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The Exiled Stoic Who Taught Epictetus

Musonius teaching
Be prepared to laugh. Musonius could be severe and hilarious in the same breath—a combination that made him one of antiquity’s most admired teachers.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

If Stoicism has a forgotten hero, it is Musonius Rufus.

Today, the names of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius are familiar to millions. But in antiquity, many regarded Musonius as the greatest Stoic teacher of them all. His lectures attracted students from across the Roman world, foremost among them Epictetus.

Unlike Seneca, Musonius wrote no polished essays. His philosophy was not intended for libraries but for life. He taught in public, argued fearlessly, endured repeated exile, and demonstrated by his example that philosophy is not something merely to discuss, but something to live.

For Musonius, philosophy was not an escape from ordinary life but a preparation for it. It taught people how to eat, work, marry, raise children, endure hardship, and come to terms with death. His school, he liked to say, was not some concert hall, where people came to be amused and entertained, but a hospital, where they came, in trepidation, to be treated.

Yet there was nothing gloomy about him. Though uncompromising in his principles, he possessed a wonderfully dry wit. When a man with a long beard claimed to be a philosopher, Musonius replied that he could see the beard—but not the philosopher.

Beginnings

Gaius Musonius Rufus (c. 25–c. 100 CE) was born in Etruria into a family of Roman equestrians.

As a young man, he went about inquiring into the health of people’s souls, suggesting that his sympathies then lay more with the Cynics than with the Stoics.

He later established himself in Rome as one of the most celebrated Stoic teachers of the age.

When, in 60 CE, the paranoid Nero banished Rubellius Plautus, a Stoic and distant cousin of Nero, Musonius followed his friend to Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and only returned to Rome after Plautus’ death in 62.

Second and Third Exiles

When, in 65, Nero learnt of the Pisonian conspiracy, led by the senator Gaius Calpurnius Piso, to have him overthrown, he condemned nineteen people to death, including Seneca. Though not involved in the plot, Musonius was banished to the barren island of Gyaros, the Alcatraz of the Mediterranean.

Exile, however, seemed to weigh lightly upon him, even on Gyaros, and one of his surviving lectures is entitled, Why Exile Is Not an Evil.

Exile, he says, does not deprive us of water, earth, air, or the sun and stars. Nor does it deprive us of human companionship. But by removing us from luxurious living, it can cure our bodies and souls of many ills.

More significantly, exile does not prevent us from caring for our real needs and acquiring virtue. On the contrary, it provides us with more leisure in which to study and do good deeds.

Resourceful people are resourceful wherever they find themselves. Those who lack resourcefulness have vice, and not exile, to blame for their miseries. Ergo, it is vice, and not exile, that we should fear.

Musonius returned to Rome in 68, in the reign of Galba. In 70, in the reign of Vespasian, he accused and obtained the conviction of Egnatius Celer, who, despite calling himself a Stoic, had colluded with Nero in condemning the Stoic Barea Soranius and his daughter Servilia to death.

When, in 71, Vespasian banished all philosophers from Rome, his reputation rode so high that he was tolerated to remain—before being banished all the same into his third and longest exile, this time in Syria.

He returned to Rome in 79, in the reign of Titus, and died around 100 CE.

The Teacher of Philosophy

Musonius exerted an important influence on his two most famous pupils, Epictetus and the polymath Dio Chrysostom (‘Dio the Golden-Mouthed’).

To separate the wheat from the chaff, he would often turn would-be students away, explaining to the young Epictetus that ‘the more one pushes the intelligent person away from the life he was born for, the more he inclines towards it.’

His school, he insisted, was no place for clever performances. People came not to be entertained but to be cured. Because treatment can sometimes be painful, students might expect to suffer a bit. He measured the success of his lectures not by the applause that they received but by the shock and silence that they provoked.

He quoted Homer after Odysseus had related the length of his labours:

Thus he spoke, and they all stayed softly in silence,
And they were held by a magic spell in the shadowy hall.

Epictetus records Musonius saying:

Am I to sit down and tell you clever slogans and sayings so that you praise me as you leave, even though the shoulder is no better than it was, the head still hurts, and the abscess and fistula remain? Do young men leave home for these reasons and leave behind their parents, friends, kinfolk, and property so that they may yell ‘hooray’ when you utter witticisms? Did Socrates do this, or Zeno, or Cleanthes?

