We Owe It All To Them | What Marcus Aurelius Learned From His Mother

In honor of Mother’s Day, Ryan talks with Donald Robertson about the powerful influence Marcus Aurelius’ mother had on his life and philosophy. Even though Stoicism is usually talked about as a philosophy shaped by men, Marcus’ mother may have been his first and most important model of Stoic character, shaping the virtues he would spend his life trying to practice. Donald Robertson is a writer, cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist and trainer. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH). Donald specializes in teaching evidence-based psychological skills, and is known as an expert on the relationship between modern psychotherapy (CBT) and classical Greek and Roman philosophy. Listen to the full episode with Donald Robertson: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTubeSubstackX: @donjrobertsonIG: @donaldjrobertson📚 Grab copies of Donald’s books, How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World, Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor and How To Think Like A Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius from The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/🎥 VIDEO EPISODES| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  We owe it all to them. What put it in motion? What created it? How did it happen that a man found himself holding absolute power and not only wasn't corrupted by it, but stayed actively working on himself, trying to get better always? Marcus Aurelius, the man we experience in Meditations, was a remarkable person, a historical unicorn, an exception that proves the rule. Sure, we can credit Stoicism and philosophy for this, but the true source, the most essential influence in his life, was something much earlier, something he was exposed to in literally his earliest days.

• 1:00Ryan Holiday?

  Donald Robertson, Marcus Aurelius's greatest biographer, explained that the whole concept of writing the Meditations is about following through on this thing Marcus remembers his mother saying when he was younger, which is to work on his character, to improve his mind, and not just his external behavior. Something his mother said to him when he was younger. One of the greatest men to ever live, the most enduring work of philosophy that history has ever seen, and it was his mother that inspired it. In his own words in Meditations, Marcus thanks his mother for her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong,

• 1:44Ryan Holiday?

  he said, but even to conceive of doing it and the simple way she lived. What a beautiful sentiment that is to think about today on Mother's Day. May we all be blessed with a mother like that, someone who loved us, who taught us, who modeled for us what the good life was. And if you didn't get that from your biological mother, then it's worth remembering Seneca's line about the fact that while we cannot choose our parents, we do get to choose whose children we are. Today, you can think about and celebrate and thank the other maternal influences in your life. Grandmothers, stepmothers, and aunts, teachers,

• 2:27Ryan Holiday?

  neighbors, older sisters, mother-in-laws, our first caregivers, the ones who helped us grow and taught us what we needed to know about life, taught us about the potential always there inside us, showed us what unconditional support and belief looked like. We can also celebrate the mother of our own children, the one we did get to choose. Today, we celebrate mothers for all the innumerable gifts they have given us, the wisdom they have bestowed on us, and the greatness they will always inspire in us. And we can give an extra nod to the great Domitia Lucilla, one of history's unsung heroes for the gift

• 3:10Ryan Holiday?

  she gave Marcus Aurelius and that he passed on to us.

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a special episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You just heard a little Mother's Day message we sent out. We don't usually do a Daily Stoic email on the weekends, but I don't know, I was sort of inspired to write that and I thought I'd share it. And then, as I was thinking about what we do for today's episode, I thought I'd take that piece, the Donald Robertson quote that I said in that email is actually from his episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Donald Robertson is one of my favorite thinkers and writers about Stoic philosophy. He has a great book, a biography of Marcus Aurelius that I like, and another book called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. He came out to the Paint and Porch bookstore, I think, twice now. But one of the times he was there, I wanted to ask him about Marcus Aurelius's mother.

• 4:10Ryan Holiday?

  I'm so fascinated by that sort of maternal influence on someone who is Obviously so well known as a sort of a masculine philosopher, I guess, but I think you can sense a sensitivity and a thoughtfulness. And Donald's point is that comes from Marcus Aurelius's mother. So that's what we're going to get into in today's episode. As I said, check out Donald's lovely books, How to Think Like Socrates, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, and Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Emperor. And you can follow him on Instagram, at Donald J. Robertson, and on Twitter, at Don J. Robertson. Have a happy Mother's Day, everyone. Enjoy this conversation. Stoicism is this thing that feels very masculine, very male centric. But the primary

• 4:55Ryan Holiday?

  influence on Marcus's life, you could argue, isn't Antoninus, it's his mother. She's this sort of quiet model of Stoicism that historians and subsequent philosophers don't give enough credit to. But what has Marcus Aurelius learned from his mother?

• 5:14Donald Robertson?

  Well, you could, you know, at a stretch, you could view her as his first tutor. And, you know, he she's the only woman, he mentions his sister fleetingly, but other than that, his mother is the only woman that he acknowledges in Book One of the Meditations. I think the most revealing thing about her is that Fronto writes to Marcus at one point and says, I'm going to write a letter to your mom in Greek, right? Fronto is an expert on Latin. Marcus's mother was not just fluent in Greek, like most Roman, most educated Romans would be bilingual in Latin and Greek, but she seems to be completely fluent in it. And Fronto, who's the most acclaimed Latin

• 5:57Donald Robertson?

  rhetorician in the world, writes this kind of slightly pathetic letter to Marcus, saying, could you just check it for mistakes before I send it to your mom? Because I'd be embarrassed, you know, to for her to read it and think I've, you know, like, got the grammar slightly wrong or something.

• 6:14Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 6:14Donald Robertson?

