Classics Scholar Robin Waterfield on Translating Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations - Pt.1 | There’s Only One Path To Greatness

Ryan reads today’s Daily Stoic meditation and talks to Robin Waterfield about his new annotated translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, the historical accuracy of the critical moments that shaped Marcus’s life, the difference between high and low philosophy, and more. Robin Waterfield is a British classical scholar, translator, and editor, specializing in Ancient Greek philosophy. He studied Classics at Manchester University and went on to research ancient Greek philosophy at King's College, Cambridge. He lives in Greece. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. This episode is also brought to you by KiwiCo. KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com. This episode is also brought to you by Talkspace, the online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show. This episode is also brought to you by Box of Awesome from Bespoke Post. They have a huge number of collections no matter what you’re into: the great outdoors, style, cooking, mixology, and more. To get started, you just take a quiz at boxofawesome.com your answers help them pick the right Box of Awesome for you. Get 20% off your first monthly box when you sign up at boxofawesome.com and enter the code STOIC at checkout.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic Follow Robin Waterfield:Homepage: http://robinwaterfield.com/See 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  You are what you give your energy toward. There is an infinite amount of things you could do today. There is an infinite amount of information you could consume. There's an infinite amount of thoughts you could think. So as you weigh those limitless options this morning, it's worth considering this declaration from Marcus Aurelius, "Our worth is measured by what we devote our energy to." Will you pursue selflessness, or will you work for the common good? Will you turn to smart books or sensational news? Will you be jealous or happy for other people? Will you be kind? Will you worry about petty things? We are what we think about. We are what we put our energy towards. If we direct ourselves well today and every day, we will be well. If we don't, we won't. It's that simple.

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, my life changed in 2006, I believe, when I read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. I don't know how I ended up with the translation I ended up with. You know, I bought a random one on Amazon, and here we are, all these years later, having had my life changed by this wonderful, wonderful experience. I've read Meditations on hundreds of occasions, literally. I have a copy of it by my nightstand. I can recite large passages of it from memory. It's formed so much of what we do here.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  Daily Stoic, and I had a wonderful experience over the last week or so, reading Marcus Aurelius, again, but from a new perspective, a new, a new translation. I'm talking about Robin Waterfield's new translation for Basic Books. In fact, an annotated edition for Marcus Aurelius with a wonderful intro, and then every passage, or almost every passage, Robin takes the time to sort of explain what they mean, what Marcus was referencing, the necessary context. It's a, it's a wonderful translation. You know, usually I introduce people to Marcus through the Modern Library Translation by Gregory Hayes, which I think is sort of lyrical and beautiful. But this translation is right up there. It's, it's, for, for a first timer

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  with Marcus, this may be the right translation for you. And, and you'll hear in my two-hour interview with Robin, just how profound a thinker and philosopher Marcus really was. You know, I, I was familiar with, with Robin's work because I've read his translation of Zenithen. I've read and referenced one of his translations of Plutarch. You know, as far as classical scholars go, Robin is, is one of the best. And so I reached out to him, having read this new translation, to see if he might want to come on the podcast. And we talked not for one hour, but for two. So you're going to be listening first to our one-hour conversation, and then on Saturday, I'm going to come out with our second hour. For the first hour,

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  we talk about who Marcus was. Who was the man who sat down and wrote these notes to himself? What was he thinking about? What was informing him? What, what made him tick? You can tell that Robin is someone who's spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think we really get into a fascinating discussion that you will like. So, look, here's my interview with Robin. I cannot recommend this translation of Marcus Aurelius enough. If you've already read Marcus, then I definitely suggest you read this. You know, Marcus talks about how we never step in the same river twice, which he gets from Herakles. But the idea that, that work changes as we change. And, and reading, you know, Marcus

• 4:20Ryan Holiday?

  from the fresh angle was really beneficial. I, I'm serious. I think I folded, this book's about 300 pages. I probably folded-

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  280, 290 pages. I mean, and, and most of the ones I folded, I drew an arrow saying I had to turn to the next page. I had the now unenviable task of going back through this edition and translating all the things that I got onto my note cards. But it's an incredible translation, a great conversation with the peerless Robin Waterfield. You can check out his new edition, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, the annotated edition from Basic Books. Do check it out and enjoy this interview and then follow up with us on Saturday for the rest.

• 5:07Ryan Holiday?

  So what is your introduction to Marcus then? When do you first, when does he first come into your life?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Oh, well, I mean, you know, from one point of view, I've known about him forever. I mean, just the same way everybody does. But in publishing terms, I didn't do very much. Actually, something like, I can't remember now, 25 years ago, Penguin produced a little series of books called Penguin 60s or something like that. And they were, they were, you know, small 99 pence books or something. And they asked me to abridge their current translation of Meditations for that. So I did that reluctantly because I thought the translation was crap. But still, I did it. And then that was it. And then, what else?

• 5:54Speaker 02

  When it would have been, I guess, 2017, 2018, Basic Books approached me and said, you want to do this? They, they had the scheme. They had the plan. They already knew they didn't just want another translation. They wanted an annotated, they wanted this, they wanted to make it stand out from all the other translations by putting more apparatus in it. So that's what they asked me to do. And that's what I did.

• 6:16Ryan Holiday?

  It is interesting. I feel like the name is, the name is very familiar. We sort of, it's like, we, we just know Marcus Aurelius. Maybe it's from the movie Gladiator, maybe it's from other things. But there is this kind of distance between us and him. For, for having been one of the only philosopher kings in history, and to have written this beautiful book, it does seem like he's not that integrated into our, our sort of lives or our scholarly lives either.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Well, that was one of the reasons for the, for the annotation is that.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, scholars have have produced, you know, learned commentaries on Marcus, but everybody else just reads the book. So I wanted to kind of act as a bridge between the two and give a little more depth to the text by by writing these notes. Yeah, hopefully it will help people. But the the feedback I've had so far has been very positive. People have said that the notes are, you know, helpful and help them to understand the book and things like that. I slightly worry about it because, you know, I think I still think prime use of the book is just for people to pick it up and read a bit and enjoy it and think about it.

