Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, was succeeded by his long-time student Cleanthes of Assos (c. 330-c. 230 BCE).

Originally a boxer, Cleanthes arrived in Athens with no more than four drachmas to his name. He studied first under Crates the Cynic and then under Zeno, recording their teachings on oyster shells or blade bones because he could not afford papyrus. Other students called him “the ass” on account of his sluggishness, but he took pride in this, saying that it implied that he could withstand any load that Zeno put upon him.

To support himself, Cleanthes worked all night carrying water, digging the earth, and milling grain. Because he seemed to do nothing all day other than study philosophy, he was hauled before the Areopagus [the Athenian judicial council] to account for his way of life. He called to witness the gardener for whom he worked, and the woman who sold the flour that he milled, and his diligence so impressed the judges that they voted him the sum of ten minae [a thousand drachmas]. Even as head of school, he continued, between teaching and writing, to work with his hands, earning him another, this time laudatory, nickname, “the Second Hercules.”

Cleanthes loved poetry. He used to say that, just as the strictures of a trumpet can transform our breath into music, so the constraints of verse can heighten our thoughts—thereby echoing the Stoic principle that it is life’s obstacles that enable us to soar. He held that human beings naturally incline towards virtue, and remain incomplete without it, “like half lines of iambic verse.” One day, the playwright Sositheus attacked him from the stage with the line, “Driven by Cleanthes’ folly like dumb herds,” but he simply sat there in silence, without so much as altering his countenance, so that the audience applauded him and heckled Sositheus off the stage. When Sositheus later came to apologize, he brushed it off as but a minor slight.

The physical exertion and calm demeanour paid off, and Cleanthes lived into his hundredth year. In the end, gingivitis [inflammation of the gums] compelled him to fast for two whole days, after which he never ate again, saying that he was so far down the road to death that it would be too much trouble to retrace his steps.

How might we deal with insults and put-downs as well as Cleanthes did?

Check the insult

The first step, I think, is to ascertain that the insult truly is an insult. Whenever someone insults us, we ought to consider three things: whether the substance is true, whom it came from, and why. If the substance is true or conceivably true, the person it came from is known to be fair-minded, and his or her motive is benevolent, then the insult is not an insult so much as a statement of fact, and, moreover, one that could be very helpful to us. Hence, we seldom take offence at our parents or teachers, whom we know to have our best interests at heart. More generally, if we respect the person who seems to have insulted us, we ought to give careful thought to their remarks and learn as much as we can from them. If, on the other hand, we believe the person to be beneath our consideration, we have no reason to take offence, just as we have no reason to take offence at a naughty child or a barking dog. So, whatever the case, we have no reason to take offence.

Check our anger

Having ascertained that the apparent insult is a genuine one, we might respond in one of several ways. The untutored response is, of course, to get angry. Anger is the weakest possible response, and this for three main reasons: it reveals that we take the insult, and therefore the insulter, seriously; it suggests that there may be some substance to the insult; and it upsets and destabilizes us, which, as well as being unpleasant, invites further attacks, including, sometimes, physical attacks. Do we really want to end up in hospital, or in prison, because some idiot is behaving like an idiot? People have issues of their own that are nothing to do with us. If anything, they deserve our pity rather than our anger.

Check our impulse

An impulse that may or may not go with anger is to return the insult. Even in the absence of anger, there are some dangers with returning the insult. Our riposte has to be clever and cutting, or at least apt, and it has to occur to us at just the right moment. L’esprit de l’escalier [French, “staircase wit”] refers to the common experience of thinking too late of the perfect put-down. But even if we are as sharp-witted as Cato or Cicero, the perfect put-down is rarely the best response. The fundamental problem with the put-down, however brilliant it may be, is that it equalizes us with our insulter, bringing them up to our level and us down to theirs. This gives them, their behaviour, and their insult far too much credibility or legitimacy.

Find something to laugh about

 In other words, the witty put-down should only ever be used for humour, when it is also at its most effective. Cato the Stoic was pleading a case when his adversary Lentulus spat in his face. After wiping off the spittle, Cato said, “I will swear to anyone, Lentulus, that people are wrong to say that you cannot use your mouth. Gentle humour can be an effective response to an insult, and this for three main reasons: it undercuts the insulter and his or her insult, it brings any third parties on side, and it diffuses the tension of the situation. A similar strategy is to run with the insult and even add to it, in the genre, “Ah, if you knew me better, you would find greater fault still!”

