Death and the View From Above — An Excerpt from Don Robertson’s “How to Think Like a Roman Emperor”

On today’s episode, Ryan features another clip from the audiobook of Donald Robertson’s 2019 book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, published by Macmillan Audio, and available wherever book and audios are sold. This chapter focuses on the last days of Marcus Aurelius, and what lessons they hold for all of us. For more from Ryan and Donald, check out their appearance on Daily Stoic’s podcast from August, when they discussed the history behind Stoicism, the Antonine Plague, and more. Donald Robertson is a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist, trainer, and writer. Robertson has been researching Stoicism and applying it in his work for twenty years. He is one of the founding members of the non-profit organization Modern Stoicism. His 2019 book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor (audiobook) is published by Macmillan Audio and available wherever books and audiobooks are sold. Today’s episode is also brought to you by Thuma. Thuma has spent thousands of hours making the perfect platform bed frame, called The Bed. The Bed by Thuma is super supportive of your mattress, breathes well, and is built to naturally minimize noise. Thuma ships your bed frame right to your door, and it takes five minutes to assemble, no tools required. Visit Thuma.co/stoic to get free shipping on your order of The Bed today. ***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/dailystoicFollow Donald Robertson:Homepage: https://donaldrobertson.name/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/howtothinklikearomanemperorTwitter: https://twitter.com/donjrobertsonFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/robertsontraining/Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Donald-Robertson/e/B002Q2WSPASee 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 Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time, and we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

• 0:53Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. I've got another edition of a very special episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast today. I am bringing you a chapter from one of my favorite books about Stoicism, Donald Robertson's How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. His publisher, St. Martin's, was kind enough to give us this excerpt. I blurbed this book as I was telling you. I called it "A Clear Guide for Those Facing Adversity, Seeking Tranquility, and Pursuing Excellence." This is the final chapter of the book. It's really the final chapter of Marcus's life. It's Chapter 8, Death and the View from Above.

• 1:32Ryan Holiday?

  And I think nothing quite captures the tragedy but the reality of life than the passing of Marcus Aurelius. He's undone by the Antonine Plague, obviously a bit timely here as we're still in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. You know, the Stoics talk a lot about death. And then each of the Stoics, as each and every one of us eventually will have to do, had to face death. And Marcus's struggle to do that with dignity, to do it with courage, to do it with acceptance, was the ultimate.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  Final test of his philosophy, as it will be the ultimate and final test for each of us. Marcus struggled to pass the empire on. Each and every one of his other heirs that he had planned to put on the throne were no longer with him, and that left Commodus. He struggled to try to get some advisors for Commodus. He tried to continue on the Pax Romana that had, he'd been lucky enough to inherit and try to preserve himself. And yet, so much of this was not to be. Donald is a beautiful writer. It's a great book. You'll really like this. So here we go. A special excerpt from How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Realist by Donald Robertson.

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  You can get it in ebook, physical, digital. It's a great book. You'll really like it and excited for you to listen.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Vindabona, March 17, 180 A.D. The emperor beckons his guard to come close and whispers, "Go to the rising sun, for I am already setting." He barely has enough strength to pronounce these words. Marcus glimpses fear in the young officer's eyes. The guard hesitates for a moment before nodding awkwardly and returning to his post at the entrance to the imperial quarters. Marcus pulls the sheet above his head and rolls over uncomfortably, as if to go to sleep for the last time. He can feel death beckoning him on all sides.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  How easy it would be to slip into oblivion and be free from the pain and discomfort once and for all. The pestilence is devouring his frail, old body from within. He hasn't eaten for days, weakening himself by fasting. Now, as the sun goes down outside, everything is very quiet. His eyelids flutter, although the pain keeps him awake.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  The Emperor slips in and out of consciousness, but he doesn't die. He thinks to himself, "Your eyes feel so heavy now. It's time to let them close." The sweet sensation of consciousness dissolving begins to creep over him. "I must have fallen asleep or lost consciousness again. I can't tell if my eyes are open or closed. Everything is dark."

