Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus and the Wondery app or on Apple Podcast.
Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here, recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life.
Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Almost a daily dad there. But no, this is the Daily Stoic podcast. Thank you for listening. We know that the philosopher who influences Marcus Aurelius the most is Epictetus.
It's kind of crazy, like how does a slave become the favorite philosopher of a Roman emperor? And they just barely miss crossing paths with each other. Their lives briefly overlap. But as far as we know, Marx really never meets Epictetus. But I think this brings up a question. How does Epictetus become a great philosopher? Where does he learn it? Who's his teacher? Who's your favorite rapper's favorite rapper? If Epictetus is your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher, who is his favorite philosopher?
And the answer to that is Musonius Rufus. Musonius Rufus is Epictetus' philosophy teacher, a fascinating guy. In lives of the Stoics, I call him Musonius Rufus the Unbreakable, because he's exiled.
not once, not twice, but three times, and potentially four times, the sources are unclear. So this guy is rattled by life, subjected to an unimaginable amount of stress and strain. And in that sense, he's someone we ought to learn from and understand. He's a philosopher, but also a doer. And I was telling you, I just gave a talk at the White House. And one of the things that I got asked in the Q&A, I'll probably bring that Q&A at some point, one of the things they asked was like,
The Stoics have a lot to teach us about exile, you know, when we're driven into the political wilderness. What do we do? How do we comport ourselves? And one of the stories I told them was the story of Musonius Rufus, which comes up in lives of the Stoics, which is what I am bringing you now. I'm bringing you Musonius Rufus' chapter from the audiobook of lives of the Stoics. And it's just a stoic, you got to know, because he's a fascinating guy whose life was not just filled with adversity.
but filled with conquering that adversity and demonstrating what a stoic ought to do in the face of tyranny, and difficulty, and pain, and heartbreak, and how we still have to do our jobs. And I just didn't know really anything about Musoni's Truth is before I wrote Les of the Stoics. And I emerged from writing that book where he emerged
for me as one of my favorite stokes as a result. I hope you will agree. If you haven't listened to lives of the stokes, you can grab the audiobook on Audible. You can grab a signed copy of lives of the stokes at store.dailystoke.com and a reminder thinking about challenging times that lay ahead. How do you prepare for
2025. Well, the new year, new you challenge that we're doing at DailyStoke. I think is a great way to do that. It's 21 days of still inspired challenges, three live Q and A's with me, private community, a bunch of awesome stuff, just a couple days left to sign up. You've already been procrastinating or ignoring me talking about it. Well, maybe you should just not do that and just sign up dailystoke.com slash challenge. I would love to see you in there.
I'm just putting the final touches on it now, and I can't wait to get started. New Year, New Year, ringing 2025 with some Stoke-inspired challenges at dailystoke.com slash challenge.
Cato may have been Rome's Iron Man, but in the end he was challenged by only one emperor. Thracia was utterly fearless, but his friend Gaius Musonius Rufus was also unafraid, and as it happens, endured a life so challenging as to make Thracias ordeal under Nero seem fun.
Born a member of the Equestrian class in Volsini, Eteria during the reign of Tiberius, Musonius Rufus quickly made his reputation as a philosopher and as a teacher. Even in a time and after a long history of brilliant Stoics, Musonius was considered above the rest. Among his contemporaries, he was the Roman Socrates, a man of wisdom, courage, self-control, and a marrow-deep commitment to what was right.
It was fame that transcended his times, and we find Musonius mentioned admiringly by everyone from the Christians like Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria to Marcus Aurelius.
But unlike Seneca and Cicero who relished their places at the top of the heap of Roman society, Mussonius was a far more humble figure. He was not born to the senatorial rank or to great wealth. He did not marry into a well-connected family. He did not seek out fame or power, nor it seems did he think these things were particularly important.
He believed that praise and applause were wastes of time for both the audience and the philosopher. When a philosopher, he said, is exhorting and persuading, rebuking, or discussing some aspect of philosophy, if the audience pour forth, trite, and commonplace words of praise in their enthusiasm and unrestrained,
if they even shout, if they justiculate, if they are moved and aroused and swayed by the charm of his words, by the rhythm of his phrases, and by certain rhetorical repetitions, then you may know that both the speaker and his audience are wasting their time and that they are not hearing a philosopher speaking but a flute player performing.
To Musonius the sign of a successful philosopher was not the loud cheering of supporters, it was silence because it meant the audience was actually thinking. It meant they were wrestling with the difficult ideas that the speaker was getting across. And so we can imagine this Roman Socrates drawing large crowds not because of his showmanship, but through the reputation of his teachings and crowds who sat in respectful silence even as he challenged their most deeply held assumptions.
His most provocative belief in first century Rome that women deserved an education as much as men. Two of Musonius' 21 surviving lectures are that women too should study philosophy and should daughters receive the same education as sons. These two lectures come down strongly in favor of treating women well and of their capabilities as philosophers. This was not a conventional view, but then again, the right thing rarely is.