• 7:27Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think it it sort of adds an extra layer of understanding. I think one of the reasons, Marcus is probably one of the few works of ancient philosophy that your average person could just pick up and get a lot out of without the annotations. But I I think what the annotations do is it it helps you understand all the levels that this, you know, maybe just a short sentence is operating on. And it turns out there's quite a few levels that he's speaking about on a lot of occasions.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, above all, of course, I wanted to bring out the stoicism because, I mean, you know, stoicism is quite complex in certain respects and and people don't get into that or they don't they don't see it straight away when they're just reading the book. So, yeah, that was one of the chief things. And the other, I think, most particularly useful aspect of the notes is the cross references, so that I'm I'm pointing out where, you know, where where a theme resurfaces throughout the book and things like that.

• 8:27Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I thought we should start, and I think this is fitting, given that today is Marcus's 1900th birthday.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Which is indeed.

• 8:37Ryan Holiday?

  That maybe we start first with the man and then let's go to the meditations. To me, what's so incredible about Marcus is, you know, we we have this sort of vague understanding of a king or a queen, you know, the crown is obviously popular. We think of these sort of people who it's like, oh, your father was king, so he prepared you to be king or queen, or you were born, you know, even though we we no longer agree with the idea of sort of a royal lineage, we at least at least makes some logical sense to us. I think what's so incredible about Marcus is that he really was just a regular person who was sort of selected, not quite from obscurity, but certainly selected with

• 9:22Ryan Holiday?

  no real pretense, other than somebody spotted potential in him. And it sort of sets this incredible story into motion.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  He was, he was more embedded in, you know, the imperial household than you're suggesting. Okay, he wasn't necessarily destined to be emperor from, from his boyhood, but, but, but his family was already, you know, was very close to, to Hadrian. So they were, they were in that circle. He would have been brought up, as I say, not necessarily with the expectation that he would be emperor, but he would, he would have been brought up with the expectation that he would rise, you know, he would be granted honorary consulships and praetorships and things like that. It would rise up through the ranks to a certain extent. As it turned out, he rose up all the way. So, yeah.

• 10:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he's not an ordinary person, but at the same time, he's not, he's not, you know, like a third cousin. There's not even like the, the sort of convoluted, you know, by marriage. It's, it's really more of this sort of Roman tradition of adopting someone and making them your heir.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I, I, I wonder about that. I don't know enough Roman history to sort of really have a view on why successive emperors did that. I suspect it was because they wanted to avoid, you know, conflict at the, suppose they had like, I don't know, two sons and they wanted to avoid, avoid conflict when they died. And one of the sons wanted to be emperor and the other one did as well. So they adopted people to make that safe. That might've been the reason.

• 10:57Ryan Holiday?

  It's funny, like you, you sort of couldn't develop a worse way to, to raise a person, which, you know, by, by saying like, you know, you're destined to be king because you're my son, or, or, or queen because you're my daughter. But then again, I'm not sure choosing a total, like choosing a random kid from the imperial household at a, at a relatively early age and saying, you know, in the future, you will be king. I'm not sure. More often than not, you know, let's say in a Nero's case, that turns out to be quite terrible. Right. I think what's fascinating about Marcus is that, you know, he's kind of the exception that proves the rule. Like it didn't, it didn't ruin him as a person to have his, to have this

• 11:41Ryan Holiday?

  path selected for him.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  No, he had a very strong sense of duty. And I think this is, again, just to sort of slightly argue against you. I think, I think the advantage of a child being brought up knowing he's going to be emperor or king is that he's instilled with a very strong sense of duty. I suspect if there is any truth to the newspaper rumors about some kind of rift between princes William and Harry, but it might be over exactly this issue. William has obviously taken on the, on board the idea that it's his duty. He is born to be king. Whereas Harry has, is trying his best to shed as much of that as he possibly can.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  And I suspect William thinks, hmm, he doesn't have a sense of duty.

• 12:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's really interesting. Right. It's, it's the, the idea that you're both a person and a personification of the state.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 12:38Ryan Holiday?

  And you don't get all of the choices and freedoms that a normal person has.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, particularly in case of, of the royal, British royal family, where the king or the queen is also the head of the church. And so was Marcus. Marcus was also pontifex maximus of Rome, as well as the emperor. So you've got this, you know, this really powerful combination of emotive issues and situations, religion, duty, emperorship, all combined in one person.

• 13:08Ryan Holiday?

  You, you talk in the book quite a bit about Marcus's theme of eternal recurrence. And there is something, it is kind of lovely, the eternal recurrence of the, the exact same dilemma and, and stress that's probably on Marcus and Lucius Verus is also 2,000 plus years later on Prince Harry and Prince William.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could be. Yeah.

• 13:34Ryan Holiday?

  So what shapes Marcus in his early life then? He seems to have this sort of tension where he's on the one hand being instructed in rhetoric and in all the things needed to be king, but he really falls in love with philosophy at some point, and there's kind of a tension between those things, it feels like.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a traditional tension. I mean, dating right back to Plato, to the fourth century, because Plato was very strongly against rhetoric. He thought that its values were superficial, that it perpetuated superficial values as opposed to reaching for knowledge or understanding in any real sense. And so it's been a traditional dichotomy ever since then. Marcus seems to have been attracted to philosophy from a very early age. In Book One, when he's thanking Junius Rusticus for acknowledging what he learned from him, he says that, you know, he was still a child when he became attracted to, I think it was

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Rusticus, when he became attracted to Greek education and austerity, the sort of ascetic side of things. So that would have been a childish attraction. He wouldn't have, he would then have started studying philosophy only when he was much older, when he was seventeen or eighteen or so. And that would have carried on for some years in parallel with rhetoric. But yeah, his heart was in philosophy, not in rhetoric, definitely.