Better still, ignore the insult

Humour, unfortunately, shares some of the same drawbacks as returning the insult. Our comeback has to be well-timed, well-judged, well delivered. All this requires precious mental energy, which we would do better to hold back for constructive purposes. Much easier, and, in fact, more powerful, is simply to ignore the insult, as Cleanthes did in the face of Sositheus. One day, a boor struck Cato while he was out at the public baths. When the boor realized that it was Cato whom he had struck, he came to apologize. Instead of getting angry or simply accepting the apology, Cato said, “I don’t remember being struck.” Subtext: “You are so insignificant to me that I don’t even care to register your apology, let alone take offence at your insult.” In ignoring our insulter we must take care not to seem haughty, which would amount to returning the insult. It can help at this point to recall the bigger picture, to remind ourself of what it was we were doing, for example, going to the baths, and to get on with it.

In summary

We need never take offence at an insult. Offence exists not in the insult but in our reaction to it, and our reactions are completely within our control. It is unreasonable to expect a boor to be anything but a boor; if we take offence at his bad behaviour, we have only ourself to blame.

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories.

I’ve reviewed my five favourite books on Stoicism on Shepherd.

Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, only came to philosophy after suffering a shipwreck. In this article, we imagine: how might he have dealt with his shipwreck had he then already been a Stoic?

Zeno (b. 334 BCE), the founder of Stoicism, hailed from Citium (modern-day Larnaca) in Cyprus, and may have been of Phoenician origin. As a young man, Zeno set sail from Phoenicia with a cargo of imperial purple, a dye obtained by crushing sea snails. Unfortunately, he lost this precious cargo in a shipwreck, and wound up in Athens with little more than the clothes on his back, if even that.

Now fully recovered from his ordeal, Zeno visited an oracle and asked what he should do “to live the best life.” The oracle replied cryptically that he ought to “have conversation with the dead.” Interpreting this to mean that he ought to take up the study of ancient authors, he began frequenting a bookshop in the agora, the central square of Athens. One day, Zeno picked up a copy of the Memorabilia, a collection of Socratic dialogues by Xenophon. Struck by Xenophon’s portrayal of Socrates, he asked the bookseller where such men might be found. At that very moment, the Cynic philosopher Crates of Thebes happened to be passing by. The bookseller pointed to him and said, “Follow yonder man.”

After agreeing to take him on, Crates gave Zeno a pot of lentil soup to carry across the Kerameikos, the potters’ quarter of Athens—a basic Cynic exercise for cultivating “shamelessness”, or disregard of popular opinion. Unused to such menial tasks, the self-conscious Zeno attempted to hide the pot under his cloak as best he could. Seeing this, Crates broke the pot with his staff, and Zeno darted off into the distance with lentil soup dripping down his legs. Crates called after him: “Why run away, my little Phoenician? Nothing terrible has befallen you!”

The incident with the pot of lentils suggests that Zeno, in those early days, was still a long way from wisdom. But how might he have dealt with his shipwreck had he then already been a Stoic? In other words, how might he have used reason to lessen his hardship by putting it into proper perspective?

1. Contextualization

Zeno might have begun by contextualizing his hardship, like so: “If I or anyone undertakes a sea voyage, there is always a chance of a shipwreck. So it is hardly extraordinary, even to be expected, that after so many successful voyages I came to suffer a shipwreck. At least I came out unharmed, and still have many advantages and assets, not least my sound mind and education. Things could be a lot worse—for many people, they are. After all, I only lost my ship because I had one in the first place. What will my misfortune amount to in five or ten years’ time, let alone a hundred? Who will care about my cargo then? Who even cares about it now? Imperial purple, how ridiculous!”

2. Negative visualization

After contextualization, Zeno could have tried a technique called premeditatio malorum [Latin, “premeditation of future evils”], also known as “negative visualization,” which in his case would involve imagining the very worst that could now happen and hopefully realizing that even that isn’t so bad: “So, I’ve lost my ship and cargo. At best, my bottomry contract [shipping insurance in the ancient world] will cover my loans. At worse, I’ll have to sell some property to pay my creditors, and start over on a more modest scale. Is that really so terrible?”