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Soon it will be daybreak outside, and the sparrows will sing their morning song. Spring has broken, and the streams have thawed. The waters flow into the mighty river passing by the camp outside. The soldiers picture the spirit of the Danube as an ancient river god. He silently offers us all a lesson if only we pause to listen. "All things change, and before long they are gone." "You cannot step into the same river twice," Heraklitus once said, "because new waters are constantly flowing through it. Nature herself is a rushing torrent, just like the Danube,

• 5:27Speaker 02

  sweeping along all things in her stream. No sooner has something come into existence than the great river of time washes it away again, only to carry something else into view." The long-forgotten past lies upstream from me now, and downstream waits the immeasurable darkness of the future, vanishing from sight. I won't be needing my medicines or physicians again. I'm relieved the fuss is over.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  The time has come to let the river wash me away too. Change is both life and death. We can try to stall the inevitable, but we never escape it. It's a fool's game with meats and drinks and magic spells to turn aside the stream and hold death at bay. Looking back, it seems more obvious to me now than ever before that the lives of most men are tragedies of their own making. Men let themselves either get puffed up with pride or tormented by grievances.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Everything they concern themselves with is fragile, trivial, and fleeting.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  We're left with nowhere to stand firm. Amidst the torrent of things rushing past, there's nothing secure on which we can invest our hopes.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  "You may as well lose your heart to one of the little sparrows who nest by the riverbank." "That's what I used to say."

• 7:01Speaker 02

  "As soon as it's charmed you, it will flit away, vanishing from sight."

• 7:07Speaker 02

  "I once set my heart on my own little sparrows." "I called them my chicks in their nest." "Thirteen boys and girls, given to me by Faustina."

• 7:18Speaker 02

  "Now only Commodus and four of the girls are left, wearing grave faces and weeping for me." "The rest were taken before their time, long ago now."

• 7:32Speaker 02

  "At first I grieved terribly, but the Stoics taught me how to both love my children and endure when nature reclaimed them."

• 7:42Speaker 02

  "When I was mourning my little twin boys, Apollonius patiently consoled me and helped me slowly regain my composure."

• 7:52Speaker 02

  "It's natural to mourn, even some animals grieve the loss of their young. But there are those who go beyond the natural bounds of grief and let themselves be swept away entirely by melancholy thoughts and passions."

• 8:07Speaker 02

  "The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it."

• 8:15Speaker 02

  "Nature also reclaimed my beloved son Marcus Annius Verus, not long before my brother Lucius died." "I gave him the name I bore myself as a child, passed down through generations in my family." "My little Marcus bled to death on the doctor's table while they were removing a tumor from beneath his ear."

• 8:37Speaker 02

  "I could only mourn him five days before I had to leave Rome for the war in Pannonia." "Later, gentle Apollonius would remind me of a saying from Epictetus: 'Only a madman seeks figs in winter. Such is one who pines for his child when his loan has been returned to nature.'" "I loved them by all means, but learned also to accept that they were mortal, leaves that the wind scatters to the ground. Such are the generations of men." And what were my children but such leaves? They arrived with the spring and were brought down by the winter blast. Then others grew to take their place.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  I wanted to keep them forever, although I always knew that they were mortal. Yet the heart that cries, "Oh, let my child be safe", is like an eye wanting only to gaze unpleasant sights, refusing to accept that all things change whether we like it or not.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  The wise man sees life and death as two sides of the same coin. When Xenophon, one of Socrates's noblest students, received word that his son had fallen in battle, what did he say? "I knew my son was mortal."