• 15:05Ryan Holiday?

  Why is rhetoric so controversial? It seems, the irony is, part of the reason we're talking about Marcus is that he was taught to be so articulate and clear in what he was saying, that even his own private ramblings to himself stand as one of the greatest works of philosophy of all time.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think the problem with rhetoric, I think the problem with rhetoric that Marcus saw was that it was too overblown. In his day, there there were two schools of uh two chief schools of rhetoric. Uh those who were into what was called sort of Asiatic style and those who were into the planar Attic style. Marcus would have been attracted to the planar style, but nevertheless, there was this tradition of very overblown fancy rhetoric, you know, clever allusions, clever word games, um, things like that, not using, even going so far, uh Atticists would have would go so far as not use any word that wasn't, you know, found in Thucydides and Plato or Demosthenes or people like that.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Um, and I think I I think Marcus probably just saw that as a bit bit silly, a bit of a sort of, you know, complex and rather useless game.

• 16:19Ryan Holiday?

  So he he does have a a a set of philosophy teachers, then he has Rusticus, uh and and and who else who else instructs him in philosophy?

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I can't remember the names off the top of my head, but quite a few. Um, ones, it's about ones six to nine are all his philosophy teachers, so that's um.

• 16:39Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's right.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, Rusticus is seven.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Diagnutus is six, so Rusticus is seven, Apollonius was a philosopher, Sextus was was a philosopher, Alexander the language teacher, yeah, and then Fronto, Alexander the Platonist we've got, yeah, so quite a few, quite a few philosophy teachers. There's not a full list, in book one, there's not a full list of all his tutors, but uh those are the ones he mentioned, all Stoics.

• 17:11Ryan Holiday?

  And and of course, he doesn't, he doesn't explicitly thank Epictetus, but Epictetus is really his his main philosophy teacher, it feels like, from a distance.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Oh, definitely, definitely. It's not even clear to me how well read, I'm I assume Marcus had access to the uh, you know, the works of the early Stoics like Xenon and Chrysippus, which are lost to us. Um, but it's not particularly clear to me that he was that well read in them. Everything, everything we can read in meditation seems to come through an Epictitan filter, um, rather than giving us the idea that Marcus was actually, you know, immersed in Chrysippus's very complex works, apparently not only complex but poorly written works, so.

• 17:58Ryan Holiday?

  So is your view that he's reading directly the lectures of Epictetus? Or is he reading Arian's translations? What is your take on that?

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Very difficult. Again, at the end, it must be Rusticus. He thanks him for, um, the end of 1:7 says,

• 18:20Speaker 02

  "Yeah, and reading Epictetus's discourses, he shared his personal copy with me." Right. So

• 18:29Speaker 02

  were these Rusticus's own notes? You know, he might have, he might have gone to Epictetus's talks and taken notes? Or was that Arian? I don't think there's any way of telling. I suspect it was Arian's. When, when Marcus quotes Epictetus, it's from Arian's discourses. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's from the lost books of Arian's discourses. So we can't tell how exact quotation is. But the other times when we can, when we can figure it, it's, it's always Arian. Yeah.

• 19:02Ryan Holiday?

  And he may well have heard some of Epictetus from Hadrian himself, who, who we believe attended some of Epictetus's lectures, right?

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Well, we believe Hadrian visited Epictetus. Whether he actually sort of attended a lecture or anything, I don't know. But yeah, yeah, he may have heard about him for sure. Yeah. I mean, he was brought up with intellectual curiosity. He'd have heard of all these people. The same way that when you asked me at the beginning, you know, when did Marcus Aurelius enter your life? You know, Epictetus would have entered Marcus's life very early.

• 19:33Ryan Holiday?

  It's, it's fairly incredible to, to have the most powerful man in the world be so influenced by, you know, such a powerless person in the world. The only real analog I can think of is the friendship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's a good parallel. I didn't know it.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Except they weren't directly friends, of course, Epictetus and Marcus, they never, they never actually met. But yeah, it is curious. But I mean, it's curious from the outside, but from the Stoic inside, it's not so curious, because of course, to a Stoic, it doesn't make any difference whether you're born a slave or an emperor. You simply do the best with what the gods have given you, the hand that's been dealt to you. So, and they both clearly did the best. Thank goodness, we can still read them.

• 20:23Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 20:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and it seems a bit patronizing, but I suspect that Marcus identified with the powerlessness of Epictetus, or that being dealt a bad hand by fate. I don't think Marcus relished the power that he was given. I think he saw himself assigned a role that he probably wouldn't have chosen. Do you agree with that?

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Broadly, I would agree with it. Yes, he's critical of the idiots around him. I mean, as emperor, he's having to deal with dozens of people every day, and he doesn't seem to think most of them are worth much. But at the same time, there is this, there is a contradiction in the Meditations, where, you know, there are four occasions, let's say four, maybe five, when he comments more or less directly on his position as emperor. And twice, it's like, this is a real burden, and it's a real obstacle, and it gets in my way of being a philosopher. And then another couple of times, it's like, you know, this

• 21:38Speaker 02

  isn't an impediment. I can still be an emperor and be a practicing Stoic. So he actually, it's one of the few times he actually genuinely, you know, completely contradicts himself within the book, saying first one thing and then the opposite.

• 21:51Ryan Holiday?

  That strikes me as pretty understandable. Sometimes you love your job, sometimes you hate your job.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  I'm lucky, I always love my job.

• 22:02Ryan Holiday?

