The emperor Augustus commissioned Virgil to write the Aeneid, which came to be regarded as the foundational myth or national epic of Rome, and Virgil’s finest work. The poem tells the story of Aeneas, the son of Venus by the Trojan prince Anchises, as he flees burning Troy and struggles to fulfill his destiny, which, as oft foretold, is to reach Italy and sire the line of the Romans, who will come to rule all the known world.

After escaping the clutch of Dido, Aeneas finally arrives in Italy, to be betrothed to Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus—who had, however, been promised to Turnus, King of the Rutilians. War breaks out, culminating in a duel between Aeneas and Turnus. Aeneas has Turnus on his knees, pleading for his life, but then sees that he is wearing the belt of his fallen friend and kills him in a furious rage.

Although Aeneas eventually surrenders to his fate and fulfills his destiny, he is constantly overwhelmed and waylaid by his emotions, even to the very end when he slays Turnus. This very Stoic conflict is the source of some of the most resonant lines in the Aeneid, such as this one: “Fear is the proof of a degenerate mind” [Degeneres animos timor arguit].

It is worth remembering that the Aeneid was written for the benefit of Augustus, who was, if not quite a Stoic, then at least a friend of Stoicism. Before he became emperor, Augustus was tutored and mentored by the Stoic philosopher Athenodorus Cananites. Now in his dotage, Athenodorus begged to be dismissed from the emperor’s service. As he was taking leave of Augustus, he reminded him, “Whenever you get angry, Caesar, do not say or do anything before repeating to yourself the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.” At this, Augustus seized him by the hand, and said, “I still have need of your presence here.”

Seneca on Anger

How, using Stoic principles, might Aeneas have controlled his anger? And how might we? The expert here is Stoic philosopher Seneca, who wrote a substantial work on anger, apparently, after his brother Novatus asked him, “How anger may be soothed.”

Anger, says Seneca, is a bad habit that people tend to pick up from their parents. When a child who was raised at Plato’s house was returned to his parents and saw his father shouting, he said, “I never saw this at Plato’s house.” More generally, anger is transmissible: if we are around angry people, it is hard not to lose our temper, however, temperate we may normally be. For this reason alone, we ought to prefer the company of mild, level-headed people. Even wild animals become gentle in the company of the calm.

We should also resist our egocentric tendency to believe the worst about others. Often, the people at whom we are most liable to get angry are those who are in fact trying to help us. Although, of course, not as much as we would like. In their minds, they are only trying to do what they think is best for them, and we, by our anger, are trying to interfere with that—which is why they tend to return our anger. If what they are doing is not in their best interests, then we should calmly explain that to them, rather than losing our temper and, with it, their ear.

As for the things that anger us, they are often mere slights or annoyances that do not do us any real harm. Luxury debilitates the mind and undermines our sense of perspective so that people who are accustomed to luxurious living are more prone to anger over trivial things. Even if someone kills our father or our daughter, anger is not required to honour their memory, seek out justice, and, more generally, do the right thing. Many people think that anger is a show of virtue or a spur to virtue; at most, it can substitute for virtue in those who lack it.

Anger and grief only add to our existing pain, and often do more harm than the things out of which they were born. It is out of anger that Alexander the Great killed the friend who had saved his life—that great conqueror of kings, himself brought low by anger. And it is also out of anger that Medea slaughtered her own children. According to Seneca, anger is a short-lived madness, and differs from the other vices in this, that “whereas other vices impel the mind, anger overthrows it.” The angry person, he continues, is “like a collapsing building that’s reduced to rubble even as it crushes what it falls upon.”

Human beings are born to provide and receive assistance. Anger, which on the contrary seeks to arrogate and annihilate, is so inimical to our nature that some angry people have benefited from looking in a mirror. Those who are unwilling to check their anger and work with others for the common good are like wasps in a beehive, gorging on the honey of others without making any of their own.

For all these reasons, the Stoic should never get angry: she might feel the beginnings of anger, but then reject this passionate impression that threatens to overthrow her reason and tranquillity and the dignity that follows in their train. To regain perspective when angry, to reclaim our sanity, we might ask ourselves: “Am I expecting too much of the world?” Or, “How is getting angry going to help me?” Or again, “Who will remember this in a day or in a year, or in a hundred?” But the surest cure for anger is delay because it gives us a much better chance of rejecting our passionate impression.

“Whenever you get angry, Caesar, do not say or do anything before repeating to yourself the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.”

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories

The Stoic response to fear and anxiety turns around two core Stoic principles: the “dichotomy of control” and the “principle of assent.”

The Dichotomy of Control

If we are not to suffer from fear, hope, envy, and other negative emotions (or “passions”), we must learn to distinguish between those things that are within our control and those that are not.

Anything external to us is not within our control, or, at least, not entirely within our control. The only thing that is entirely within our control is our own mind. 

When it comes to things over which we do not have complete control, we play our part, we do our best, but we do not fret over the outcome—which, if we have done our best, is no reflection on us. Like the Stoic archer, we do everything we can to shoot accurately. Even so, as soon as it leaves us, the arrow, and with it the success of our action, is no longer within our control, but subject to outside forces such as a sudden change in wind speed or direction. 