• 9:58Speaker 02

  He grasped so firmly the precept that what is born must surely also perish. I had evidence of this from an early age, having lost my father, Anios Veras, when I was just a child. I barely knew him, except through his reputation as a good and humble man. My mother, Lucilla, buried him, and in due course it fell to me to bury her. The emperor Antoninus, my adopted father, buried his empress. And then the time came for Lucius and me, his sons, to place him in his tomb and mourn for him. Then my brother, the Emperor Lucius, died quite unexpectedly, and I buried him too.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Finally, I laid to rest my own beloved empress, Faustina. Soon I shall be reunited with her once again when Commodus lays my remains in Hadrian's great mausoleum on the banks of the Tiber. My friends will deliver eulogies for me in Rome and remind the people that Marcus Aurelius has not been lost, but only that he has been returned to nature. The sun sets this evening and takes me down with it. Tomorrow it will be another who rises to take my place. So you're finally here, death, my old friend, for assuredly I can call you a friend. You've been my guest many times after all,

• 11:27Speaker 02

  welcomed through the gates of my imagination. How often have you accompanied me as I picture the reigns of emperors from long ago while deep in my meditations?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Everything is different, but underneath, it's all the same. Anonymous individuals, marrying, raising children, falling sick and dying. Some fight wars, feast, work the land and trade their wares. Some flatter others or seek to be flattered, suspect their fellows of plotting against them or hatch their own plots. Countless engage in intrigues, pray for the death of others, grumble at their lot, fall in love, pile up fortunes or dream of high office or even a crown. How many individuals, his names we will never know, their lives extinguished, life forgotten

• 12:24Speaker 02

  as if they'd never been born at all? Yet turn your thoughts to the mighty and what difference does it make? Death comes knocking at the king's palace and the beggar's shack alike. Augustus, the founder of the empire, his family, ancestors, priests, advisors and his whole entourage, where are they now? Nowhere to be seen. Alexander the Great and his mule driver, both reduced to dust, made equals at last by death. And what of great dynasties now utterly extinct? Think of the efforts their ancestors took to leave behind an heir, only to have their

• 13:08Speaker 02

  whole lineage end abruptly with the epitaph, last of his line engraved upon some tomb. And how many cities have, as it were, also died? Entire nations wiped out from history. Asked why he wasn't rejoicing at the annihilation of Carthage, great Scipio wept and prophesied that one day even Rome herself will fall.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Every era of history teaches us the same lesson: nothing lasts forever. From the court of Alexander long ago, to those of Hadrian and Antoninus, among whom I once walked, known today through monuments and stories only. The very names Hadrian and Antoninus have acquired an archaic ring, like the names of Scipio Africanus and Cato of Utica, inscribed in history books. Tomorrow my own name will sound old to others, describing a bygone era: the reign of Marcus Aurelius. I will be joining them: Augustus, Vespasian, Trajan and the rest.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Yet it is a thing indifferent to me, how or even whether I shall be remembered. How many of those whose praises were once sung have long since been forgotten? And those who sang their praises too? It's vanity to worry about how history will recall your actions. Even now I'm surrounded by people who are overly concerned with what future generations will think of them. They might as well lament the fact that centuries ago, before their birth, their names were utterly unknown. The lips of mankind can grant you neither fame nor glory worth seeking. What matters is how I face this moment, which will soon be gone,

• 15:07Speaker 02

  for I can already feel my very self evaporating, slipping gradually into extinction, as if into a dream. Death, when I rode in triumph through the streets of Rome alongside Lucius, were you with me then? The slaves stood with us in the chariots, holding golden wreaths above our heads, whispering at our backs: "Remember, you must die." Even as Lucius paraded his haul of gold and treasures in shackled lines of captured Parthians, his legionaries were bringing back something far more sinister from the east: the pestilence that followed them to Rome.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  It's taken fourteen years, but the disease that saw Roman dead piled high on carts has finally claimed another Caesar.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  The Stoics taught me to look death square in the eye, to tell myself with merciless honesty each day, "I am immortal", all the while remaining in good cheer. They say that when Zeno, the founder of our school, was elderly, he once tripped and fell. He banged on the ground and quipped, "I come of my own accord. Why then do you call me?

