All The Stoics Were Kings | Following The Doctor’s Orders

Marcus Aurelius was a true philosopher king, but he wasn’t the first or the last amongst the Stoics. The first emperor, Octavian, studied under Athenodorus and Arius Didymus. Hadrian took classes from Epictetus and Antoninus was a kind of natural Stoic.--And in today's excerpt from The Daily Stoic, Ryan reminds us to to stop fighting against the thing and use it as a prescription, that it is unfortunate that it happen but its fortunate that it happen to me.✉️ 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. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  All the Stoics were kings. Marcus Aurelius was a true philosopher-king, but he wasn't the first or the last among the Stoics. The first emperor, Octavian, studied under Athenodorus and Arius Didymus. Hadrian took classes from Epictetus, and Antoninus was a kind of natural Stoic. But actually, all the Stoics were of the same mold. Cleiantheus was a manual labor, but he carried himself like his work mattered, like he mattered. Cato, a man in command of himself, had no desire for the power that Caesar so destructively sought. Epictetus was a slave, but he knew he was freer than most of the men in Nero's court, perhaps even more so than Hadrian. As Epictetus's teacher, Musonius Rufus, would

• 1:24Ryan Holiday?

  say, "I believe a good king is from the outset and by necessity, a philosopher. And the philosopher is from the outset, a kingly person." For the Stoics, it didn't matter what one did for a living, it mattered how they did it. Yes, sure, there was the job king, but far more important was being a kingly person, was conquering the greatest empire, the one that Seneca laid out, command of oneself. "If we are to aspire to power, this is the type to aspire to. If we want to lead, let us start by leading ourselves. If we want accolades and privileges, let us seek to deserve them rather than to lust after and acquire them."

• 2:07Ryan Holiday?

  And by the way, some of the names in today's message, Athena Doris and Klyantides and Musonis Rufus, maybe that's not as familiar to you as Marcus and Seneca and Epictetus, the so-called big three, but they're actually just as fascinating and in some cases, better examples of what Stoicism is supposed to be than than than the more famous ones. And they're actually who I profile in Lives of the Stoics, the art of living from Marcus Aurelius to Zeno, Zeno being the founder of Stoicism, which also might not have totally landed with you. The book came out in 2020, so right at the depths of the pandemic. So maybe it got lost for you, but I really wanted to look at who the Stoics were, what they did, how they lived, where they lived up to the philosophy, where they fell short. That's what Lives of the Stoics is about. When I sign it, we have

• 2:51Ryan Holiday?

  signed copies in the Daily Stoic store, I usually write acta non verba, which means deeds, not words, which I think is a really important thing when it comes to Stoicism. How do you practice this stuff? How do you live up to it? That's what the book's about. And I'd love for you to check it out if you haven't already.

• 3:15Ryan Holiday?

  Following the doctor's orders, this is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. Just as we commonly hear people say that the doctor prescribed someone particular riding exercises or ice baths or walking without shoes, we should, in the same way that nature prescribed someone to be diseased or disabled or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone's healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 5.8. It is funny, right, to think about

• 3:55Ryan Holiday?

  in the Rolf days, someone being prescribed to walk without shoes or to ride a horse, also, I guess, better than being prescribed to bleeding. But we'll get to today's meditation. The Stoics were masters at analogies and used them as a tool to help strengthen their reasoning. Here, Marcus Aurelius observes how willingly we will put up with unpleasantness if commanded by the magic words, doctor's orders. The doctor says that you've got to take this nasty medicine and you'll do it. The doctor tells you that you have to start sleeping hanging upside down like a bat. You'll feel silly, but soon enough you'll get to dangling because you think it will make you better. On the other hand, when it comes to external events, we fight like hell if anything happens contrary to our plans.

• 4:37Ryan Holiday?

  But what if, Marcus asks, the doctor had prescribed the exact same thing as a part of our treatment? What if it's as good as taking our medicine? Well, what if? What's so magical about those words the doctor orders is that feel like we don't have a choice. Of course, you don't have to listen to the doctor. I guess some people don't listen to their doctors. You go, oh, well, they know better. They chose this for me. That's what the treatment of this disease sickness is. Who am I to object? I will accept it and I will go along with it because I want to get better. But then when you're stuck in traffic or you're, a job turns out to be harder than you thought,

• 5:19Ryan Holiday?

  or a relationship turns out to be more difficult than you thought, you have to do anything that you didn't expect, you didn't want, because you feel like you have a choice in the matter, you don't want to do it. But what if, Marcus is saying, actually, this too is chosen to make you better? And in a sense, that's what the obstacle is the way as a philosophy is really about. It's this idea that these things aren't things we have to do, they're things we get to do, things that were chosen for us. You can see it as some sort of higher power if you want, you can, you can see it as fate if you want, you could just simply see it as a thing, but that it is something that's going to make you better.

• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

  In meditations, Marcus Rios talks about how, he goes, it's unfortunate this happened, that this happened. And then it catches him, no, it's fortunate that it happens to me, right? He was saying, oh, no, wait, this was chosen for me. I am right for this. This is right for me.

• 6:19Ryan Holiday?

  So stop fighting, stop pushing against the thing and see it as a prescription. See it as part of the process. See it as an assignment you've been given. How will you handle it? Are you going to be a good patient or a bad patient? A good student or a bad student? This is everything. These things were chosen for you and all you have to do in turn is choose them back.