Thus, we seek to be loveable, not to be loved, because the one is within our control whereas the other is not. Or, we seek to write well, not become a bestselling author, because the one is within our control whereas the other is not.

Life, says Epictetus, is like a ball game: if we start caring about the ball more than the game, it is no longer a game but a brawl and no fun at all. The important thing is not to hog the ball, or even win, but to play and enjoy the best game we can—which is a surer kind of winning, and likely also to lead to the other kind.

The Principle of Assent

Closely related to the dichotomy of control is the principle of assent. 

Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, taught that knowledge could be secured through a process called katalepsis (Greek, “grasping”), which he illustrated through four successive hand gestures.

• First, he held out an open palm to represent an impression (essentially a sense impression or idea of the mind). 
• Second, he opposed his fingertips into a claw to represent reason assenting, by free will, to the impression.
• Third, he flexed his fingers into a firm grasp to represent comprehension or katalepsis.
• And last, he slapped and squeezed the fist with his other hand to represent knowledge.

The ability to assent to, or reject, impressions is, in the final analysis, the only thing that is fully within our control. 

Our highest concern should be to reject any impression that fails the test of objectivity, notably by being more aware of our value judgments and postponing our response to passionate impressions. For instance, we might be “impressed” by the purple of the imperial robe until we remind ourselves that it is no more than a piece of cloth that has been dyed purple in the foul-smelling excreta of sea snails. Or we might burn uncontrollably for the frame of a man or woman until we remind ourselves, as Marcus Aurelius did, that the sex we crave amounts to no more than “the friction of a membrane and, following a sort of convulsion, the expulsion of some mucus.”

The proper use of impressions corresponds to “cognitive distancing” in modern cognitive behavioral therapy. It is, says Epictetus, “the basis of God’s own well-being,” and the thing that most distinguishes us from children and animals. Little children are constantly overwhelmed by their impressions, which is why they go from outburst to outburst.

Because they are almost totally lacking in perspective, the smallest thing seems to them like a tragedy. “Their nanny leaves and they cry, but give them cake, and they’ve forgotten about their nanny.” 

What we grown-ups need is not cake or constant consolation, or anti-depressants, but accurate impressions, unless we are to remain all our lives like oversized children.

The Stoic Response to Fear and Anxiety

Putting two and two together, if we are anxious or fearful, it is deep down because we wish to control things that are not in our control or not fully in our control. In other words, it is because we wish for things to turn out in a certain way, instead of understanding or accepting that they will turn out however they turn out.

In that much, fear is the obverse of hope: it is because we hope that we fear. In the Discourses, Epictetus is recorded as saying, “When I see a man anxious, I say, What does this man want? If he did not want something which is not in his power, how could he be anxious?”

Given that the future is not in our gift, both hope and fear are redundant. More than redundant, they are counterproductive in that we would do better to concentrate on the things that are actually within our control so as to increase the probabilities of a favourable outcome. If, for example, we have to give a talk, it’s hard enough to prepare and deliver a good talk without also worrying about how it will be received—which is, of course, not in our control.

By worrying, we are only making our life more difficult than it needs to be and also run the risk of getting stage fright and sabotaging our performance. But if we are calm and well prepared, the overwhelming likelihood is that our talk will be generously received.

In the words of Seneca, “More things frighten us than really affect us, and we are more often afflicted in thought than in fact.”

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories.

Why the Stoics, like their ancestors the Cynics, greatly valued hardship.

After being exiled from his native Sinope for having defaced its coinage, Diogenes the Cynic moved to Athens, took up the life of a beggar, and made it his mission to metaphorically deface the coinage of custom and convention—which, he maintained, was the false currency of morality. 

Diogenes disdained the need for conventional shelter and other corrupting ‘dainties’ and chose instead to live in a storage jar and survive on a diet of chickpeas and lupins. He used to beg for the bare necessities, including from statues—saying that he was thereby practising for rejection. He held that human beings had much to learn from the simplicity and artlessness of dogs, which, unlike human beings, had not ‘complicated every simple gift of the gods’. The term ‘Cynic’ possibly derives from the Greek for ‘dog-like’, kynikos.

In the deep winter, Diogenes would strip naked and embrace bronze statues. One day, upon seeing this, a Spartan asked him whether he was cold. When he said that he was not, the Spartan replied, “Well, then, what’s so impressive about what you’re doing?”

Like their ancestors the Cynics, and like the Spartans, the Stoics greatly valued hardship, albeit it on a more modest or moderate scale. We should, they said, routinely practice poverty or put ourselves through mild hardship, and this for several reasons.

First, to discover what we can do without, and reduce our fear of losing these things. In his Letters, Seneca advises Lucilius: ‘Set yourself a period of some days in which you will be content with very small amounts of food, and the cheapest kinds, and with coarse clothing, and say to yourself, “Is this what I was afraid of?”‘

Second, to be reminded that simple things, such as bread and olive oil, or a good night’s sleep, can be just as enjoyable and profitable as any great banquet, and thus that pleasure is both easily available and highly transferable.

