Courage Is Calling | Going Beyond The Call

On today’s special episode of the podcast, Ryan reads a chapter from his newest book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave. Opening the 3rd and final section of the book “Going Beyond The Call” details the incredible heroism of the 300 Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae. This audiobook is published by Penguin Random House Audio. Grab a signed copy of Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave at the Daily Stoic Store or pick up a copy anywhere books or audiobooks are sold. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupCheck 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 weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm gonna give you a little behind the scenes on today's episode. I was sitting down and I wanted to write about the 300 Spartans, the story of the Spartans at Thermopylae, one of the most inspiring epic moments in the history of Western civilization, literally a clash of civilizations, the East and the West. And I don't know if we'd be sitting here talking today had those 300 Spartans not gone to what we call the hot gates

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  and fought for the Western way of life, the Greek way of life against the then tyrannical Persian way of life, the conqueror Xerxes, who wanted to subjugate Greece. Anyways, as I was thinking about telling that story, I was thinking about what I wanted my source material to be. And of course, Herodotus is one of the first places that we hear about the story, the 300 Spartans. And I went, I picked up my copy, and I hadn't touched it since probably 2006, when I first read it.

• 2:09Ryan Holiday?

  And there it was, not just all the, all his beautiful retelling of the 300 Spartans, but there were the notes that I'd written to myself as I read it for the first time shortly after I graduated from high school and I was just starting college. And

• 2:27Ryan Holiday?

  Anyways, I felt this wonderful feeling that like I had 15 years earlier, sent a message to myself in the future. I of course, didn't know that I would be a writer. I certainly didn't know that I'd be writing this book at this time about this story. But somehow there was then a part of me that sensed that, that there was something here that perhaps someday in the future, I would need it. And to go back to it and be able to touch, it was like having a conversation with the past and watching myself have a conversation with the future. I know this all sounds very weird, but it was a really cool experience to me. And that's what I love so much about writing is that it's this

• 3:09Ryan Holiday?

  process. We talk about process, but that was the process playing out. I'd done work 15 years earlier with no sense of what it would add up to, where it would go, what it would contribute to. And then that boomerang comes back, or that loop gets closed. 15 years later, in a chapter in a book, I couldn't have even conceived of writing then, wouldn't have been qualified to write then, wouldn't have been capable of writing then. But that's what the process does. It builds on itself. It takes you somewhere day by day that you could never have expected or anticipated. But if you follow the process, if you trust

• 3:53Ryan Holiday?

  the process, it gets you there. So today's episode, I wanted to give you one of my favorite sections in Courage is Calling. This is part three of the book. Part one of the book is about overcoming fear. Part two of the book is about courage. Part three of the book is about heroism, the heroic courage, and then some. Courage, selfless courage, sacrificial courage, right?

• 4:19Ryan Holiday?

  The idea of valor, giving oneself, giving every part of oneself for something that someone believes in, to protect someone else, protect a future, an idea, a cause, which is really what the Spartans were doing there at Thermopylae. So this is an audio excerpt of Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave, my new book, debut New York Times bestseller. Thank you to all of you who supported the book. If you haven't checked it out, you can get it at Amazon, you can get signed copies from me in the Daily Stoic store, or here at my bookstore in Bastrop, Texas, The Painted Porch. You can also get the full audiobook anywhere audiobooks are sold. This audiobook excerpt was provided by my publisher Penguin Random House Audio, and I'm excited to bring it to you.

• 5:04Ryan Holiday?

  And I hope you could check out Courage is Calling, support the book, make a great gift. I think it's a very timely read, very proud of it. Thank you to everyone who has supported the book. And again, if you haven't, check it out, Amazon, indie retailer, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Audible, wherever. Appreciate it. Going Beyond the Call. The Greeks were not perfect, the Spartans least of all, but they were not bootlickers, and they were better than the tyrannical, insatiable king who bore down on them in 480 B.C. Xerxes, the ruler of the enormous Persian Empire, sought subjugation and revenge.

• 5:46Ryan Holiday?