  So, and in Roman society, to look to a woman like that as a as your superior intellectually is unusual. Like, Fronto, and also Fronto mentions that his wife is like a student to Marcus's mother. He actually refers to her as Marcus's mother's client, meaning her kind of subordinate, like her student. So a bit of a strip, but the picture kind of emerges of a woman who is like a multimillionaire, billionaire, a construction industry magnet. We have bricks with her name stamped on them that survive today.

• 6:59Donald Robertson?

  Right. She owned clay fields and brick and tile factories that she inherited from her family. She never remarried after Marcus's father died. She would have been in her early twenties or late teens when her husband died. She remained single. She, Marcus and her went to stay with Marcus's paternal grandfather for a while. But then they leave and they go back into her house, which again shows unusual independence in Roman society. And she seems to have surrounded herself with a kind of intellectual circle, a kind of salon of which she is the centre. And so Marcus grew up in, in a sense, in a school or among a circle of leading intellectuals.

• 7:42Donald Robertson?

  Harodis Atticus is another crazy guy, colourful figure. He's the most famous sophist of the period. He lived for a while in the same household as Marcus's mother, so he's a close family friend. He later becomes Marcus's Greek rhetoric tutor. So Marcus's mother is mingling, you know, is maybe family friends with or grew up alongside the most famous Greek orator and sophist of the period. She seems to be familiar with Risticus. Marcus mentions that Risticus wrote a letter. Maybe she chose Risticus to be Marcus's tutor. There's another really obscure clue in the meditations that I didn't notice until I was working on this.

• 8:28Donald Robertson?

  Another biography mentions that Marcus in passing mentions.

• 8:35Donald Robertson?

  Guy called Domitius, who we don't know anything about, who he said heaped praise on his, he was very generous in heaping praise on his philosophy tutor. And the tutor that he mentions is a guy called Athenodotus, who is known to be a Stoic teacher. So there's a guy who really loves Stoic teachers and his name is the masculine version of Domitia, which is Marcus's mother's family name. So he may have been an uncle or some other relative of Marcus's mother. So there's a tiny, you know, when you're

• 9:12Ryan Holiday?

  She's got quite a scene.

• 9:13Donald Robertson?

  When you're really digging, you know, there's a hint there that Marcus's mum's family already have links to Stoicism and connections with leading intellectuals. She seems more into literature.

• 9:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Donald Robertson?

  She's an expert on language and rhetoric. She must be reading plays then and other literature. There's not much indication directly linking her with philosophy. Her family have a long history of being associated with the region of Italy that traditionally was colonized by Greece and speaks Greek. So Marcus grew up in this household where he would have studied Greek literature and where his mum may have been steering him towards Stoic philosophy. We're also told she lived quite in a steer. She's another one of these billionaires, you know, who supposedly lives very simply.

• 10:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, well, it says, it says, my mother, her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong, but even to conceive of doing it in the simple way she lived, not in the least like the rich.

• 10:21Donald Robertson?

  And she's also said to be unlike the Roman elite in another way. Fronto.

• 10:28Donald Robertson?

  Kind of notoriously says, there's no word in Latin for philistorgia or natural affection. And he says, cause it's a quality, he said, I think he says this more than once, it's a quality completely lacking among the Roman elite. But he clearly thinks that Marcus is the exception and his mum, but they're not typical Romans. Cause they're kind of Gracianized, like to some extent. And so I think Fronto is kind of implying this is a quality that's more common in the Greek world.

• 10:57Ryan Holiday?

  Like, and he's not a mama's boy, but isn't one of the stories we have of Marcus Aurelius crying? That he doesn't want to have to move out of his mother's house and in to the, like he, he, she, she creates such a good home.

• 11:09Donald Robertson?

  Yeah.

• 11:10Ryan Holiday?

  Such a, a place of love and affection and comfort and security. The things that supposedly a Stoic is not interested in, but he doesn't want to leave.

• 11:18Donald Robertson?

  He's definitely close to her. So in the letters with Fronto, she gets mentioned quite a lot.

• 11:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Donald Robertson?

  And Fronto is like, always saying, oh, say hi to your mom and things like that. And but Marcus, even after he's married, I don't think he ever, or Faustina only gets mentioned very fleetingly. Like, so it's interesting, you think they're, they always mention his mum, but they don't really mention his wife. Right? And they clear, the way that Fronto talks about her is with reverence. Like, you know, it really, it really comes through, not just as a powerful and wealthy Roman woman, but as an, his intellectual superior.

• 11:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Donald Robertson?

  In some ways. So she, I wish we knew more about her, right? And this, what she says, it's just one fleeting little remark there. You know, not to, only to avoid wrongdoing in your actions, but also in your thoughts. In a way that sets up the entire agenda for writing the meditations, the whole concept.

• 12:15Ryan Holiday?

  Ideal that Marcus is aspiring to all his life.

• 12:18Donald Robertson?

  Yeah, like the, the whole concept of writing the meditations is about following through on this thing that he remembers his mother saying at the beginning, which is to work on his character. Like to improve his mind, not just his external behaviour.

• 12:31Ryan Holiday?

  And I, so I think it's really important that we don't just, when we run down the lists of famous Stoics. It's not just the people who wrote about Stoicism. It's this whole other half of society that embodied the Stoic ideals within the confines of a society that was inherently misogynistic and patriarchal, although there were exceptions to that rule. But ultimately, it's like we focus too much on the Stoic generals and the Stoic philosophers and thinkers, and we don't forget who they were actually aspiring to be like. Like in Marcus's case, it's like his mother is the philosophical model for what he's trying to... She's kind of naturally effortlessly this thing that he's very deliberately

• 13:15Ryan Holiday?

  and methodically having to cultivate inside of himself.