3. Transformation

My favourite technique is transformation, which involves turning hardship into an opportunity—which is, of course, just what Zeno did by attaching himself to Crates and becoming a philosopher. Had Zeno not “suffered” a shipwreck, he would not have been the subject of this article. In fact, there would have been no article. Given the influence of Stoicism on the Founding Fathers, there may have been no America either. As Zeno later put it, “I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered a shipwreck.”

My new book Stoic Stories is now out.

Stoic views on suicide.

From the outset, I should clearly state that, while the Stoics may have recognized the potential glory of death before subjugation, they argued strongly against suicide on the grounds of despair or dissatisfaction with life. So, when it comes to suicide, what exactly did the Stoics believe, and how did those beliefs shape our knowledge of these men today?

On a recent trip to Tenerife, a local reminded me that it was in Tenerife that Admiral Lord Nelson lost his arm, before exclaiming, “Poor Nelson!” “Well, not so poor” I quipped: “If he hadn’t lost his arm, we wouldn’t know who he was.”

It was by killing themselves that the likes of Cato and Socrates gave birth to their legends. When Cato is depicted in art, it is always in the act of stabbing himself. Had Socrates simply fled Athens, as he could have done, we today would be living in different minds. In the words of Seneca, “It was the hemlock that made Socrates great. Wrest from Cato his sword, his guarantor of liberty, and you take away the greater part of his glory.”

After his defeat to Caesar in 46 BCE, the Republican general Metellus Scipio attempted to flee to Iberia to raise another army, but his ship, driven by a contrary wind, fell into enemy hands. Rather than surrender, Metellus impaled himself upon his sword. As he bled to death, he reassured his men that, “All is well with the general” [Imperator se bene habet]. Relating this story, Seneca concludes, “It was a great thing to conquer Carthage; a greater thing to conquer death.”

For the Stoic, death is not merely an event, or a tragic accident, but a challenge, an opportunity, and the proof and consecration of a lifetime of philosophy.

Seneca compared our life to a storage jar. The sediment sinks to the bottom of the jar, so that the purest parts are poured out first, until all that remains are the turbid dregs. Most of us let the better parts of our life be siphoned off for others and keep only the bitter residue for ourself. The more rancid the residue becomes, the more we value and cling to it. 

What matters, the Stoics argue, is not how long we live, but how well. And often, living well consists in not living long. Better to die than to live badly, or against our nature. A caged bird may be safe from predators, and a caged lion may never go hungry, but what bird or lion would choose such a life? Some indeed would rather starve to death.

But even in the strongest cage, or the darkest dungeon, the door is always open. “Life” says Seneca, “does not hold anyone by force… If it suits you, live; if not you are allowed to return from where you came from.”

The Stoics argued that we should not fuss over the timing or method of our death. Better to go a little too soon that risk leaving it until we are no longer able to act. As for the method, Seneca tells the story of a young Spartan who was taken as a slave. The first time he was ordered to fetch the chamber pot, he dashed his head against the wall and burst his skull. Seneca concludes, “With freedom so near at hand, how is anyone a slave? … Life itself is slavery when one lacks the courage to die.”

Musonius too was open to the idea of a rational or philosophical suicide, but with some important utilitarian caveats. Being social animals, we should not end our life if our continued living would be helpful to many—unless, that is, our dying would be helpful to more. 

According to Seneca, Epicurus warned against killing ourself simply out of disgust or despair at life, since disgust at life has more to do with us than with life itself, and despair at life is, at the bottom, born out of the fear of death: “What could be more absurd than to seek death when it is fear of death that has made your life unquiet?”

In short, we should not flee from life in an excess of passion, like most people who commit suicide, but dispassionately depart from it when the time is right. That the law (in most jurisdictions) does not yet allow it shows that Stoicism is a philosophy of the future as well as of the past.

Suicide can be metaphorical too. The perspective brought by imagining that we have already died can, like a near-death experience, free us from our anxieties and attachments and lend us a new lease of life. “Think of yourself as dead,” wrote Marcus Aurelius to himself, “You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”

Socrates and Plato did not openly advocate for suicide because they realized that such a call would be misconstrued. But in On the Soul, Socrates says that, since philosophy is the study of the separation and release of the soul from the body, the philosopher aims at death, and can be said to be almost dead.

Paradoxically, perhaps, it is those who are most intimate with death who are also most intimate with life.

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories.

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