  The Greeks had offended him, rebuffing his emissaries with insolence and foiling his father's invasion a decade before. And now with an enormous army, he marched into Greece. Some Greek city-states saw the writing on the wall and surrendered. Some took large bribes to switch sides. The already shaking Confederacy of Greek nations, from Sparta to Athens, Thebes, Argos, and Corinth, stood on the precipice of collapse and with it rested the entire future of Western civilization, though they could not have fully known this in the moment. Would Xerxes conquer the West? Would an all-powerful king worshipped as a god stamp out the embers of freedom and equality, extinguishing a way of life we are fortunate enough to enjoy today?

• 6:32Ryan Holiday?

  As the Allies struggled to come together, struggled to prepare, it was decided, a small army led by 300 Spartans and their ruler Leonidas would rush to Thermopylae, the hot gates, to hold back the Persians as long as they could. If they could make a strong stand, perhaps Greece could be inspired to fight on. "They say that the barbarian has come near and is coming on while we are wasting time," Leonidas told his soldiers. "Truth? Soon we shall either kill the barbarians or else we are bound to be killed ourselves." And so they marched, 300 of Spartans' most elite soldiers, two a man, each one the father

• 7:11Ryan Holiday?

  of at least one living son, traversing some 250 miles to face perhaps the worst odds in the history of warfare. They picked up some reinforcements from a few neighboring states, but it is believed that between 5,000 and 7,000 Greeks eventually stood against a Persian force that some ancient historians have claimed numbered as many as 1 million men. Their only advantage: Thermopylae, a narrow coastal pass near the Aegean Sea, which would neutralize Xerxes' overwhelming strength. Also, unlike their invader, the Spartans were actually fighting for something.

• 7:52Ryan Holiday?

  They were prepared to fight and die, so that others might stay free. "If you had any knowledge of the noble things of life," Leonidas told Xerxes, "you would refrain from coveting others' possessions. But for me to die for Greece is better than to be the sole ruler over the people of my race." Of course, the insatiable conquerors of history have no understanding of such things. The very first thing Xerxes did was try to bribe the Spartans. It had worked on some of the weaker city-states, and it was certainly the kind of temptation that Xerxes would have lunged for had he been in the same position. Not Leonidas, not for a descendant of Hercules, to take the easy choice to betray others

• 8:34Ryan Holiday?

  for your own gain, to advance one's position but to do so through treachery. "The Greeks have learned from their fathers to gain lands not by cowardice, but by valor," Leonidas replied. He chose virtue. He chose courage. This idea of valor, not just courage, but a commitment to something larger than themselves, was what convinced the Greeks this mission was even worth attempting. “How could you possibly risk so few against that many?” one ally asked Leonidas. “If you men think that I rely on numbers,” he replied, “then all of Greece is not sufficient, for it is but a small fraction of their numbers. But if on men’s valor, then this number will do.”

• 9:16Ryan Holiday?

  And so, when Xerxes asked the Spartans to surrender their arms, the laconic reply was, “Come and take them.” For four days, just the threat of tangling with the Spartans kept the Persians at bay. Sometime on August 18th, the assault began. Line after line of Persian soldiers was thrown against the phalanx of Greeks. There, they clashed among the rocks, the Spartans fighting in lockstep, not just for their country, but as true heroes always do, for the man next to them. Toward the end of the first day, Xerxes ordered his most fearsome soldiers, the 10,000 Immortals, into the breach. A Spartan remarked to Leonidas that the Immortals were near.

• 9:59Ryan Holiday?

  Leonidas reassured him, “Yes, and we are also near to them.” To Xerxes’ horror, rising three times in anguished impotence, even these troops were hurled back at great loss. As the first day bled into the second, Leonidas was not fooled by the victories he had won. He had always known, regardless of the hope of reinforcements, that this was a one-way mission. Yet he had come all the same. He was fighting for time. He was there to prove a point as well. His act of devotion was meant to call to the courage of the Greeks, who wavered on whether to surrender or resist. They fought on the second day as brutal as the first. By the third day, it was clear that the Persians had found a way to attack from the rear.

