They Will Shove This In Your Face

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. They will shove this in your face. He had to compromise from the start. Seneca had no love for emperors, but Nero was his way back from exile, his chance to be at the center of things once again, having been unjustly exiled by Claudius in forty one AD. So Seneca swallowed some of his true feelings to advise and to teach Nero.

And how did the emperor reward him for this commitment? By shoving the moral compromise in Seneca's face. constantly. Seneca had to watch as Nero fixed the Olympic so he could award himself the prize. He had to help Nero give a speech after Nero killed his own mother.

He stood aside as members of the ruling class were forced onto the stage, humiliated in performance, even sent into the arena to fight wild beasts. It's a problem as old as time. Just ask Plato, who found himself in the same position with the tyrant in his time. Those that first ask us to bend our principles a little will ultimately return to ask for more and more. They will ultimately require us to contort ourselves into utterly unrecognizable positions.

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