Musonius could be severe. By Epictetus’ own account, he once rebuked him for overlooking the omission in a syllogism (formal logical argument). Epictetus sought to excuse himself, saying, ‘It’s not like I burnt down the Capitol’—to which Musonius replied, ‘Idiot, the omission here is the Capitol.’

Nothing worthwhile, he insisted, is acquired without pain. But if we think that the path of virtue is too arduous, let us consider the alternatives and how much more trouble people put up with for the sake of gain or how many ills they suffer for the sake of fame, even though these things are worthless.

Practical Philosophy

Insofar as we know, Musonius did not work on anything for publication. However, two of his students wrote down his sayings and opinions. The Discourses, collected by a certain Lucius, form the basis of the 21 short lectures preserved in Stobaeus. But a second work, by one Pollio, has been lost except for fragments.

All in all, there remain 31 fragments (preserved in Stobaeus, Epictetus, and Aulus Gellius), as well as the 21 lectures, which altogether fit comfortably within 80 or so pages.

Musonius’ lectures are full of practical, everyday advice aimed at instilling virtue and include a lecture on home furnishings and even a lecture on hair. Men, he advised, ought to grow a beard on the grounds that the beard is the mark of manhood, on a par with a cock’s comb or a lion’s mane.

Besides facial hair, Musonius advocated a vegetarian diet (preferably raw and unprepared), plain clothing, and shelter of a kind that offers little more than the protection afforded by a cave.

He once gave a thousand sesterces to a man claiming to be a philosopher. When his friends protested that the fellow was a charlatan, he let him keep the not-inconsiderable sum, explaining that money was exactly what he deserved.

To do philosophy, said Musonius, is to reason correctly, and to reason correctly is to act correctly. The person who does philosophy thereby takes care of his country, family, and friends—in a word, everybody.

The person who does not do philosophy, even if he be a doctor, lawyer, or some such, is thoughtless, and thoughtlessness is very near to insanity.

Even if one rules only oneself, no one is more kingly than a philosopher or more fit to rule, because one cannot rule others unless one first rules oneself.

Musonius was not merely a teacher of Stoicism. He showed what a Stoic looked like.

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The Slave Who Inspired an Emperor

Epictetus the slave and Marcus Aurelius the emperor
Epictetus inspired not one but two of Rome’s greatest emperors: Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

A biography of the Roman slave who rose into one of the leading Stoic philosophers, inspired an emperor, and shaped modern psychotherapy.

Stoic philosophy has exerted a profound influence on the history of ideas, inspiring thinkers as diverse as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Adam Smith, and J. S. Mill.

Its influence extends far beyond philosophy. In the field of mental health, Stoicism inspired what has become the most widely practised form of talking treatment, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Aaron Beck (d. 2021), the father of CBT, wrote that ‘the philosophical origins of cognitive therapy can be traced back to the Stoic philosophers.’

Epictetus, together with Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Musonius Rufus, is one of our principal sources on Stoicism. But whereas Marcus Aurelius ruled the greatest empire on earth, and Seneca rose into the wealthiest man in that empire, Epictetus began as a slave.

Yet his teachings came to shape an emperor, influence Christian and Islamic thought, inspire the founders of modern psychotherapy, and guide millions in the face of hardship and adversity.

So, how did a mere slave achieve all this?

Life as a Slave

Epictetus (c. 50–c. 135 CE) was born into slavery at Hierapolis, in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). His name, in Greek, means something like ‘Acquired One’.

He spent his youth in Rome as a slave to Epaphroditus, a wealthy freedman and secretary to Nero. In 68, Epaphroditus assisted Nero in committing suicide (since Nero could not bring himself to plunge the dagger), with the deluded emperor lamenting, Qualis artifex pereo [‘What an artist dies in me!’].

In those early years, Epictetus, though a slave, discovered philosophy, and even managed to study under the charismatic Stoic Musonius Rufus. Musonius taught that philosophy is not merely something to be discussed but something to be lived—a lesson that Epictetus never forgot.

It is also around this time that he developed a disability, which may have owed to rheumatoid arthritis, although the Christian theologian Origen claims that it was his master who injured him.

One day, according to a famous anecdote, Epaphroditus lost his temper and grabbed Epictetus by the leg. He twisted it so forcefully that Epictetus warned him that it would break. When it snapped, Epictetus did not wince or cry, but calmly said, ‘Did I not tell you that it would break?’