  Well, one other philosophy teacher I wanted to talk about in Marcus's life, who you're sort of indirectly connected to, is Sextus, who we don't know a lot about, but from my understanding is Plutarch's grandson or nephew. I just love the idea that Rome was such a small world that Marcus Aurelius is being tutored by Sextus. And Plutarch, you know, his whole life is about telling stories about people just like Marcus Aurelius. They would have liked each other, I suspect.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Yes, except for the fact that, okay, as well as writing biographies, Plutarch wrote a large number of essays. And quite a few of those essays are anti-Stoic tracts. So what's curious is that Plutarch, who was a Platonist, his nephew was a Stoic. And it was his nephew Sextus, as he said, who was one of the influences on Marcus. But yeah, no, I think they would have liked each other. I mean, I rate Plutarch very highly. I like his work. I like his mind. I like his use of language. I've translated four volumes of Plutarch, I think.

• 23:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you're right. The irony of Plutarch's descendants being connected with the Stoics. It's not quite as ironic as Cato, the elder's great-grandson, being a Stoic, given his antipathy towards philosophy. But yeah, I wonder how bitter that taste would be in his mouth.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Cato was, yeah, not just opposed to philosophy, but opposed to all things Greek, or he pretended to be. I think it was kind of a bit of a front for the sake of, you know, a politician saying something for the sake of the effect it will have. But, you know, Cato said he was opposed to all things Greek.

• 23:57Ryan Holiday?

  So talking about Marcus Aurelius's male influences, obviously, they're significant. But you have an interesting annotation about Marcus's mother, who doesn't get talked about quite as much, but seemed like she was an enormous force in his life.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  I don't know. As you say, she's not talked about much. I mean, she was immensely wealthy. She owned...

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Dozens of factories, I think, but I can't remember what they were making. But, sorry, I'm speaking more as a philosopher than a historian. So I don't, I don't pick up on all the historical details necessarily. But how much of an influence you was? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

• 24:39Ryan Holiday?

  I remember reading, maybe it's in the Historia Augusta, where, where Marcus almost doesn't want to be king because it means he's going to have to move out of his mother's house, which I thought was both cute and, and perhaps an insight into Marcus's character.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah. He moved into the imperial household.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Aged about sixteen, I think. Yeah.

• 25:03Ryan Holiday?

  Because he loses his actual father quite early, correct?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, very early. Up before the age of ten, let's say.

• 25:12Ryan Holiday?

  And, and I feel like he, there's also a few allusions to mothers in Meditations. You know, he talks about philosophy being your true mother and, you know, your job being sort of like your stepmother. So I don't know, maybe I'm making it up. But I did feel like clearly his mother was a symbolically significant in his life, at least.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think, I think it's safe to say that, yeah. But I'm being, I'm being a pedantic scholar and not, not pushing it any further.

• 25:44Ryan Holiday?

  All right. So talk to me about his relationship with his brother, which is kind of, it's his, what is it? His adopted stepbrother? I don't know what you would call it exactly, but this strikes me as a pretty remarkable, a remarkable relationship.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the first thing that's interesting about it is it's the first time Rome had had a dual emperorship, first time there'd been two emperors. I think that, I, I mean, we don't know really what the dynamic was between them. We can't know. There's a recent book about Lucius Verus, which I haven't read, which tries to.

• 26:21Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, what's it called?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  I don't know. It was mentioned at the anniversary conference yesterday. Which, but, but at any rate, what I know about it is it's trying to correct his reputation and say he wasn't just this sort of dandy and playboy, which is the sort of first thing that people think of when they think of Lucius Verus. But I think the dynamic between them would have been very interesting as they were growing up. Because as far as I can tell, it was Lucius who Hadrian first intended to become emperor.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  And then it was only when Antoninus Pius became emperor that he elevated Marcus over Lucius. And Marcus accepted that. And so when they became joint emperors, he made it clear that he was the senior of the joint emperors by by getting Lucius to marry his daughter, making Lucius his his son in law, a slightly sort of inferior position to a father in law. Um, but it's but I think the dynamic between them when they were growing up, perhaps because Marcus could see less quality in Lucius than he thought the emperor should have. I think the dynamic between them when they were growing up would have been very, very interesting. One could write a novel about it, but I don't think there's enough historical evidence to to write a proper historical book about it.

• 27:36Ryan Holiday?

  So so you're you're saying that Marcus is the heir and Lucius is the spare or vice versa? And and they end up sort of just sticking with it? Is is the dual emperors maybe a descendant or or an homage to the idea of the two consuls before Rome is a it it becomes a a dictatorship?

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Yes, it could be that, or it could be there. There are a lot of other precedents. Um, uh, classical Sparta had, okay, and classical Sparta had two kings. A lot of the um, the Greek kingdoms, um, you know, in Egypt and Macedonia after after Alexandria, when it all sort of basically divided up into three or four kingdoms, Syria, Egypt and Macedonia were the were the three chief ones. They often had dual kingships. They often made their sons their joint kings a few years before they retired or died. So that there was there was quite a strong precedent for dual kingship, but um, uh, just the first time that Rome had one.

• 28:39Ryan Holiday?

  When when I was writing Lives of the Stoics, one of the the interesting examples that came up to me is when when Arius uh becomes the advisor to young Octavian. And then Octavian becomes emperor. The the first thing that this Stoic philosopher tells the emperor to do is to kill Caesarion, uh, you know, Caesar's illegitimate heir, who who actually probably in some ways has a, you know, a closer claim to the throne, being an actual descendant of Caesar and and Cleopatra. So I don't know, I just find it remarkable that, you know, given, given what had happened just a generation or two before with Nero, you know, there's not a long history of kings

• 29:23Ryan Holiday?

  allowing their rivals to peacefully coexist or, or quite frankly, continue breeding for very long.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  No. Well, going back to what we said earlier, I mean, this, this might be why the Roman emperors or the, the Flavian emperors used adoption rather than, rather than birth children so as to avoid that kind of, that kind of conflict. But yeah, no, that was, I mean, I mean, the, again, going back to the Greek kingdoms, the, you know, Greek and Macedonian kingdoms, they were, I mean, those families were, apart from the Macedonian kingdom, that was, that was fairly stable. They didn't tend to, there's only one case there of a son being killed, but in Egypt and Syria, they were bumping each other off left, right and center. Brothers, sisters, wives, daughters, cousins.