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Now I too am an old man. And though you call me, I come readily to meet you, death. Yet there are still many afraid even to utter your name aloud." The Stoics taught me that there are no such words of ill omen. Socrates was the first to call the idea that death is terrible a mask to frighten small children. He said, "Friends, if a childish part of you is still afraid of death, you should sing a charm over him every day until he's cured. If I can subdue death for what it is, analyzing it rationally, stripping away all the assumptions encrusted round it, it should reveal to be nothing but a process of nature.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Look at what is behind the mask. Study it, and you'll see it does not bite. Yet this childish fear of death is perhaps our greatest bane in life. Fear of death does us more harm than death itself, because it turns us into cowards, whereas death merely returns us to nature. The wise and good enjoy life, without a doubt, but nevertheless are unafraid of dying. Surely we're never fully alive as long as we fear the end. Indeed, to learn how to die is to unlearn how to be a slave. I must die, but must I die groaning? For it's not death that upsets us, but our judgments about it.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Socrates did not fear death. He saw that it was neither good nor bad. On the morning of his execution, he casually informed his friends that philosophy is a lifelong meditation on our own mortality. "True philosophers," he said, "fear their own demise least of all men. For those who love wisdom above everything else are continually in training for the end." To practise death in advance is to practise freedom and to prepare oneself to let go of life gracefully.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Indeed, I have been travelling along the road to death since the very day I came into this world. From a green grape to a ripened cluster, to a shriveled raisin, everything in nature has a beginning, middle, and an end. Each stage of man has its own ending or demise: childhood, adolescence, prime, and old age. Assuredly, this body is not the one to which my mother gave birth. Indeed, I've been changing, dying, every day since I was born.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  If there is nothing to fear in that, then why should I fear the final step? And if death is a loss of awareness, then why should I fret? For only that which is something can be good or evil, but death is nothing, the mere absence of experience.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  It's no worse than sleep.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Moreover, death is a release from all pain, a boundary beyond which our sufferings cannot go. It returns us to that state of peacefulness in which we lay before we were even born. I was dead for countless eons before my birth, and it did not vex me then. I was not, I was, I am not, I do not care, as the Epicureans say. For if it troubles me not at all that my body only occupies a small portion of space, then why should I be afraid that it only occupies a small span of time?

• 20:27Speaker 02

  In any case, from another point of view, we don't disappear into nothingness, but are dispersed back into nature. I shall be returned to the earth from which my father drew his seed, my mother her blood, my nurse her milk, and from which I have taken my daily food and drink.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  For everything comes ultimately from one source, and returns there, taking another form. It's as though from softened wax, you might shape a little horse, then a little tree, then a human form. Nothing is ever really destroyed, just sent back into nature's arms and turned into something else, over and over. One thing becomes another. Today, a drop of semen; tomorrow, a pile of ash or bones. Not eternal, but mortal, a part of the whole, as an hour is of the day.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Like an hour, I must come and like an hour, pass away. The more our minds comprehend that we are parts of the whole in this way, the more we realize our own body's frailty. I always reminded myself that I wasn't meant to live a thousand years, and that death would be here for me soon enough. I lived each day as if it were to be my last, preparing myself for this very moment. Now that it's finally upon me, I realize it's just the same as every other moment. I have the choice to die well or die badly. Philosophy has prepared me well enough.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  "Do you suppose that human life can see many great matter?" said Socrates, "to a great-souled individual who has embraced the whole of time and the whole of reality in his thoughts." No. To such a person, not even death will seem terrible. My soul disperses for a while in drowsy reveries, teetering on the brink of insensibility.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  What a miraculous power thought has to travel swiftly across the world, or to consume grand vistas, enveloping more and more within its scope. Roaming dreamily over the whole wide world and bidding it farewell, I realize that I have taken flight above it. Like Homer Zeus, looking down on earth from Mount Olympus, observing now the lands of the horse-loving Thracians, now Greece, Persia, India, and surrounding everything the wine-dark sea.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Or like Arascrepio Emilianus, who, slumbering in umidia, dreamt that he was transported aloft, allowed to gaze down briefly on the world of men from among the stars. I have long prepared my mind to embrace the most comprehensive outlook through the daily practice of philosophy. Plato said anyone seeking to understand human affairs should gaze down upon all earthly things in this way, as though from a high watchtower. Each day I would rehearse, just as my teachers did, imagining myself suddenly raised aloft