Some time after Nero’s death, by virtue of his education or the dignity which it conferred upon him, Epictetus gained his civil freedom, having already acquired the far greater freedom of the mind.

Now a freedman, he taught philosophy in Rome.

Exile and the School at Nicopolis

When, in 94, Domitian banished all philosophers from the capital, Epictetus settled in Nicopolis, in Epirus, Greece, where he established a school and remained for the rest of his life.

Students travelled from across the Roman Empire to hear him speak. Among them was the young Arrian of Nicomedia, whose notes would preserve Epictetus’ teachings for posterity.

Like Musonius, Epictetus concentrated on ethics, arguing that physics and logic—the other two branches of ancient philosophy—ought to be in the service of practical action:

What do I care if matter is made up of atoms, indivisibles, or fire and earth? Isn’t it enough to know the nature of good and evil, the limits of desire and aversion, and of choice and refusal…?

The purpose of philosophy, he argued, is not to speculate about the stars but to learn how to live, ‘to practise how to remove from one’s life sighs and sorrow, grief and disappointment, and cries of “Alas!” and “Poor me!”’ This is largely a matter of according our will to the world, ‘so that nothing happens contrary to our wishes, and, conversely, nothing fails to happen that we want to happen.’

Hadrian, the future emperor, held Epictetus in the highest regard, and visited him, a former slave, in Nicopolis.

Epictetus’ Lamp

Epictetus did not marry or have children, despite urging these things upon others.

When he rebuked his friend and student Demonax for not marrying, Demonax sarcastically replied, ‘Very well, then, will you give me one of your daughters for a wife?’

However, in his retirement, Epictetus did, out of necessity, adopt the infant child of a friend, and raised him with the help of a woman.

His own needs remained remarkably modest. One day, the iron lamp by which he wrote was stolen. Reasoning that one can lose only what one has, he replaced it with a lamp of clay—which, after his death, was purchased at a great price by an admirer with no sense of irony.

The Discourses and Encheiridion

Epictetus wrote nothing himself. His teachings were recorded as the Discourses (or Diatribai) by his pupil Arrian of Nicomedia, also known for his account of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, written in a very different style.

In a prefatory note, Arrian writes: ‘Whatever I used to hear him say I wrote down, word for word, as best I could…’

He also claims that the Discourses ‘have somehow, without my knowledge or intention, fallen into the public’s hands.’

Such, in any case, is the public story. It is possible that Epictetus wrote the rather polished Discourses himself, with Arrian’s claimed authorship serving as a literary device to create an impression of spontaneity.

Whatever their precise origin, the Discourses remain unique in ancient philosophy. Rather than polished treatises, they preserve the atmosphere of a living classroom, with Epictetus questioning, teasing, rebuking… and constantly bringing philosophy back to the business of living.

Of the original eight books, only four have come down to us, and we also have the more portable Encheiridion, which is a digest of the Discourses—the word encheiridion [Greek, en+ kheir, literally, ‘in hand’]meaning something like ‘to have at hand’, originally with reference to a dagger or knife.

From Emperors to Modern Psychology

According to Origen, by the third century Epictetus’ renown exceeded that of Plato:

Plato is only found in the hands of those reputed to be philologists. By contrast, Epictetus is admired by ordinary people who have the desire to be benefited and who perceive improvement from his writings.

His influence spread far beyond the pagan world. In the ninth century, al-Kindi, the ‘Father of Arab Philosophy’, wrote a Device for Dispelling Sorrows which appears to have been influenced by Stoicism—for instance, in the contention that sorrow arises from thwarted desire, or that it is more a matter of convention than of nature.

In a striking analogy, which also features in the Encheiridion, al-Kindi compares life to a landfall during a much longer sea voyage back to our homeland, and warns us, as Epictetus did, not to get so caught up by the fruits and flowers as to forget about the ship.

Epictetus also left a lasting mark on modern psychology. In the first major work on rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT), the forerunner of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), Albert Ellis (d. 2007) framed his project with a line from the Encheiridion: ‘Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.’

The US fighter pilot James Stockdale (d. 2005) credited Epictetus with helping him survive more than seven years of imprisonment and torture in Vietnam, including four years in solitary confinement in a 3′ by 9′ concrete, windowless cell.

When his A-4 Skyhawk was shot down over North Vietnam, Stockdale remembered thinking to himself as he parachuted towards the jungle: ‘I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus!’

