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Marcus Aurelius, reluctant Emperor of Rome
Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus Caesar (121-180 AD), or Marcus Aurelius in short, is still one of the most famous emperors of Rome and one of the best-known Stoic philosophers. He was played beautifully by Richard Harris in the Hollywood blockbuster Gladiator (2000) – he is the old emperor who dies at the beginning of the film.
Marcus was, from an early age, attracted to the quiet, secluded and peaceful life of a philosopher, but he was thrust onto the political stage of Rome against his own desires. As a young boy of eleven, he liked to dress “as a philosopher,” which, for him, meant wearing a coarse, Greek cloak and sleeping on the floor – until his mother convinced him to resume using a bed.
Part of his philosophical disposition was an extreme sense of duty, which we can still clearly see when we read his diary today: the book that is better known as “Meditations,” although originally it did not have a title and was never meant to be published.
The Meditations is Marcus Aurelius’ philosophical diary and one of the major texts of Stoicism. In it, Marcus describes his life of duty and his thoughts on everyday occurrences. A fascinating read that is as relevant today as it was the moment it was written.
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Marcus, a Stoic through and through, believed that being placed into a position of power came with responsibilities that one had to take seriously. Stoicism, generally, is based on the idea that the wise man must do what is in his power to do in order to improve the world, while he should not worry about the things that he cannot influence. Being the Emperor of Rome at that time meant that there was little one could not influence – and so the young Marcus Aurelius felt the enormous weight of this responsibility throughout his life.
Faithful to his beliefs, he let political calculus dictate whom he would marry, when and where he would fight and how he would live his whole life in the service of his country. When he was asked to move into the imperial palace, he struggled to convince himself to do it.
What Is a Stoic Person?
A Stoic is an adherent of Stoicism, an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy of life. Stoics thought that, in order to be happy, we must learn to distinguish between what we can control and what we cannot.
“Where life …
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