A Guide to the Good Life : The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (7 page)

After the death of Nero, Epictetus apparently gained freedom. He started a school of philosophy but was subsequently banished, along with all the other philosophers in Rome, by Domitian. He moved his school to Nicopolis, in what is now western Greece. After the assassination of Domitian, Stoicism regained its respectability and even became fashionable among Romans. Epictetus was by then the leading Stoic teacher. He could have moved back to Rome but chose instead to remain in Nicopolis. His school, despite its location, attracted students from around the Roman Empire.

According to the classicist Anthony A. Long, Epictetus expected his pupils to satisfy two conditions: “(1) wanting to benefit from philosophy and (2) understanding what a commitment to philosophy entails.”
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Epictetus knew that his words would be wasted on students who didn’t yet recognize their own inadequacies or who weren’t willing to take the steps necessary to deal with them. He describes his ideal pupil as
someone who will be satisfied if he can “live untrammelled and untroubled,” as someone who seeks to be “tranquil and free from turmoil.”
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What these students could expect at one of Epictetus’s lectures was not a one-way communication, from Epictetus to his students, about esoteric philosophical theories. To the contrary, he wanted his students to take his lectures personally. He wanted his remarks to strike close to home. He therefore told his students that a Stoic school should be like a physician’s consulting room and that patients should leave feeling bad rather than feeling good,
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the idea being that any treatment likely to cure a patient is also likely to cause him discomfort. His lectures were therefore, according to Long, “dialectical lessons—invitations to his audience to examine themselves.”
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According to Epictetus, the primary concern of philosophy should be the art of living: Just as wood is the medium of the carpenter and bronze is the medium of the sculptor, your life is the medium on which you practice the art of living.
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Furthermore, much as a master carpenter teaches an apprentice by showing him techniques that can be used to build things out of wood, Epictetus taught his students the art of life by showing them techniques that could be used to make something of their life. The techniques in question were quite practical and completely applicable to students’ everyday lives. He taught them, among other things, how to respond to insults, how to deal with incompetent servants, how to deal with an angry brother, how to deal with the loss of a loved one, and how to deal with exile. If they could master these techniques, Epictetus promised, they would experience a life that
was filled with purpose and dignity, and more important, they would attain tranquility. Furthermore, they would retain their dignity and tranquility regardless of the hardships life might subsequently inflict on them.

T
HOSE WHO READ
Epictetus cannot help but notice his frequent mention of religion. Indeed, Zeus is mentioned more than anyone except Socrates. To better understand the role Zeus plays in Stoicism, consider the situation of a prospective pupil at Epictetus’s school. If this person asked what one must do to practice Stoicism, Epictetus might describe the various techniques Stoics advocate. If he asked why he should practice these techniques, Epictetus might reply that doing so will enable him to attain tranquility.

So far, so good, but suppose this student had looked at other schools of philosophy and wondered why Epictetus’s school was better than they were. Suppose, more precisely, he asked Epictetus what reason there was to think that the techniques advocated by the Stoics would enable him to attain tranquility. In his response to this question, Epictetus would start talking about Zeus.

We were, he would tell the student, created by Zeus. His student was likely to accept this claim, inasmuch as atheism appears to have been a rarity in ancient Rome. (Then again, what Epictetus had in mind when he referred to Zeus is probably different from what most Romans had in mind. In particular, it is possible that Epictetus identified Zeus with Nature.)
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Epictetus would go on to explain that Zeus made us different from other animals in one important respect: We are rational, as are the gods. We are therefore a curious hybrid, half-animal and half-god.

Zeus, as it so happens, is a thoughtful, kind, and loving god, and when he created us, he had our best interests in mind. But sadly, he appears not to have been omnipotent, so in creating us, there were limits to what he could do. In his
Discourses
, Epictetus imagines having a conversation with Zeus, in which Zeus explains his predicament in the following terms: “Epictetus, had it been possible I should have made both this paltry body and this small estate of thine free and unhampered. … Yet since I could not give thee this, we have given thee a certain portion of ourself, this faculty of choice and refusal, of desire and aversion.” He adds that if Epictetus learns to make proper use of this faculty, he will never feel frustrated or dissatisfied.
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He will, in other words, retain his tranquility—and even experience joy—despite the blows Fortune might deal him.

Elsewhere in the
Discourses
, Epictetus suggests that even if Zeus could have made us “free and unhampered,” he would have chosen not to do so. Epictetus presents us with the image of Zeus as an athletic coach: “It is difficulties that show what men are. Consequently, when a difficulty befalls, remember that God, like a physical trainer, has matched you with a rugged young man.” Why do this? To toughen and strengthen you, so you can become “an Olympic victor”
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—in other words, so you can have the best life possible. Seneca, by the way, argued along similar lines: God, he said, “does not make a spoiled pet of a good man; he tests him, hardens him, and fits him for his own service.” In particular, the adversities we experience count as “mere training,” and “those things which we all shudder and tremble at are for the good of the persons themselves to whom they come.”
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Epictetus would then tell the prospective student that if he wishes to have a good life, he must consider his nature and the purpose for which God created him and live accordingly; he must, as Zeno put it, live in accordance with nature. The person who does this won’t simply pursue pleasure, as an animal might; instead, he will use his reasoning ability to reflect on the human condition. He will then discover the reason we were created and the role we play in the cosmic scheme. He will realize that to have a good life, he needs to perform well the function of a human being, the function Zeus designed him to fulfill. He will therefore pursue virtue, in the ancient sense of the word, meaning that he will strive to become an excellent human being. He will also come to realize that if he lives in accordance with nature, he will be rewarded with the tranquility that Zeus promised us.