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What the Stoics Knew About Grief and Loss

The Angel Standing in the Sun, by JMW Turner (cropped)

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 17 August 2026.

The Stoic Seneca (d. 65 CE) is the master of the ‘consolation’, a letter written for the express purpose of comforting someone who has been bereaved. Seneca wrote at least three consolations, to Marcia, to Polybius, and to Helvia. In the Consolation to Helvia, he comforts his own mother Helvia on ‘losing’ him to exile—an unusual case, and literary innovation, of the lamented consoling the lamenter.

The emperor Marcus Aurelius (d. 180 CE) had at least 14 children with his wife Faustina, but only four daughters and one unfortunate son, Commodus, outlived their parents. In the Meditations, Marcus likens his children to leaves, and paraphrases Homer in the Iliad:

Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees. Those of autumn the wind sheds upon the ground, but when the spring returns the forest buds forth with fresh vines.

The image is deliberately impersonal. To a parent, the death of a child is a profound loss; but to nature, it is no more extraordinary than the falling of a leaf. The Stoic challenge is, somehow, to hold both perspectives at once.

Marcus was a Stoic, and would have known, at least in principle, how to cope with grief, loss, and bereavement. But if Seneca could have consoled Marcus on the loss of his children, and could only have told him three things, what would he have told him?

A Life Can Be Sufficient

First, Marcus, remember that life is given to us with death as a precondition. Some people die sooner than others, but life, on a cosmic scale, is so short that, really, it makes no difference. Even children are known to die—indeed, they often do—and these, Marcus, simply happened to be your own. A human life, however long or short, or great or small, is of little historical and no cosmic consequence. Since a life can never be long or great enough, the most that it can be is sufficient, and we would do better to concentrate on what that might mean. A short life may be complete, just as a long life may be squandered, or drag on for far too long. It is not how many years we have, but what we make of those years, or the shape of those years.

Is Death Really Such an Evil?

Second, it may be that death is in fact preferable to life. Life is full of suffering, and grieving only adds to it, whereas death is the permanent release from every possible pain. Indeed, many people who have died—think only of our friend Cicero—would have died happier if they had died sooner. If we do not pity the unborn, why should we pity the dead, who at least had the benefit, if benefit it is, of having existed? The unborn cry out as soon as they are delivered into the world, but to the dead we never have to block our ears. If weep we must, it is not over death, but the whole of life, that we should weep. Marcus, you may find this bleak, or me brutal. But if death is a loss to those who remain, it does not follow that it is a misfortune to the departed—and we should not deepen our grief by assuming it is so. When King Midas compelled the wise Silenus to reveal what was best for human beings, he replied: ‘Not to be born; and, failing that, to die soon.’

The People We Love Are Only on Loan

Third, we should treat the people we love not as permanent possessions but as temporary loans from fortune. When, in the evening, you kiss your wife and children goodnight, reflect on the possibility that they, and you, might never wake up. In the morning when you kiss them goodbye, reflect on the possibility that they, or you, might never come home. That way you’ll be better prepared for their eventual loss, and, what’s more, savour and sublime whatever time you spend with them—and, in that way, lead them to love you more. 

If you do lose a loved one, do not grieve, or no more than is appropriate, or no more than they would have wanted you to, but be grateful for the moments that you shared, and consider how much poorer your life would have been if they had never entered into it.

Sometimes, like now, Marcus, our grieving is recent or prominent, but in truth we are permanently grieving. We accumulate losses—people, places, possibilities, former selves. Much of that grief simply recedes, only to resurface more softly in our quieter moments.

Everything leaves us, and if they do not, we leave them.

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10 Unexpected Benefits of Voluntary Hardship

Bread and olive oil
More enjoyable than any great banquet?

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Article substantially revised on 26 July 2026.

We spend much of our lives trying to make ourselves marginally more comfortable. The Stoics, Cynics, and Spartans believed that this pursuit of comfort could pose a trap. Their remedy was occasional voluntary hardship.

In the deep winter, Diogenes the Cynic (d. 323 BCE) 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 predecessors the Cynics, and like the Spartans, the Stoics greatly valued hardship, albeit on a more modest or moderate scale. They believed that we should occasionally practise 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 those 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 (if not more so), and thus that pleasure is both readily 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 advantages 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 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 fortitude.
  • To empathise 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, saving time or money, and making yourself popular by seeming like one of the people.

