it comes on the condition that he in turn adopt Marcus Aurelius. And that really all Antoninus is, is a glorified throne warmer. Now, we know from history how something like this will go, right? Hadrian will die and the first thing Antoninus do,

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  Antoninus will do will be to eliminate all of his rivals, to get rid of this boy who he's not related to, who he shouldn't even care about, who's really just an impediment. To Antoninus's legacy and his family line being passed on and on. We see this today in sports. Brett Favre doesn't want to train Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers doesn't want to prepare and train and mentor the replacement for him. And that's in sports where there's so much less at stake. And yet, again, given absolute power, Antoninus can do anything he wants. What does he do? Over the next 23 years, he grooms Marcus Aurelius to succeed him, to not just take power,

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  but more importantly, to be worthy of power, to be one of the greatest emperors in history. There's this story we hear about an exchange between Antoninus and his wife. She's sort of thinking about all the things they can afford now. And he says, I'm sorry, we have even less now than we did before. Believing that his wealth and his power and his obligations that now lay to the Roman people and to the boy he was to train. The one north star for Marcus Aurelius his whole life is the example of Antoninus. The root word of discipline actually comes to us from the word pupil, meaning you're a student of something. Conversely, that you have someone who's a pupil of you.

• 5:08Ryan Holiday?

  And I think this is what's so key about Marcus Aurelius's and Antoninus's relationship. Marcus writes that he had the ability to both refrain from and enjoy the things that most people are too weak to refrain from and too inclined to enjoy. Of course, life hands Antoninus power and success and good looks and all of these things. But what strikes Marcus Aurelius about his mentor, how gracefully Antoninus takes these things. He says, if they were there, Antoninus took advantage of them. And if not, he didn't miss them. They never let go of an issue, a topic, a decision before he was sure that he understood it perfectly. Marcus notes how he was able to defer to experts, to listen to them, but also to have

• 5:52Ryan Holiday?

  a strong sense of his own capacities, not just when to listen to them, but when to ignore them. He didn't go on tangents. He didn't bore people, even though people would have put up with endless amounts from him. He never indulged that. He tolerated being questioned. He liked the back and forth. There's something striking about Antoninus that he never tours the expanse of the Roman Empire. It's not because he didn't like to travel. It wasn't because he had business. He understood even that imperial baggage train was an imposition and he didn't want to impose on people. And one thing Marcus never notices, he never sees it once, despite all the stress of the job. He never once sees Antoninus lose his temper. Hadrian at one point loses his temper with a secretary and he stabs the man in the eye with a pen.

• 6:37Ryan Holiday?

  Something the emperor then could get away with. There's no repercussions. And yet Marcus says of Antoninus that he never exhibited rudeness. He never lost control of himself. He never turned violent. A gravity without errors. He was a man of immense self-control. When Seneca says that he is most powerful who is under his own power. That's what Antoninus was. And you really couldn't imagine then a better teacher for someone like Marcus Aurelius, right? If you think of Marcus Aurelius and someone like Nero, they had very similar paths. They lose their parents at a very young age. They're thrust into power. They have Stoic teachers. Seneca teaches Nero. Junius Rusticus teaches Marcus Aurelius, but what's the difference then? Why is Nero so awful and Marcus so great?

• 7:22Ryan Holiday?

  The answer is Antoninus. In 161 AD, Antoninus comes to the end of his life. Hadrian probably thought he would rule for a few years. Antoninus was an old man. That was the idea. Marcus was too young. Antoninus was too old, but he does come to the end. His final words? Equanimitas or equanimity. This is what he's passing along to Marcus Aurelius. It's now his turn to wear the purple, to carry the load, to be the man that Hadrian saw in him. Marcus is supposedly so terrified at this thought at first that he goes to bed weeping. But he has a dream that night. I think you could imagine Antoninus visiting him in this dream.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus sees in the dream that he has shoulders of ivory. This is him realizing that he is strong enough to carry the load. And in fact, he has to carry the load. Fulfilling the destiny that Hadrian had set out for him all those years ago. Now, Antoninus had been blessed with wonderful peaceful times. Antoninus did not have to spill a single drop of blood. Marcus Aurelius's reign is marked by floods and war, invasions, a terrible plague, one thing after another. One ancient historian says, "Marcus Aurelius does not meet with the good fortune that he deserved. In fact, his whole reign is marked by a series of troubles." And yet, this same historian says that he comes to admire Marcus Aurelius for the very reason that these troubles don't break him.

• 8:50Ryan Holiday?

  In fact, Marcus never loses command of himself, never loses control of himself. He survives, and so does the empire. But as cursed as he was in that sense, you would argue, he was blessed with the example and the guidance and those long years of apprenticeship under Antoninus. And now, it's Marcus Aurelius's time to bring those ideas into practice. Now, the first thing that Marcus does is write out of Antoninus's playbook, right? Part of a quirk of Adrian's odd, you know, unprecedented succession plan, there's this other guy, the son of someone that Adrian had once thought could succeed him, a man named Lucius Verus. Now, Marcus Aurelius is the same age roughly as Lucius Verus.

• 9:35Ryan Holiday?