• 10:44Ryan Holiday?

  A warning came about the enemy’s strength. Xerxes’ archers would fire enough arrows to block out the sun. “Then we shall fight in the shade,” Leonidas said. Then he ordered his men to dine well, because they were most likely to dine next in the afterworld. He attempted to select three injured men to return to Sparta with news, hoping secretly to spare their lives as well. "To a man they rejected this golden ticket. 'I came with the army not to carry messages, but to fight,' the first replied. 'The next, I should be a better man if I stayed here. The third, I will not be behind these but first in the fight.'" With nothing left to say, the Spartans stood in silence. Who among them was not bearing wounds from the previous day's fighting?

• 11:29Ryan Holiday?

  Who was not exhausted? Who was not thinking of their children, of the country they had left behind? By nine o'clock, the sun was up and the heat with it. They sweated in their armor. Their bodies coarse with whatever reserves of adrenaline and patriotism remained. They would never see Sparta or their families again. Leonidas gave the order to march forward. They stepped outside the protection of the rocky gates to meet the enemy in the open, inflicting extra damage as they took their final stand. The Persians hit them with a fury whipped from behind by their slave drivers, backed by so many soldiers that they could afford to trample the wounded or fallen comrades as the endless waves of men followed one after another.

• 12:14Ryan Holiday?

  The Spartans dispatched them methodically, as fiercely as before, at times even feigning to have broken ranks, letting the Persians rush forward and then reforming to slaughter them. Each time, a cry of exhilaration would go up. For this brief moment, uncommon valor was common virtue. The men passed beyond themselves, fighting and performing with almost otherworldly excellence. But the Spartans knew, they knew, this was it. They would not grow old, to a man they would fall and soon. Leonidas was killed in the middle of the final day, fulfilling a prophecy he had long believed, that a Spartan king would have to die lest Greece be destroyed by an invader.

• 12:56Ryan Holiday?

  His men rushed out in one, two, three attempts to retrieve his body. On the fourth, they managed, then right back to the fight. Their spears broke off from use, no reinforcements came. Now the word spread through the ranks. It was time they retreated back to the gates. Here they fought with only their swords, and upon losing these, they resorted to their hands and teeth. Eventually, inevitably, they were overwhelmed. It had been three days of battle, plus the four before. They bought their country one week. It cost Xerxes countless men, but mostly time he did not have. More, it shook his confidence. “How many more Spartans are there in Greece?”

• 13:40Ryan Holiday?

  he asked one of his advisers. “Do they all fight like this?” “There are thousands more,” came the reply. “None are equal to these fallen men, but all are just as good at fighting.” Greece also understood what was at stake. No one could deny the gesture the Spartans had made. No one could deny the call to do their part. Centuries later, Churchill remarked of the RAF’s incredible defence of Britain during the Battle of Britain, that “never before have so many owed so much to so few.” This was not quite true, for even the stand of those few owes a debt first to the 300 Spartans. It’s not a stretch to argue that all the accomplishments of Western civilization, from

• 14:22Ryan Holiday?

  the Renaissance to the American Revolution, would not have happened were it not for the sacrifice at Thermopylae. And so those 300 soldiers who sacrificed, as the soldiers at Gettysburg did, as the RAF did, they became more than men. They became almost like gods. It’s almost offensively cliché now to use the phrase “freedom isn’t free.” Nonetheless, it is true. Purchased there in the glorious defeat at Thermopylae were the victories that the Greeks were able to achieve at Salamis and Plataea. The Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the United Nations, all of it rooted there in the fight at the hot gates. The freedom that everyone loves, but so many tend to abuse.

• 15:05Ryan Holiday?