Finally, all these motives are in 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 man 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?’

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Did Stoicism Make Marcus Aurelius a Better Emperor?

Marcus Aurelius writing the Meditations
Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations as a private journal, never intending it to be published.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Article substantially revised on 28 July 2026.

In Plato’s Republic (c. 375 BCE), Socrates says that his vision of the ideal state could not exist ‘until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy…’

Here he was at last, more than five hundred years later, rarer even than the Æthiopian phœnix: the fabled philosopher-king—and not just any vassal or kinglet, but the Emperor of Rome.

His private journal, the Meditations, has become one of the world’s most widely read works of philosophy, inspiring everyone from statesmen and soldiers to psychologists and countless ordinary readers seeking wisdom in difficult times. J. S. Mill, in On Liberty (1859), hailed it as ‘the highest ethical product of the ancient mind’.

So, how did it work out?

How Marcus Became Emperor

Marcus was born in 121 CE as Marcus Annius Verus, into a prominent senatorial family with intimate imperial ties. He began from an early age to evince signs of virtue, so that the emperor Hadrian noticed him and even punned on his name, Verus (‘True’), calling him Verissimus (‘The Truest’).

In 136, Hadrian, having no male heir, adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who now became Lucius Aelius Caesar. But Lucius died in 138, and Hadrian had to choose again.

This time, Hadrian adopted Titus Aurelius Antoninus, the husband of Marcus’ aunt Faustina the Elder, on condition that Antoninus in turn adopt Marcus and the son of the late Lucius, also Lucius.

The intricacy of these machinations suggests that Hadrian intended Antoninus as a simple placeholder for Marcus, and the much younger Lucius as a spare.

Whatever the case, by the age of 17, Marcus had already been marked out as a future emperor.

Childhood and Education

Whereas most would have been overjoyed, Marcus was not.

In 132, under the influence of Diognetus, the eleven-year-old Marcus had taken up the dress and habits of a philosopher—to the extent that his mother had had to talk him out of sleeping on the floor. In the Meditations, the grown-up Marcus thanks Diognetus, a Stoic and painter, for introducing him to ‘the Greek lifestyle—the camp-bed and the cloak.’

His other tutors came to include the lawyer and orator Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the rhetorician Herodes Atticus, and Plutarch’s grandson, Sextus of Chaeronea.

As an orator, Fronto was second only to Cicero, and had something of the Cicero about him when he purchased the fabled Gardens of Maecenas. Much of the extensive and years-long correspondence between Marcus and Fronto is still with us.

Herodes Atticus, one of the richest men in the empire, funded several public works including, in Athens, the Panathenaic Stadium and the odeon known as the Herodeon, both of which, remarkably, are still in use.

But although Marcus had for tutors the greatest men of his age, it is the dog-eared copy of Epictetus that he received from the Stoic Junius Rusticus that made the greatest impression upon him. Still today, it is difficult to read the Meditations without hearing the echo of Epictetus—the former slave who inspired an emperor. 

Marriage and Children

In 136, Marcus had been betrothed to the daughter of Lucius Aelius Caesar.

But after the death of Hadrian, the engagement was annulled, and Antoninus, the new emperor, betrothed him to his daughter Faustina (even though Marcus and Faustina were legally brother and sister).

Marcus married Faustina seven years later, in 145, while serving out his second term as consul.

After the birth of their first child, a daughter, in 147, Antoninus gave Marcus the imperium and the tribunicia potestas(tribunician power), thereby elevating him, in effect, to the rank of junior emperor.

Faustina the Younger would bear Marcus at least thirteen more children, including two sets of twins, over the next 23 years—but only four daughters and one unfortunate son, Commodus, outlived their parents. In the Meditations, Marcus likens his children to leaves, and echoes Homer in the Iliad: ‘Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees. Those of autumn the wind sheds upon the ground, but when the spring returns the forest buds forth with fresh vines.’

Relationship with His Co-Emperor

As Antoninus began to age and ail, Marcus took over more of his responsibilities—so that he was already well worn in upon his accession to the imperial throne in 161.

He could easily have ruled alone, but instead insisted upon making his adoptive brother Lucius co-emperor.

In truth, Marcus would rather have remained a philosopher, or private citizen, but considered it his Stoic duty to take up the purple. In the Meditations, he compares philosophy and the court to a mother and stepmother: ‘you would pay your respects to your stepmother, yes… but it’s your real mother you’d go home to. The court… and philosophy. Keep returning to it, to rest in its embrace. It’s all that makes the court—and you—endurable.’