• 24:14Speaker 02

  and looking down on the complex tapestry of human life from high above. Now, as the life keeps fading from my body, my daydreams turn into visions, real enough to touch. How insignificant the countless things men squabble over seem from this high vantage point, as if I was standing upon the shoulders of Atlas. Like children, though, who think only of what baubles belong to their play, men, their minds captivated by narrow fears and desires, are alienated from nature as a whole.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  I can see them now below me, the great herds of human animals, numerous workers toiling in the fields, far-travelled merchants of all nations, and huge armies massed for battle, all of them like ants scuttling over the earth,

• 25:18Speaker 02

  always busy at something, an anonymous, swarming mass, wandering astray down the countless labyrinthine paths that stretch before them. Men, women and children, slaves and nobles, those being born and those dying, marrying and separating, celebrating festivals and mourning their losses, the tiresome clapping of tongues in courts of law. I see a hundred thousand faces of friends and strangers pass me by. I see great cities growing from humble settlements, thriving for a spell,

• 26:04Speaker 02

  then one day crumbling into deserted ruins. Races, barbarous in their infancy, struggling towards civilization, then falling into barbarism again. After darkness and ignorance come arts and sciences, then the inevitable descent once again into darkness and ignorance.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  I see exotic and undiscovered races hidden in the far corners of the world,

• 26:39Speaker 02

  the many different rituals, languages, and stories of men, the countless lives of others long ago, and the lives that will be lived many years from now after my own demise.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  And even though I was fated to be acclaimed the Emperor of Rome, how few there are in the vast world who have even heard my name, let alone known me for who I really am.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Those who do will soon be gone themselves and forgotten.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  I find myself marveling once more at the soul's capacity to rid itself of myriad unnecessary troubles in this way, enlarging itself, embracing the whole universe, and reflecting on the finitude and transience of all individual things, the brevity of our entire life and the lives of others when compared to the eternity of time.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  We become magnanimous, great souls, by expanding our minds and rising above trivial things which belong far beneath us. The soul flies free when it's not weighed down by earthly fears and desires, and returns to its homeland as citizen of the entire cosmos, making its abode the immeasurable vastness of universal nature.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Thanks be to the gods that I was encouraged to make a habit of picturing the whole cosmos thus and contemplating the immensity of both time and space. I learned to set each particular thing in life against the whole substance of the universe in my mind's eye and see it as far less than a fig seed, and measure it against the whole of time as nothing more than the turn of a screw.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  For what is impossible to see with mortal eyes is nevertheless possible to grasp with the intellect.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Before me now a mental image forms, the representation of a shining sphere enclosing all creation, each part distinct, but nevertheless one, gathered into a single vision. All the stars of the heavens, the sun, the moon, our earth, both land and sea, and all living creatures, just as though seen within a transparent globe, which I can almost imagine holding in the palm of my hand.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  From this cosmic perspective, in truth, to rail against the universe in fury over all the troubles in history would be as though weeping over a cut on my smallest finger. My life, all but over, nothing remains, no fears and no desires to separate me from the rest of nature. I see before me the whole of the cosmos, its vast design, and the mighty revolutions performed by the celestial orbs, and I find myself plunged deep in this imagination.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Traversing the heavens above, the strength leaves my limbs. In this vast ocean of being, what a minute dot our whole earth seems. Asia and Europe, in their entirety, are merely specks of dirt. The great oceans, nothing but a raindrop, and the highest mountain, merely a grain of sand. I can only admire the grace and majesty of the stars as my mind is blessed to accompany them, and I marvel further still at the vision of the whole cosmos before me. May I be transformed through the proximity of death