• 30:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And it's like, you know, Hadrian gets credit for sort of putting this into motion, but I mean, he dies. So he, he has no idea whether the experiment works. Perhaps most of the credit is due to Antoninus, that he manages to keep all this together and, and sort of shuttle it from, from, you know, that, that he manages to inherit the throne, hold it for so long, and then peacefully transition power to two essentially polar opposites is a, is a pretty incredible feat.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, he was clearly a good emperor, one of the emperors we call a good emperor and a strong emperor. But I think in the first place, he wasn't expected to live so long. I think, I think when Hadrian passed it on to him, he thought, okay, he'll be, because he was already in his 50s or something and people didn't necessarily live that long in those days. So I think, you know, Hadrian expected Antoninus to live for another sort of, you know, six or 10 years and then pass it on. As I say, I think Hadrian wanted him to pass it on to Lucius in the first, in the first place. It was Antoninus who then turned around and made it Marcus. Seeing, I think, the greater quality of Marcus.

• 31:17Ryan Holiday?

  And Antoninus strikes me as everything Marcus wanted to naturally be, but was not.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, obviously. I mean, the admiration that he expresses in both Book One, 116, and in Book 630, the admiration he expresses for Antoninus is absolutely genuine. And it makes, and it makes those two, those two entries really unique because,

• 31:52Speaker 02

  you know, what we know about Roman emperors is what the historians choose to tell us. And they're dealing with a mixture of court gossip and official documents and this and this. But here is Marcus writing from personal knowledge about, about an emperor, Antoninus Pius. And that's, that's unique. And what he says about him is, is really remarkable. And, you know, it gives us more insight into, into the workings of a Roman emperor's mind than, than the historians do, I think.

• 32:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, what's, what's remarkable is, is in some ways Antoninus is in the way of what Marcus, Marcus is, you know, birthright or what he's been given. So to me, what makes the, the admiration so impressive is that, you know, by, by hanging around so long, Antoninus is preventing Marcus, like, you know, we have this idea of the impatient heir, you know, the, the, the young son whose father has an empire, you know, a, a business empire, they want their turn in charge, they've got new ideas for a new generation.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:59Ryan Holiday?

  It's remarkable how respectful he is, even though in some sense they're sort of jockeying with each other for power. You know what I mean?

• 33:10Speaker 02

  But do you think, I mean, I think that I, I, I think, I don't think Marcus was unhappy about being delayed before becoming emperor. I think it, you know, gave him more time to be a private individual and get on with his Stoic reading. I mean, he had lots of official jobs, you know, he was a consul and priest and all sorts of, all sorts of things even before he became emperor. But at least he would have had slightly more time to himself, slightly, you know, less having to deal with these people he regards as idiots and fools and crooks.

• 33:39Ryan Holiday?

  A- A- Antoninus does seem to have a good understanding of Marcus's nature. There's the story that I love where when Marcus is, one of Marcus's teachers dies and Marcus is crying and supposedly another instructor goes to, you know, sort of say, this isn't dignified, you know, th- this isn't what a Stoic would do. And he says, you know, let the boy be human for once. And, and so I, there is, there are these moments of, of where we get just through the, you know, the centuries, we get a glimpse at the, the, the affection and the understanding that these two had for each other.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, I'm not sure I particularly believe in the historical accuracy of that story, but, uh, but it, it might, it might reflect some aspects of the truth. Yeah.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  I mean, cause that's the trouble with these stories, the Historia or Gaster in particular, is that, you know, there's a lot of kind of tropes in it, which, you know, which you just, you just sort of apply, apply an idea to a person because he's an emperor, or because you think he's a good man, or because this, or because that, rather than necessarily it has too much basis in reality.

• 34:51Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 34:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, but if you're telling me that I can't trust the anecdotes in, in Plutarch or, or these sort of insights into the character of these philosophers, I feel like you're shaking the entire foundation of, of my world here.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  No, one just has to be careful, that's all. I mean, you have to, you know, you have to have a, th- this is, this is, this is what we do. This is what students of the ancient world do. We, we pick a judicious path through the evidence. We try to determine what's sound and what's unsound and we stick to what's sound and, uh,

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, cast out the rest. No, Plutarch is a good source, but the historian Augustus isn't.

• 35:39Ryan Holiday?

  Do you think Marcus was happy?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  No, I don't. I mean, one of the, one of the major themes in the book is, is anger management. He, uh, he was frequently disappointed with the people around him. He frequently thought the world was, you know, basically shit and filth. I mean, he actually uses more or less those words at one point. Um, he thought the people around him, as I've already said, were liars and crooks. He calls them at one point. These, this, these were the people he had to deal with. He thought, at least in some moods, that being emperor was a major impediment towards his pursuit of, you know, philosophical enlightenment. So I think, I think on the whole, uh, he wasn't happy and I think the tone, I mean,

• 36:24Speaker 02

  uh, we should qualify this. He was, he was, he was a practicing Stoic or he was trying to be a good Stoic. So he wouldn't have allowed himself to be unhappy. Um, but nevertheless, I think that was there and I think, I think the way it shows chiefly in the book, in the meditations, is that

• 36:42Speaker 02

  there's a certain sort of melancholy in the book, a certain kind of sadness. Um, which, you know, melancholy is, is, is, is not necessarily a negative state. It's a state of mind that can lead one to quite, uh, quite a lot of profundity. And I think that's where it takes Marcus. But nevertheless, I think he was melancholic. Yeah, I think he was, I think he would have preferred to, uh, but he wouldn't. No, we see, we can't even say he would have preferred to be something else or do something else because he was a state. He accepted a lot that Zeus had given him. And that was to be emperor.

