This Roman Party Trick Holds A Hidden Wisdom | It’s Just A Number

It’s a lesson we’d do well to remember today. Don’t overdo anything. Don’t take virtue or vice in its pure or unadulterated form. The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge is 3 weeks of ALL-NEW, actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy, to help you create a better life, and a new you in 2025. Why 3 weeks? Because it takes human beings 21 days to build new habits and skills, to create the muscle memory of making beautiful choices each and every day. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge today to sign up.🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube at www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  The Greeks and Romans were known for their parties. They threw huge ones. Seneca famously owned, not rented, some 300 tables for entertaining. Imagine that. The ancients also knew how to drink. Cato liked to drink. So did Socrates. There's no evidence that Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus in Seneca didn't either. But the accounts of their drinking don't square one to one with our modern times. You see, the Greeks and the Romans were famous for watering down their wine. In fact, anyone who didn't water down their wine was considered barbaric, someone who was out of control. The poet Hesiod, a favorite of Marcus Aurelius and

• 1:24Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca and many of the Stoics, actually said that three parts water and one part wine was the proper ratio. Nobody but the drunks drank their alcohol neat. For much of history, the symbol of mixing water and wine has been a kind of symbol for that essential Stoic virtue that we talk so much about here: moderation. Wine was quite strong in those days, so to take this intoxicating but enjoyable pleasure and dilute it a bit, that was not only necessary, but it was an important metaphor. It's one we should think about today. What vices or indulgences do we have that we might add a little water to? Maybe if you drink soda, you can start mixing in some diet. Or if you like lemonade or tea, you can mix a little

• 2:09Ryan Holiday?

  bit of sweetened into your unsweetened, rather than the other way around. Water down your television time by reading during the commercial breaks. Water down your night out with friends by listening to a podcast or an audiobook on the way out. Water down your workout regimen with rest days. Water down your whirlwind love affair with time apart. Moderation is key. Don't overdo anything. Don't take virtue or vice in its pure or unadulterated form. Balance, soften, enjoy.

• 2:46Ryan Holiday?

  It's just a number. This is the December 13th entry from the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. I am holding a copy that someone ordered from the painted porch that they're asking me to sign. You can grab those at store.dailystoic.com. We have leather bound edition, although that's downstairs. Today's entry, though, begins with a quote from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 649. "You aren't bothered, are you, because you weigh a certain amount and not twice as much? So why do you get worked up that you've been given a certain lifespan and not more? Just as you're satisfied with your normal weight, you should be with the time you've been given."

• 3:31Ryan Holiday?

  They say that age is just a number, but to some people, it's a very important one. Otherwise, women wouldn't lie about being younger and ambitious young men wouldn't lie about being older. Rich people and health nuts spend billions of dollars in an effort to move the expiration date from around 78 years to hopefully forever. The number of years we manage to eke out doesn't matter, though, only what those years are composed of. Seneca put it best when he said, "Life is long if you know how to use it." Sadly, most people don't. They waste the life you've been given. Only when it's too late do they try to compensate for that waste by vainly hoping to put more

• 4:15Ryan Holiday?

  time on the clock. Use today. Use every day. Make yourself satisfied with what you've been given. I said this before, but I got to know this guy, Richard Overton, in Austin before he died. When he died, he was the oldest man in the world. He was 112 years old. My, my son and wife, I was out of town. They got to go to his 112th birthday. Like, how crazy is that? But it's interesting. I've gotten to know a number of really old people. We just had Judge Block on the podcast. He's 90. George Raveling is 88. Look, all these people, you know, they're not like itching to die. But one of the things that I think is interesting when you meet older people is they're not desperate to live longer.

• 4:58Ryan Holiday?

  That's kind of a young man or young woman's game or fantasy or delusion even, right? All these, you know, as I said, health nuts who are like radical life extension. It's not old people that are thinking that way. It's not, right? There's partly this because quality of their quality of life is diminished. They haven't always taken care of themselves is something Peter Attia talks about a lot in his work. But also, I think what you tend to realize, you start to realize as you get older is it's not about the quantity, it's about the quality. And it's about making use of the time you have as opposed to deferring and deferring, getting more and more and more. Look, of course, life is, is good. Dying, not so good.

• 5:41Ryan Holiday?

  If you had to pick one or the other, you'd pick to be alive than not alive, right? For the most part. But, but I guess what I'm saying is that when, when you hear these people talk about how they want to live forever or whatever, they never have like a great reason. Again, life itself is precious and great. I'm not saying it's not, but what I'm saying is that they're never like, I need all this time because I, I have to do X, Y, and Z. Because I just so love X, Y, and Z. What's funny, when I look at some of these people, and I know some, I've spent a lot of time with them, I'm not like, that's the guy, that's, it's mostly dudes, that's the person that I would gift another two decades, because they use it so well. Right? Most of

• 6:23Ryan Holiday?

  their time seems to be caught up with weird health stuff, right? I guess what I'm saying, this is what Seneca is trying to say, when he said that life isn't short, we just waste a lot of it. These people who keep needing to push the clock, how are they using the time they have now? How are you using the time you have now? I was just talking to someone who was pushing back the deadline on the book they have to submit. They're like, you know, I could use more time, you know, the deadline is like, two months from now. They're like, I think I'm gonna ask for an extension. And I was like, look, if it was due tomorrow, and you were wrapping up, and you could use that week, that'd be one thing. I said, I feel like, you're not using today that well. You didn't use yesterday

• 7:04Ryan Holiday?

  that well. Why do you think three months versus two months is going to be radically different? Are you actually going to get an extra month if the deadline is extended from two months to three months from now? And I think this is the point about fantasizing about living till you're 90, living till you're 100, becoming the oldest person in the world, is you tell yourself, are you really gonna live those years? But where is the evidence? Where is the proof? How are you showing right now? Maybe that's an interesting question. How are you showing right now that you are worthy of all those extra years? That's what I want to leave you with today. I know it's a little strange, the month of

• 7:44Ryan Holiday?

  December in the Daily Stoic book is all about memento mori, but this is the time to think about these questions, to evaluate what's important, to evaluate how you're spending your time. That's where I want to leave you today. Memento mori. Life is short. Use today, use every day. Make yourself satisfied with what you've been given. Make yourself worthy of getting more. Talk soon.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out, dailystoic.com/email.

• 8:32Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out, dailystoic.com/email.