• 30:54Speaker 02

  into something worthy of nature and the cosmos, an alien in my motherland no more. Traveling through the breadth of nature, my mind expands to a vastness that envelops individual events, swallowing them up and making them appear like a pinpoint by comparison. Where is the tragedy in such negligible incidents? Where the surprise or astonishment?

• 31:25Speaker 02

  What I spent my life learning, I now see everywhere. As I turn my attention from one thing to another, all sides grant me the same vision. The universe is a single living being, with a single body and a single consciousness. Every individual mind is a tiny particle of one great mind.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Each living creature, like a limb or organ of one great body, working together, whether they realize it or not, to bring about events in accord with one great impulse.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Everything in the universe, so intricately woven together, forming a single fabric and chain of events.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Whereas I once saw each fragmentary part and with some effort imagined the whole, my sight is now transformed. Having let go of fear and desire forever, I can see only the whole to which every part belongs, and this appears more real to me than anything else. What I knew before, my life and opinions, seem like smoke, through which I glimpsed nature darkly. Rejoicing in this comprehensive vision, myself is dilated, until it becomes one with infinite, universal nature.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  How miniscule the fraction of cosmic time that has been assigned to each of our lives. How small this clod of earth over which we creep.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  The more confidently I grasp this vision, the more clearly I understand that nothing is of any great moment in life, except that we should do two simple things. First, we must follow the guidance of our own higher nature, submitting ourselves to reasons dictates. Second, we must deal wisely and dispassionately with whatever universal nature sends to be our fate, whether pleasure or pain, praise or censure, life or death. My soul ascends higher as the remaining life now ebbs from my limbs.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  The difference between knowing and seeing has somehow given way.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Before my very gaze, the constellations surround me like those adorning the walls in the temples of Mithras. I glide effortlessly alongside them, like a ship sailing over the smoothest waters.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Around me are the multitude of stars, a host of beings composed of pure light.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Naked and flawless, they gracefully follow their course through the heavens without deviation.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  How they differ from men below on earth? We possess the same divine spark, yet it lies buried deep within us, and we live as though imprisoned, anchored down in the mud by our own folly and greed.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  The mind of the sage is like a star or our own sun, from which purity and simplicity shine forth.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  I've been fortunate enough to observe these characteristics in others. Men like Apollonius, Junius Rusticus, and Claudius Maximus, by their own example, showed me how to live wisely, virtuously, and in accord with nature. Released now from earthly attachments, I feel my soul being transformed and cleansed, unveiling within me some glimmer of the deep wisdom that I once glimpsed in the words and actions of my beloved teachers.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  As I let life slip away, content apart from it, my mind is finally liberated to follow its own true nature without obstruction. I see things more clearly than ever before. The sun does not do the work of the rain, nor of the wind. The sun himself and every star in heaven are telling me, "I was born to do what I am doing." And I too was born to follow my own nature by striving for wisdom. Countless stars punctuate the night sky. Each one is distinct from the others,

• 36:37Speaker 02

  yet they all work together, forming the whole panoply of heaven.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Man was meant to be like this, striving his whole life with patient endurance to cultivate the pure light of wisdom within himself