• 37:20Ryan Holiday?

  But what of the argument that perhaps what we see in meditations is not a representative picture of the whole person, personality because, you know, he's writing about his temper because he's struggling with that. Perhaps he's not reminding himself that jokes are funny or that sex feels good. He's actually doing the opposite. He's saying, hey, uh, remember, don't be deceived by, you know, uh, this, this lust that you feel or this, this fit of passion, you know, in your temper that you feel. Maybe, maybe there, there's a certain amount of omission here.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. We're only getting, we're only getting one of, you know, some facets of the Diamond. Um, we, and you can pick up other aspects of his character from the historians. I mean, for instance, uh, I think it's pretty reliable information that during the Markmanic Wars, he, he, you know, he wanted to eliminate an entire tribe. He wanted to, he put, he put a price on the, on the head of the chief of this tribe, literally, you know, bring him to me alive or dead. So here we see, you know, Marcus as Emperor of Rome had to be at times a violent person, a warlike, belligerent person, uh, ruthless to his enemies.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  That's not a side we see in Meditations, but necessarily an emperor had to do that.

• 38:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's, it's interesting, right? You, you hear him talk about, you know, sex, for instance, and he seems to be sort of just, as you say in, in Meditations, you know, he's sort of disgusted by lust.

• 38:54Ryan Holiday?

  At the same time, doesn't he have like 11 children? So he couldn't have been that turned off by sex.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  He had, um, I think it was even more. Um, nearly all of them died, of course. I think there were like, when he died, there was only one son remaining. That was Commodus, but I think there were four daughters remaining. Uh, but yeah, well, I don't know, but Ryan, come on, we can't tell whether he enjoyed it. Or whether Faustina did.

• 39:21Ryan Holiday?

  He kept going back to that well.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. He kept going back to the well, but he might've just been doing his duty as an emperor to make sure that, uh, he had a son and a, but isn't that interesting? Going back to what we were saying before. But he broke this pattern. I think three emperors before him had all, um, gone with adoption to produce an heir. And, and Marcus let Commodus be, uh, the next emperor and, uh, made him joint emperor while, while he was still alive for the last three years of his life. And, um, yeah, I think historically we tend to think that was a bit of a mistake. Maybe he should have adopted somebody and somebody better.

• 40:03Ryan Holiday?

  Well, unquestionably Commodus is Marcus Aurelius's greatest failure. But it is strange because.

• 40:12Ryan Holiday?

  First off, if you have 12 children, you know, at a certain point, I think statistically, one of them is going to be a dud, right? And then, and then maybe I'd also say, you know, what is it, what does it do to a family to lose, I think he loses, what, seven children or six children before adulthood?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:30Ryan Holiday?

  I can only imagine the trauma that that inflicts on a person and as Marcus, but, but I also just think of the trauma that must have inflicted on Commodus. Like if Commodus was a totally normal individual and then six of your brothers and sisters die, I mean, I could see that being a story one tells in Alcoholics Anonymous or something.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think I want to put a slightly different spin on it because you're looking at it from a modern perspective. In the ancient world, it was very, very common for children to die. Probably, probably more died in infancy than, than, than lived to, to, to their teenage years. And the result of that is this, what seems to us, a very callous attitude towards death, not just among the Stoics. We know, we know what the Stoics thought about your, your child's death, how you should, you know, be able to cope

• 41:30Speaker 02

  with it easily, or at least relatively easily. But everybody, everybody necessarily had to be much more hard-hearted than we, or hard-hearted or realistic about death than we are today. I actually, I mean, and, and, you know, I mean, you've got to think about things like gladiatorial contests. I mean, that's an extraordinary, extraordinary thing. There are, and, and warfare, I mean, thousands of people being killed in, in brutal warfare, year after year after year. I mean, there was warfare going on, you know, in ancient Greek times and Roman times, almost annually, brutal, horrible warfare. I think, I think

• 42:14Speaker 02

  people were far more.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Disinterested in death than we are now, far more objective about it. And hence, of course, you know, all the stories about what's important isn't you as an individual, but it's the perpetuation of the family, the family name, you've got to be noble, you've got to die nobly, courageously, et cetera, et cetera, in battle, whatever. So this is all like consolation for the fact that they were probably going to die anyway.

• 42:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you know, I was, what's weird is, you know, Marcus talks about how, you know, and it gets this from Heraclitus, that we don't step in the same river twice. I do feel like I've gotten a different understanding of Marcus as I've gotten older, as I've had my own kids, you know, I know, I know he gets this lesson from Epictetus about, you know, as you tuck your child into at night, you know, to just say to yourself that they might not live till the morning. And I sort of got, I got that, but it wasn't until I read your translation, I'm thinking about Notebook 11, where the Epictetus thing appears, but also the meditations on either side of it, I never really comprehended them all in one block together.

• 43:25Ryan Holiday?

  But it was very striking to me that Notebook 1133, where he says, "It's crazy to look for figs in winter, it's no less crazy for someone to look for his child when that's no longer possible." I don't know, when I heard that, I was almost moved to tears to think of Marcus, like, thinking of or reaching for these children that he would have loved, that he no longer had. And to see it juxtaposed next to this other reminder, where he's having to tell himself, "Hey, when you tuck them in at night, think about this." It really brought home that Marcus isn't always being figurative. Often, he was probably being quite literal about his actual painful experiences.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think you make a good point there, Ryan. It hadn't occurred to me, but yes. He obviously had been looking for his children when it was no longer possible. And so he's sort of, that's how he came to the realization that it's crazy to do so, because that's exactly what he was doing. Yeah, I think you're right.