  And although it's very clear to Antoninus who deserves to be emperor, it's kind of not clear what to do with Lucius Verus. Again, Marcus Aurelius could have been the bloodthirsty Machiavellian, absolute tyrant that many emperors were. He could have assassinated, gotten rid of his rival. Instead, he appoints Lucius Verus, his stepbrother, only on paper, to be co-emperor. The first thing Marcus Aurelius does with absolute power is give half of it away. The next thing he does is give Antoninus a nickname. He names him Antoninus Pius. He deifies his stepfather, and it puts down in the record just how truly great and holy and humble this man was.

• 10:19Ryan Holiday?

  And then Marcus Aurelius has to get to work. Solving one problem after another, which he does with the same kind of calmness and self-control and poise and dignity and goodness that he learned from Antoninus. Marcus Aurelius points out how trivial the ambitions of most emperors and powerful people actually are. He says how much more philosophical it is to take what we've been given and show uprightness and self-control and obedience to God without making a production of it. In the depths of Rome's Antonine plague, what does Marcus do? He sells off the palace furnishings. He doesn't spend the treasury's money like it's his. He protects it. He reaches into his own pocket so other people don't have to suffer.

• 11:02Ryan Holiday?

  The work of Marcus's life is to be like Antoninus. He writes in Meditations that he wants to never be swayed by pleasure or pain. He wants to be purposeful when in action, free from dishonesty or dissimulation. And this is never dependent on action or inaction from anyone else. He wants to be self-reliant in that truest sense. He wants to cultivate a certain kind of indisputable immunity from the dice rolls of fortune. And even as an old man, he continues to learn and study philosophy to try to be the man that Antoninus wanted him to be. There's a story about Marcus Aurelius leaving the palace. Friend stops him and he says, Marcus, where are you going? And he says, I'm off to see Sextus the philosopher to learn that which I do not yet know.

• 11:47Ryan Holiday?

  The man is amazed. This is one of the wisest, most powerful men in the world, and he's taking up his tablets and books and going to school like an ordinary student. But this was the kind of humility and grace that Marcus had learned from Antoninus. This was his interest in what other people had to say. This was his interest in experts. During the depths of the Antonine plague, right, going back to Antoninus and the ability to defer and listen to experts, the first thing Marcus does is appoint one of Rome's great medical minds, his doctor, Galen, to be in charge of the response. He doesn't think he knows everything. He doesn't let politics get in the way. He tries to listen to the people who know what they're talking about. And there's another passage in Meditations that echoes of Antonius. Marcus Aurelius just concentrate every moment.

• 12:31Ryan Holiday?

  Like a Roman, right? Is this concentrate on the task in front of you like it's the most important thing in your life, like it's the last thing you're doing in your life. If you had asked Marcus to define what a Roman was, he would have defined Antoninus. It's one of the most remarkable stories in all of history. Two consecutive emperors, not related by blood, who managed to not just be decent and good at their job, but to not be corrupted by the unlimited power in front of them. Now, why haven't you heard of Antoninus? It's a good question. If he was so great, why don't you know who he is? Well, in some ways, Antoninus is really a victim of his own success. First off,

• 13:13Ryan Holiday?

  he is eclipsed by Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is so beloved that he overshadows the man who trained and cultivated him and protected him. If that hadn't happened, Antoninus could have been remembered for all of history if that was something that mattered to him. Think of the months August and July. These are named after Augustus and Julius Caesar. Well, the Senate so loved Antoninus in his own time that they offered him the chance to name a month after him and his wife. This was preposterously egotistical. To a Stoic, it's also utterly meaningless. Who cares? But in truth, Antoninus's real legacy was his life. You know, there's that expression that no

• 13:52Ryan Holiday?

  man is a hero to his valet. Marcus Aurelius is closer to Antoninus than his valet. And yet, he not just sees him as a hero, he adores him, he loves him, he worships him. He was his hero. Because Antoninus did the hardest thing there is to do in philosophy. Actually, lived by what he talked about. He lived up to the standards he set for himself and believed in. And more importantly, he gave Marcus Aurelius the tools to do the same. And this was true multi-generational impact, tragically impact that Marcus Aurelius is not even able to replicate in his own life. We see his son Commodus fall terribly, shamefully short of the standards that Marcus set for himself.

• 14:36Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus isn't able to be the kind of father or guardian or a mentor that Antoninus was for him. And what sets Marcus Aurelius up to be so great? It's that he had this North Star. Superior to all the masters and teachers that he was given, the historian Ernest Renan says, "Marcus had a single master whom he revered above all, and that was Antoninus. It was because Marcus Aurelius had by his side the most beautiful model of a perfect life, one whom he understood and loved, that he became who he was." You know, when we think of discipline, we think of discipline as working out, eating well, controlling your temper, and of course, it's all these things.

• 15:18Ryan Holiday?

  But the deeper, most profound level of discipline, the magisterial discipline, as I call it in the book, is this. It's one thing to not do stuff that you shouldn't really do, but so much of what we don't do, or we judge on others, we're not even in a position to do. Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus have unlimited power. They can put people to death, they can start wars, they can build enormous monuments to themselves. They do none of this. They focus on the job, they focus on doing their best, they focus on being the best people that they could possibly be. And that's their legacy, that's what discipline is really about. That's what we have to cultivate in our own lives. Ultimately, that's what Stoicism is about as well.