• 36:54Speaker 02

  and allowing it to shine forth for the benefit of others. Alone and yet at one with the community of fellow men around him, living wisely and in concord with them.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  The ancient Pythagoreans were right. To contemplate the unwavering purity and simplicity of the stars in this way is to cleanse our mind of earthly dross and set it free. The rays of Apollo pour down in every direction, but are not exhausted, extending itself. Sunlight touches objects and illuminates them, without being weakened or defiled. It rests where it falls, caressing objects and exposing their features, neither deflected like the wind, nor absorbed like the rain.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Indeed, the mind of the wise man is itself like a heavenly sphere, radiating the purest sunlight. It falls gracefully upon things, illuminating them without becoming entangled or degraded by them. For what does not welcome the light condemns itself to darkness. In the mind of one who has been purified though, nothing is veiled or hidden. Pure wisdom, like the blazing fire of a sun, consumes anything cast into it and burns brighter still. Reason adapts itself to any obstacle if it's allowed to,

• 38:36Speaker 02

  finding the right virtue with which to respond. We have been given a duty of sorts to take care of this paltry body with its unruly feelings, but only our intellect is genuinely our own. We let go of our attachment to everything external, purifying and separating ourselves from things, when we firmly grasp the realization that they are transient and ultimately indifferent. When we cut our ties to the past and the future, and center ourselves in the present moment, we set our soul free from external things,

• 39:18Speaker 02

  leaving it to invest itself wholly in fulfilling its own nature.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Things external to our own character, such as health, wealth and reputation, are neither good nor bad. They present us with opportunities, which the wise man uses well and the fool badly. For men desire wealth and other such things, they no more improve a man's soul than a golden bridle improves a horse. We contaminate ourselves with these externals, blending and merging into things, when we confuse them with our soul's natural good.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Rising above in different things, the mind of the wise becomes a well-rounded sphere, as Empedocles used to say. It neither overreaches itself, mingling with external things, nor shrinks away from them. Its light spreads evenly over the world around it, complete in itself, smooth and round, bright and shining. Nothing clings to its surface, and no harm can touch it. I can still feel the pain over there in my body.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  That part of me that lies bleeding and shuddering beneath the bed sheet, it seems very far away now. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. Soon, another lapse into unconsciousness will come. I think it will be the last one. And so I bid farewell to myself, in good cheer, not begrudging the loss. I take one last step forward to meet death, not as an enemy, but as an old friend and sparring partner. Clenching my fists gently, embracing myself against the unknown and unforeseen, I arm

• 41:27Speaker 02

  myself once more with the precepts of my philosophy. The duration of a man's life is merely a small point in time, the substance of it, ever-flowing away, the sense, obscure, and the whole composition of the body, tending to decay.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  His soul is a restless vortex. Good fortune is uncertain and fame unreliable. In a word, is a rushing stream. So are all things belonging to the body. As a dream or as vapor are all those that belong to the soul. Life is warfare in the sojourn in a foreign land. Our reputation after life is nothing but oblivion. What is it then that will guide man? One thing alone: philosophy. The love of wisdom. And philosophy consists in this:

• 42:34Speaker 02

  For man to preserve that inner genius or divine spark within him from violence and injuries, and above all, from harmful pains and pleasures. Never to do anything either without purpose or falsely or hypocritically, regardless of the actions or inaction of others. To contentedly embrace all things that happen to him as coming from the same source from whom he came himself. And above all things, with humility and calm cheerfulness, to anticipate death as being nothing else but the dissolution of those elements

• 43:18Speaker 02

  of which every living being is composed. And if the elements themselves suffer nothing by this their perpetual conversion of one into another, that dissolution and alteration which is so common to them all, why should it be feared by any man? Is this not according to nature? But nothing that is according to nature can be evil. It must be nearing dawn outside, but I can no longer tell. My eyes have grown so feeble, surrounded by darkness on every side. I won't live to see another sunrise. It doesn't matter.

• 44:06Ryan Holiday?

  You were just listening to an excerpt from "How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius" by Donald Robertson, published by St. Martin's Press. Thank you to St. Martin's and Donald for allowing us to run this. I hope you've enjoyed it, and please do check out the book. It's very good.

• 44:24Ryan Holiday?

  If you like the podcast that we do here and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.