Third, to better reflect upon our true goals, or to work towards them. ‘If you want to have time for your mind’, says Seneca, ‘you must either be poor or resemble the poor… One cannot study without frugality, and frugality is just voluntary poverty.’

Here are six more benefits of self-imposed hardship, according to the Stoics:

• To increase our appreciation and enjoyment of the things that we normally enjoy.
• To break from our normal routine, and reinvigorate our minds while exercising and reinforcing our freedom.
• To be prepared for future hardship, which, unless we are suddenly struck dead, is all but a certainty.
• To be convinced that the greater part of our suffering lies not in fact but in our attitude towards it.
• To practise self-discipline, or test our Stoicism.
• To empathize with less fortunate people, and people from the past.

In addition, self-imposed poverty and hardship can also have more mundane benefits, such as losing weight, or saving time or money.

Finally, all the reasons so far enumerated are themselves a source of pride, and pleasure of a different kind. ‘Do not’ says Marcus Aurelius, ‘lament misfortune. Instead, rejoice that you are the sort of person who can undergo misfortune without letting it upset you.’

Seneca does us the favour of putting self-imposed hardship into radical perspective when he says: ‘Armies have endured being deprived of everything for another person’s domination, so who will hesitate to put up with poverty when the aim is to liberate the mind from fits of madness?’

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories.

Stoicism and ‘the view from above’.

Stoicism and “the view

The emperor Augustus commissioned Virgil to write the Aeneid, which came to be regarded as the national epic of Rome, and Virgil’s finest work. The poem tells the story of Aeneas, the son Venus, goddess of love, by the Trojan prince Anchises, as he flees burning Troy and strives to fulfill his destiny, which, as oft foretold, is to reach Italy and sire the line of the Romans, who will come to rule all the known world.

The most Stoicial passage in the Aeneid is the one known as Creusa’s farewell, which has been used for centuries for emotional education. As the concealed Greek soldiers pour out of the wooden horse, Hector, the fallen Trojan hero, appears to Aeneas in a dream and urges him to flee their beloved Troy. When Aeneas awakens, the city is in flames with fighting and looting in every corner. Aeneas gathers a few men and fights as best he can but loses his companions and witnesses the slaughter of King Priam upon his own altar. He sees Helen hiding and resolves to kill her; but his mother Venus appears and stays his hand, telling him that it is not Helen but the gods who are to blame for the war. Echoing Hector, Venus urges him to flee with his family.

Aeneas repairs to his house, but his father Anchises refuses to leave. The head of his son Ascanius briefly catches fire, and this omen is confirmed by a shooting star, which now not even Anchises can ignore. Aeneas carries his father in his back (as we all do) and leads his son by the hand, while Creusa, his wife, follows closely behind. Once outside the city gates, Aeneas finds that Creusa is no longer with them, and turns back in search of her.

But amid the tumult, and after searching in every place, Aeneas finds only Creusa’s ghost, which speaks to him. Creusa, or her ghost, bids Aeneas not to grieve, for it was the will of the gods that she should die. Death is preferable to being raped, or enslaved to ‘some proud Grecian dame’. She foretells that, after many arduous years of wandering, Aeneas will arrive in Latium to a bride and kingdom, and there restore the Trojan line. She bids him farewell and reminds him that she will live on in their ‘common issue’, Ascanius. As it vanishes, Aeneas tries three times, in vain, to grasp at her spectre.

Creusa is completely accepting of fate, and, although she sees it clearly, does not begrudge her husband his kingdom to come or bride to be. Her detachment and perspective, which enable her to empathize with Aeneas and even to help him along his way, rather than grieve for all that she has lost, are an epitome of Stoicism, and especially of ‘the view from above’.

If we are too absorbed in our life and times, our perspective shrinks, and we become fearful and hopeful and prone to upset. Like readers of tabloid newspapers, we panic or rage at every little thing, rather than being alive in our lives. To achieve Creusa’s greatness of soul, we need to distance ourself from the life that we happen to be leading, and what better way to distance ourself than by seeking to adopt the perspective of Zeus on Olympus and look down from on high onto the world? The reason, maybe, why billionaires are so keen to blast themselves up into space.

Cicero’s Republic has largely been lost, but a part of the final book, called the Dream of Scipio, has survived in a commentary by Macrobius, which rose to prominence in the Middle Ages. The passage describes a dream that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus is supposed to have had at the outset of the Third Punic War, which culminated in the destruction of Carthage.

In this dream, Scipio Aemilianus is visited by his grandfather-by-adoption, Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal at the outcome of the Second Punic War. The Elder Scipio shows him Carthage, the Earth, and the cosmos from the outer heavens, ‘a place on high, full of stars, and bright and shining.’ Scipio is awed by the music of the spheres, and sees that Rome is only a small part of the Earth, and the Earth a small part of the cosmos, and that it is better to fix our mind on this eternal picture, and to seek out wisdom and virtue, than to bleed and sweat for transient fame and fortune. 

In the words of Marcus Aurelius, which are all the more remarkable for coming from an emperor:

Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river… Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.

Meditations, V, 23.

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories.