12 Stoic Rules For A Better Life

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Marcus Aurelius never claimed to be a Stoic. If you look in his famous Meditations, one of the greatest books ever written. Nowhere in here does Marcus Aurelius claim to be a stoic philosopher.

And Gregory Hayes, who is perhaps Marcus Aurelius's greatest translator, says that Marcus identifies more as a philosopher than as a stoic. And Hayes says that that for Marcus Aurelius, philosophy was not merely a subject to write or argue about, but one that was expected to provide a design for living. He says it was a set of rules to live one's life by. So what were those rules? What did philosophy do for Marcus Aurelius?

That's what I want to talk about in today's Daily Stoic video. Some rules, some lessons from Marcus Aurelius, from the Stoics, from philosophy that can help us live a better life. One of my favorite stories about Marcus Aurelius comes in the depths of the Antonine plague, which is a horrible time in Roman history. This pandemic that overwhelms Rome, it kills millions and millions of people, it lasts years and years and years. It devastates the economy, the streets are filled with bodies, and Marcus Aurelius holds a sale on the lawn of the Imperial Palace where he sells off his most valuable possessions.

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