What Limits You?

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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, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

• 0:30Ryan Holiday?

  What Limits You? There wasn't anyone who could tell Marcus Aurelius what to do, and yet, he was still quite circumscribed. Again, not by Roman law, but by something much more voluntary. Marcus Aurelius subordinated himself to philosophy. He fought, as he said, "to be the person that philosophy tried to make him." When he was betrayed by Avidius Cassius in 175 A.D., he had immense power and latitude to deal with the problem. Blood could have run in the streets. His enemies could have been eliminated one by one as previous emperors had done when threatened. Instead, Marcus Aurelius not only tried to deal with the problem peacefully, but he instructed the Senate that he would not accept reprisals on his behalf either. As we talked about before, as a Roman male in a time of slavery,

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  and again, as emperor, Marcus Aurelius had incredible power over human beings in his household, too. Yet he writes with pride in Meditations, which was written to himself, about how he never laid a hand on anyone. It's not too much to say that Marcus Aurelius was a slave himself, a slave to philosophy. He was supremely powerful, and yet, he was also not free because he had chosen to live according to the Stoics, and they had given him a clear set of directions and rules about what he was allowed to do and not allowed to do. D. H. Lawrence once wrote sneeringly that Benjamin Franklin's view of virtue was that of a horse in a paddock, fenced in on all sides. But that's precisely what Marcus Aurelius loved about virtue. Instead of chafing at these constraints,

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  he saw them for what they were: boundaries, protections. They were protections against himself, protections against being Caesarified and stained purple by his corrupting position that kept him good in a job and a world that had created so many bad people. And what about you? You're not emperor, but you've still been blessed with incredible privileges, freedoms, and opportunities. Perhaps you have no small amount of power and authority too. This is great. But what limits do you impose on yourself? What protects you from yourself? What keeps you in line? What keeps you good?