  It was won there too by the fathers who fought side by side, knowing for certain that they would not live to see the fruits of their labour, just as the tree you sit under was planted long ago by a man or woman who cared about the future. Theirs was not to reason why, theirs was to do and to die. As the ancient inscription at the battlefield reads, “Tell the Spartans, passerby, here obedient, to her laws we lie.” Their example of courage and selflessness stands eternal. None of them survived, yet they turned out to be far more immortal than the Persian troops who killed them. Gates of Fire, the epic historical novel of this battle by Stephen Pressfield,

• 15:48Ryan Holiday?

  is today passed from soldier to soldier, person to person, as a kind of tribute to that example. The central question of that book is, what is the opposite of fear? It's not enough to simply conquer or quench fear. In writing the book, Pressfield wanted to know, as the Spartans did, what lay beyond it. If fear was the vice, what was the virtue? It's not just courage, because you can be courageous for selfish reasons. You have to override fear to jump out of an airplane, sure, but if you're doing it for fun, is it really that meaningful? It wasn't just the men and their arms that made feats at Thermopylae possible. It was also the wives who not only allowed their husbands to go,

• 16:29Ryan Holiday?

  but whose courage and iron self-discipline was the backbone of the country. The toughness and selflessness of Spartan women is legendary. When one Spartan king was killed in a vicious coup, his mother rushed to his body, and when the killers offered to spare her, if she kept quiet, she stood up and defied them. Her last words, as she offered her neck, was, "May this only be in service of Sparta." We are mistaken to see the Spartans as mere warriors, just courageous fighters. As Pressfield concludes, "The opposite of fear, the true virtue contrasted with that vice was not fearlessness. The opposite of fear is love," he says. "Love for one another, love for ideas, love for your country, love for the vulnerable and the weak, love for the next

• 17:14Ryan Holiday?

  generation, love for all." Is that not what hits us in the solar plexus when we hear Leonidas's final cheerful words to his wife as he leaves? "Marry a good man who will treat you well, bear him children, and live a good life." And it is this profound, marrow-deep love that allows one to rise above the logic of self-preservation and achieve true greatness, whether that's shielding someone from a bullet, risking your job to speak out in defense of the common good, or fighting against all hope for a cause you know is right.

• 17:48Ryan Holiday?

  Florence Nightingale cared tenderly for the suffering of the sick in her country. De Gaulle fought exasperatingly hard to preserve France. The Spartans at the hot gates were something beyond this, truly selfless, giving the most a person can possibly give. Sure, not all selflessness requires the ultimate sacrifice, but there is no selflessness without sacrifice. The sacrifice they made was incredible, all the more so because it had not been for themselves or their own people that they had made it. Leonidas could have survived if he chose. He and the Spartans could have ruled all of Greece. Nevertheless, he went and died so that all those other Greeks could be free, so that we could be free.

• 18:30Ryan Holiday?

  If courage is rare, then this kind of heroism is a critically endangered species. If courage is by itself unreasonable, then love in this higher form, the truly selfless kind, is insane. It's baffling in its majesty. It is real human greatness. It is us transcending logic, self-interest, and millions of years of our own biology defined quarter, however briefly, in a higher realm. The Spartans are the heroes we recognize as the embodiment of that idea, but we should remember that they are stand-ins. They represent the anonymous courage of countless resistors for all time, for people who testified in trials and faced reprisals, people who registered to vote and were beaten for it,

• 19:13Ryan Holiday?

  union organizers who went up against robber barons, pioneers who sent out rescue parties, athletes who played through career-ending injuries to keep their team in the game or their families fed. These were moments of true greatness, a soul. What we're willing to give, that full measure of our devotion to the effort, to the stranger, to what must be done, that's what takes us higher. That's what transforms us from brave to heroic, maybe for a moment, maybe just to one person, maybe to be enshrined in the history books for all time.

• 19:51Ryan Holiday?

  My new book Courage is Calling is now officially a New York Times bestseller. Thank you so much to everyone who supported the book. It was literally and figuratively overwhelming. We signed almost 10,000 copies of the book, which just, you know, it hit me right here, and I appreciate it so much. If you haven't picked up a copy, or you want to pick up a signed copy as a gift, please do. You can get your copy at dailystoic.com/courageiscalling, or you can just go to store.dailystoic.com.