This explanation might have satisfied people in Epictetus’s time, but it is likely to be off-putting to modern individuals, almost none of whom believe in the existence of Zeus, and many of whom don’t believe we were created by a divine being who wanted what was best for us. Many readers will therefore, at this point, be thinking, “If I have to believe in Zeus and divine creation to practice Stoicism, then Stoicism is for me a nonstarter.” Readers should therefore realize that it is entirely possible to practice Stoicism—and in particular, to employ Stoic strategies for attaining tranquility—without believing in Zeus or, for that matter, in divine creation. In
chapter 20
I will have more to say about how this can be done.

“B
EGIN EACH DAY
by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and
selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”
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These words were written not by a slave like Epictetus, whom we would naturally expect to encounter insolence and ill will; they were written by the person who was at the time the most powerful man in the world: Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome.

Because he was someone important, we know more about Marcus than about any of the other Roman Stoics. We also have an unusual degree of insight into his inner thoughts, thanks to the correspondence he carried on with his tutor Cornelius Fronto and thanks, also, to his
Meditations
, in which he reflects on life and his response to it.

Marcus was born in 121. He appears to have taken an interest in philosophy at an early age. One biographer describes him as a “solemn child” and relates that “as soon as he passed beyond the age when children are brought up under the care of nurses, he was handed over to advanced instructors and attained to a knowledge of philosophy.”
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At age twelve Marcus was taught by the painter and philosopher Diognetus, and he started experimenting with what sounds like Cynicism: He wore crude clothing and started sleeping on the ground.
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His mother subsequently talked him into sleeping instead on a couch strewn with skins.
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As a teenager, Marcus studied with the Stoic philosopher Apollonius of Chalcedon. According to Marcus, it was Apollonius who impressed on him the need to be decisive and reasonable, taught him how to combine days full of intense activity with periods of relaxation, and taught him how, “with the same unaltered composure,” to withstand sickness
and pain—and in particular, Marcus notes, how to withstand the mental anguish he later experienced on losing a son. Another important influence on Marcus was Quintus Junius Rusticus, who, significantly, lent Marcus a copy of Epictetus’s
Discourses
.
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Epictetus subsequently became the single most important influence on Marcus.

Like Epictetus, Marcus was far more interested in Stoic ethics—in, that is, its philosophy of life—than in Stoic physics or logic. Indeed, in the
Meditations
he asserts that it is possible to achieve “freedom, self-respect, unselfishness, and obedience to the will of God” even though we have not mastered logic and physics.
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W
HEN
M
ARCUS WAS SIXTEEN
, Emperor Hadrian adopted Marcus’s maternal uncle, Antoninus, who in turn adopted Marcus. (Marcus’s father had died when Marcus was quite young.) From the time Marcus entered palace life, he had political power, and when Antoninus became emperor, Marcus served as virtual co-emperor. He didn’t let this power go to his head, though; during the thirteen years he acted as Antoninus’s chief lieutenant, he did not give people the impression that he longed for sole rule.
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Furthermore, when Antoninus died and Marcus gained power, he appointed Lucius Verus joint emperor. This was the first time the Roman Empire had two emperors.
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As Roman emperors go, Marcus was exceptionally good. For one thing, he exercised great restraint in his use of power. No emperor, we are told, showed more respect to the Senate than Marcus did. He took care not to waste public
money.
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And although he didn’t need to ask the Senate for permission to spend money, he routinely did so, and in one speech reminded them that the imperial palace in which he lived was not his but theirs.
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To finance wars, he auctioned off imperial possessions, including statues, paintings, gold vases, and some of his wife’s jewelry and clothing rather than raise taxes.
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Marcus, wrote the historian Edward Gibbon, was the last of the Five Good Emperors (the other four being Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus) who ruled from 96–180 and brought about “the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous.”
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This period, writes the nineteenth-century historian W. E. H. Lecky, “exhibits a uniformity of good government which no other despotic monarchy has equalled. Each of the five emperors who then reigned deserves to be placed among the best rulers who have ever lived.”
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Marcus is, in other words, a rare example of a philosopher king and perhaps the only example of a philosopher whom subjects wanted to have as their king.

L
IKE THE OTHER
Roman Stoics, Marcus didn’t feel compelled to prove that tranquility was worth pursuing. To the contrary, he thought its value was obvious. And if someone had told Marcus that he thought mortal life could offer something better than “peace of mind,” Marcus would not have attempted to persuade him otherwise; instead he would have advised this individual to turn to the thing in question “with your whole soul, and rejoice in the prize you have found.”
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As an adult, Marcus was in great need of the tranquility Stoicism could offer. He was sick, possibly with an ulcer. His family life was a source of distress: His wife appears to have been unfaithful to him, and of the at least fourteen children she bore him, only six survived. Added to this were the stresses that came with ruling an empire. During his reign, there were numerous frontier uprisings, and Marcus often went personally to oversee campaigns against upstart tribes. His own officials—most notably, Avidius Cassius, the governor of Syria—rebelled against him.
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His subordinates were insolent to him, which insolence he bore with “an unruffled temper.”
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Citizens told jokes at his expense and were not punished for doing so. During his reign, the empire also experienced plague, famine, and natural disasters such as the earthquake at Smyrna.
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It is therefore with good reason that Marcus observed, in his
Meditations
, that “the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”
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The Roman historian Cassius Dio summarized Marcus’s plight as follows: “He did not meet with the good fortune that he deserved, for he was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles throughout practically his entire reign. But for my part, I admire him all the more for this very reason, that amid unusual and extraordinary difficulties he both survived himself and preserved the empire.” Dio adds that from his first days as counselor to Antoninus to his last days as emperor, “he remained the same and did not change in the least.”
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