• 44:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and it's heartbreaking to, you know, I agree with the philosophy, but then the image of a father having, trying to convince himself in the pages of his journal that it's crazy to miss the child that he lost. There's something, I don't want to say discordant about that, but something, something almost sad about the philosophy of doing that to a person.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Oh, well, I wouldn't say that, but, but, but no, no, it's moving. It's certainly moving.

• 45:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  And as I say, I think you're right, a bit of insight into his character there, yeah. But I mean, this is, this is, this is, I think, the proper understanding of the Stoic teaching about apathia, about not feeling any emotions or passion, is that it's, I think, to understand that as, as that you're just, you know, cold-blooded and callous and, you know, collected in all circumstances is, is wrong. I think a Stoic felt the emotion or was aware of the emotion, but didn't let it affect him, rose above it.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  By substituting, by substituting a rational proposition, I knew my child was, I know my child is mortal, instead of the pain of the child dying, then you could rise above it, but it doesn't mean he didn't feel something. They weren't, they weren't feeling less.

• 46:04Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 46:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, the myth of the Stoics is that they were emotionless robots. And I suspect it's actually that they felt the emotion. They just didn't let the emotion rule their lives. They transcended the emotion, probably partly by processing it in the pages of a journal like Marcus is doing here.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  That would help. That's certainly one of the purposes of the journal. But yeah, no, that's what I was saying. You're right. They feel the emotion but rise above it.

• 46:36Ryan Holiday?

  So I had another thing that struck me about Meditations that I'd be curious for your thought on that. That, again, I didn't really get until I read Meditations again at the beginning of the pandemic. When did you start doing this translation? I'm curious of what was happening in the world as you were writing.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it wasn't in lockdown. It was before lockdown. I was doing it basically throughout 2019. I did Epictetus in lockdown.

• 47:02Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I can't wait to read that. But the thing that struck me, and I'm forgetting where it appears in Meditations. But Marcus talks about how a plague can take your life. But the real pestilence is the one that destroys your character. And again, you know, reading that many times, you know, I came to think of that as a figurative statement. And then watching how humanity acted during the coronavirus pandemic and some of the, you know, sort of awful, cruel things that, you know, human beings revealed themselves to be capable of. It struck me that perhaps Marcus was being literal there as well. What a plague does to us can be worse than the plague itself.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did, I think I added, I was tweaking the introduction at the beginning of lockdown. So I did include a reference to COVID-19 in the introduction. But basically, I was writing the book outside of that. But yeah, no, I think you're right about what you say about Marcus's insight there, yeah.

• 48:05Ryan Holiday?

  How does the Antonine plague shape him?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  We can't know. We can't know the answer to that, right? We can't. I mean, it must have been devastating. It was, you know, powerless to stop it. The only attempt they had at curing it was praying to the gods.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Which wasn't going to do much good. So it must have been, must have been devastating. Goodness knows, tens of thousands of people dying when you're the emperor. And you feel, in a sense, you're the shepherd and they're your flock. And then they are just dying around you all the time. Must have been devastating.

• 48:40Ryan Holiday?

  So, so you're, you've, you've questioned some of the, the historical moments that, that I like to hang my hat on. I just think they're beautiful, but I am struck by the, the, the actions that Marcus takes during the plague. You know, particularly when, when he supposedly sells off some of the imperial treasures. You know, to, to keep Rome going. It does seem like he, he steps up to the plate at least as the world is falling to pieces.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I repeated that story in the introduction. But again, I'm not a hundred percent sure of it.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  The resources of the Emperor of Rome were vast. I don't see why he was so broke. But, but he had to, but it might have been a gesture, you see? It might have been, it might have been a, a good bit of PR to, to do that. To say, you know, I'm, I'm suffering along with you people.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  And I'm doing the best I personally can to see that your lives get better.

• 49:45Ryan Holiday?

  I had, I had one other question about the intro. You have this interesting note. You talk about the distinction between high and low philosophy. What is, what does that mean?

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Well, the way I'm using the terms, high philosophy is more or less what we nowadays think of as philosophy. In other words, you know, the study of concepts, argumentation, the development of logic and epistemology. And, you know, complex theories to explain the world and all its parts is high philosophy. And that was a strong feature of ancient philosophy as well. As I said in the introduction, some of the work of the Stoics on logic and epistemology is really challenging. Really difficult, really complex and very interesting because for many centuries Stoic logic was thought to be.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Pretty useless, not, you know, kind of a digression from Aristotelian logic, which was the main thing. Um, and it was only in the nineteenth century that people perked up and realized that Stoic logic was actually very profound. Very, very powerful tool. It was when people like Freger and mathematical logicians like that came along and they looked back at Stoic logic and realized how great it was. So, um, so it was, yeah, so this is high philosophy, doing, doing this complex. Uh, classroom and, and book learning type of philosophy. And what I'm calling low philosophy is the type that we see in Epictetus and, and Marcus Aurelius. In other words, it's philosophy for life. It's philosophy to, it's, it's philosophy for consolation.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  In the face of death and it's philosophy for therapy to try to make you a better person. That's what I'm calling low philosophy. And that's clearly what Marcus was into. He, if, um. Ancient philosophy was divided broadly into three branches, logic, physics and ethics. Logic covered more than what we think was logic. It covered all. Argumentation and forms of reasoning and rhetoric and grammar and so on and so forth. Um, physics covered the way the world is. Not just what we call the physical laws of the universe, but also things like, um, theology, the nature of the gods and things like that. And ethics was supposed to, you know, help you make a better be it, become a better person.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  And it was also at the high philosophical level, ethics was just the study of the abstract concepts of ethics. Um, but in terms of those three branches, Marcus clearly felt himself to be, uh. At one point, he says, not bright enough to, to be an expert in logic and physics. As another point, he just says, I don't know enough about them. Um, so what his, his focus is entirely on ethics. His focus is entirely on. How a philosophy can help me, Marcus, become a better person and a better emperor. That's Epictetus's focus as well, or at least it's Epictetus's focus in the external discourses.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  He also was teaching, uh, the other stuff in his school, but we don't know, you know, we don't have that surviving that course. Um, but yeah, so Marcus is a low philosopher in that sense. And I think it's also worth remembering always that he's an amateur philosopher. He was a professional emperor, but you know, he hadn't, he hadn't taken a full course in Stoic philosophy. He'd read widely, clearly, he'd attended lectures when he could, but it wasn't like he'd been, you know, he hadn't like gone to Epictetus, not that he could, because Epictetus was old or dying by the time he was young. But he hadn't gone to a teacher like Epictetus and hung out in his school for three years and, you know,