In practice, Lucius—now Lucius Verus—deferred to Marcus, who was ten years older and, by experience and temperament, better suited to the role.

The burden Marcus inherited could scarcely have been greater. Rome stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia, embracing perhaps a quarter of the world’s population. Every frontier demanded vigilance, every province justice, every crisis a solution. Marcus found himself ruling the greatest empire on earth just as it entered one of the most turbulent periods in its history.

The Antonine Plague

Towards the end of 161, the Tiber broke its banks and flooded much of Rome, bringing about a famine.

At around the same time, the Parthians invaded the client state of Armenia and began destabilizing the East.

Lucius nominally led the Roman response from Antioch, assisted by able generals such as the Assyrian Roman, Gaius Avidius Cassius.

As the war wore on, Lucius made a trip to Ephesus to wed Marcus’ daughter Lucilla.

The Romans prevailed, but the returning armies brought back a plague, possibly of smallpox. The so-called Antonine Plague raged throughout the empire for many years and quite literally decimated (killed one in every ten) the population.

The Marcomannic Wars

In 167 or 168, Marcus and Lucius set out on a punitive expedition across the Rhine and Danube, while a horde of German tribes invaded Italy from behind their backs.

In 169, Lucius suddenly died, perhaps of a stroke, or from the plague.

Marcus battled on for three more years to secure the north-eastern border, while other parts of the empire suffered smaller scale rebellions or invasions. It is at around this time that he kept the notebook which we now know as The Meditations.

He never intended these notes for publication. They were not a philosophical treatise but a private conversation with himself: reminders to remain patient, humble, just, and rational amid war, illness, political intrigue, and personal grief. Their very privacy adds to their enduring appeal. We encounter Marcus not as a distant emperor addressing his subjects, but as a fellow human being struggling, day after day, to become a better person.

Threat to His Throne

By 175, Avidius Cassius had taken control of the East, including Egypt, the granary of Rome.

In that year, he heard rumours of Marcus’ death and proclaimed himself emperor.

Marcus set off for the East, rejecting offers of assistance from some of the friendlier German tribes. But three months after his proclamation, Cassius was murdered by one of his own centurions.

His head was sent to Marcus, but the philosopher-king refused to behold it, and pardoned Cassius’ co-conspirators in the Senate.

Eastern Tour

Marcus then felt obliged to shore up the East, visiting Antioch, Alexandria, and Athens, where he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

In Athens, he endowed the first ever public chairs, one for each of the four major schools of philosophy, the Platonic, Peripatetic (Aristotelian), Stoic, and Epicurean.

His beloved Faustina, who had come with him, died in Cappadocia, and he honoured her service by having her deified.

Death and Succession

In 177, Marcus proclaimed his 16-year-old son Commodus co-emperor, breaking with the Nerva-Antonine dynasty’s remarkably successful practice of succession by the best man available—a tradition which, in truth, owed more to necessity than to enlightened principle.

This, with the benefit of hindsight, or even without, was a grave error, but what else could Marcus have done short of planting the seed of a civil war, or ordering the assassination of his own son?

In 180, Marcus, who had been sickly all his life, possibly with a stomach ulcer, passed away at his military headquarters in Sirmium, Pannonia, thereby bringing to an end the long period of relative peace and prosperity now known as the Pax Romana (27 BCE—180 CE).

In 192, Commodus was strangled in the bath by his wrestling partner Narcissus, acting in concert with other palace insiders, and with the retrospective approval of the Senate.

The demise of Commodus brought the Nerva-Antonine dynasty to a close, to be followed by the chaotic Year of the Five Emperors.

Assessment

Marcus did not merely write about Stoicism but sought to govern an empire according to its principles. Faced with flood, famine, plague, invasion, rebellion, bereavement, and chronic ill health, he repeatedly chose duty over inclination, clemency over retribution, and self-command over self-glorification. If any ruler came close to Plato’s ideal of the philosopher-king, it was Marcus Aurelius.

I’ll leave the last word on Marcus to the historian Cassius Dio, who lived through his entire reign:

[Marcus Aurelius] 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. Just one thing prevented him from being completely happy, namely, that after rearing and educating his son in the best possible way he was vastly disappointed in him. This matter must be our next topic; for our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.

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