• 53:33Speaker 02

  become a professional philosopher. He was an amateur philosopher. Uh, but again, that's part of his appeal to us because we read him as amateur philosophers ourselves. We read him as people, you know, trying to improve ourselves, trying to improve our own lives, trying to be nicer people. And so it's good that he's an amateur philosopher because we see the same struggles in him that we're having in ourselves.

• 53:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's ironic that we would think of the low philosophy as the, as being, or the not as good philosophy being the one you can actually use that would actually help you in life.

• 54:08Ryan Holiday?

  That's not the one that people get paid money to teach at Stanford or Harvard. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's the least accessible part that sort of gets, that, that, that people chase. Although I guess that kind of sort of, that distinction exists even in Marcus's time. And this is why, you know, they, they were against, maybe it's the sophists or, you know, some of the, some of the fancier sort of thinkers, that there was this bias towards action, even amongst the Stoics, I feel like.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah. And no, I think you're right about, about philosophy nowadays as well. A lot of, a lot of kids, I think, go to university. They like ideas, they like chatting with their friends at night over a pint in the pub, you know, and sorting life out and trying to be better people and using ideas to make themselves better people. And so they say, right, well, I like this stuff, so I'm going to go to university and study philosophy. And then that whole, you know, what they meet there is high philosophy and, and the low philosophy, which they, is what they wanted, gets kind of burnt out of them. It's a shame. With the revival of Sturcism, I mean, people can find it again now. It's it's really great. But you didn't tune in to yesterday's anniversary, Marcus' anniversary conference?

• 55:21Ryan Holiday?

  No, I didn't.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  I was looking at it on YouTube. The last the last bit I thought was really good because the last bit was just two young women. Um, one a lawyer, I can't remember what the other one did, talking about what Sturcism meant to them as young women, as young professionals, and so on and so forth. And to me, it was the most profound part of the conference because it was it was really showing how philosophy can still, how Sturcism can still um be a force for good in people's lives.

• 55:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, my, one of my favorite lines in Meditations is where he says, it stares you in the face. You know, no role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you're in right now. Um, I think that's, I think that's how Gregory Hayes says it, but um, the idea that he's, he's saying that it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, doesn't matter what your job is. Philosophy, there is a role for philosophy inside that, and it can make you better. Whether you're a classic scholar, or a, a writer, or a general, or a, you know, a merchant of some kind.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah, this Hayes translation, I have never come across it. It seems to be quite, quite a popular one.

• 56:36Ryan Holiday?

  I think I may have something to do with that. It's, it's the one that I've, uh, I've, I was first introduced to. Uh, you know, I just went on Amazon when I was nineteen years old and I bought, you know, Meditations. And it was the one that arrived. And I think what I find to be particularly great about it is that it's very sort of lyrical and poetic. I've since, I've since come to hear from translators like you and and I did a, we did a version of, of some Marx realist translations in my, in my book, The Daily Stoic, but uh. That, you know, he's taken some liberties, let's say, with, with the, with the language.

• 57:15Ryan Holiday?

  But I, I love Marcus as, just as a writer, I'm particularly fond of, of Marcus and how beautifully he renders some of these expressions.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Who's the publisher of the Hayes book?

• 57:27Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, this is the Modern Library.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Okay, right. So that's Duckman, isn't it?

• 57:32Ryan Holiday?

  I think so. Uh, I don't know. So I guess it's Random House.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're all part of the same group now, of course. I am suspicious of, of what you said about it then, because I've come across other translations of Marcus where, frankly, sometimes one is reading more of the translator than one is reading of Marcus. And I, as a translator, you know, I've done, I've done, look, you know how many volumes of translation I've done? I've done 32 or something volumes of translation. I feel myself to be somehow a poster child for, for being a translator. So when I come across people taking liberties with the text, especially when it's a philosophical

• 58:16Speaker 02

  text and inserting their own ideas, or paraphrasing Marcus's ideas into their own ideas, I really, really don't like that. My, my aim in all my translations is to be absolutely accurate to the, to the original and fluent English as well, but I don't, I don't add.

• 58:36Ryan Holiday?

  Our newest course, Daily Stoics, Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life. You can sign up now, just go to dailystoic.com/101. You're going to be able to, to benefit from my synthesis of all this information over the years. This is going to be a live course. All the participants will join the course together and move through together at the same time. Registration is now officially open. It will close on Sunday, May 2nd at 11:59 PM CST, and the course will begin on May 3rd. This is different than our normal courses, but I'd really love to have you join us. Check it out. We think it's going to be one of our best. I hope to have you join me. Just go to dailystoic.com/101. That's dailystoic.com/101.

• 59:19Ryan Holiday?

  Or just click the link in the show notes, and I'm excited to talk to you soon.