It should not surprise us that Mustonius held it, or that he had the courage to argue it at a time when most believed that women were no more than property. A core precept of stoic training is independent thinking. And here, Mustonius was illustrating an ability to see what was just outside the context of his times.
It is not men alone who possess eagerness or a natural inclination towards virtue," he wrote, but women also. Women are pleased no less than men by noble and just deeds and reject the opposite of such actions. Since that is so, why is it appropriate for men to seek out and examine how they might live well? That is, to practice philosophy, but not women.
And of course, the stoics were very early on equality between the sexes. Three centuries earlier, Cleanthes had written a book titled On the Thesis that Virtue is the Same in a Man and a Woman. Even Musonius' view of marriage was modern, calling for the perfect companionship and mutual love of husband and wife, both in health and in sickness and under all conditions. A good marriage, he believed, was one where a couple strove to outdo each other in devotion.
He spoke of the kind of beautiful union that Brutus and Portia had, where two souls stick with each other through the adversity of life and inspire each other to greater virtue. What was Musonius' marriage like? We don't know, but it would be incredible to think that a man who wrote so movingly about the benefits of this kind of marriage would not be speaking from experience, and more impossible still that Musonius could have endured the adversity he was soon to face without a life partner of courage and virtue.
At the core of Musonius' teachings was the belief in the importance of hard work and endurance. He was a man cut from the same cloth as Cleanthe's, whose centuries before had supported his philosophical studies with manual labor. In a lecture entitled, What Means of Livelihood is Appropriate for the Philosopher, Musonius would speak highly of that kind of hard work believing very little was beneath our dignity if done well and with the right work ethic.
hardship he believed was simply a part of life. In order to support more easily and more cheerfully those hardships, which we may expect to suffer in behalf of virtue and goodness, he said, it is useful to recall what hardships people will endure for unworthy ends.
Thus, for example, consider what intemperate lovers undergo for the sake of evil desires, and how much exertion others spend for the sake of making profit, and how much suffering those who are pursuing fame, endure, and bear in mind that all of these people submit to all kinds of toil and hardship voluntarily.
So if we are going to suffer, ought we not suffer in a way that gets us somewhere worth going? Suffer and endure toward virtue. That's the core of Musonius' teachings. As he said, and yet would not anyone admit how much better it is instead of exerting oneself to win someone else's wife.
to exert oneself to discipline one's desires, instead of enduring hardships for the sake of money, to train oneself to want little, instead of giving oneself trouble about getting notoriety, to give oneself trouble about how not to thirst for notoriety, instead of trying to find a way to injure an envied person, to inquire about how not to envy anyone, and instead of slaving as sycophants do to win false friends, to undergo suffering in order to possess true friends.
It is fitting that he would write and speak so much of this topic because he, like many of the Stoics, would find that life had challenges and hardships in store.
Musonius' first brush with trouble came from his association with the stoic opposition, including Gaius Rubelius Plautus, for whom Nero's paranoid delusions made him a marked man. It was Musonius who would accompany Plautus into exile in Syria in 60 AD. It was Musonius' first brush with the capriciousness of fate, and by no means his last. Musonius would advise his dear friend to have courage and await death, and was likely there when Plautus fell to Nero's angry
sword. Musonius was allowed to return to Rome briefly, but in 65 AD, when the fallout from the Pisonian conspiracy claimed Seneca Musonius was banished by Nero to the desolate island of Gaira. It was there that Musonius sat some 700 miles from home wondering if he would need to follow his own advice and courageously wait for death.
Why did he not kill himself as he had suggested Thracia do? He had reminded Thracia that there is no reason to choose a heavier misfortune if we can make do with the one in front of us. We can train ourselves to be satisfied with the difficulties Fortune has chosen to give us. Besides, Musonius believed he still had living to do. One who by living is of use to many, he said,
has not the right to choose to die and less by dying, he may be of use to more. So he lived and studied as we must, as long as it was in his control to keep doing so well and for the greater good.
Guyera is a very dry, harsh island that today is unpopulated, but Musonius seized every opportunity he could to live by his teachings and to be of use to those around him. According to one source, he discovered an underground spring on the island, earning him the eternal gratitude of his fellow residents, most of whom were also political exiles.
It's clear that he believed that exile was not an evil or a hardship, but merely a kind of test, a chance to move closer to virtue if one so chose. So he did, rededicating himself to teaching and writing, playing advisor to the philosophers and dignitaries who visited him from across the Mediterranean.
A testament to Musonius' growing fame and the inspirational example he cast in those dark times is seen in the fictional letters of a man named Apollonius. In one exchange, Apollonius says he dreams of boldly rescuing Musonius from the island. Musonius writes back to say that he won't need it because a true man undertakes to prove his own innocence and therefore has control of his own liberation. Apollonius replies that he worries that Musonius will die like Socrates.
Musonius says he has no intention of going so quietly. Socrates died because he was not prepared to defend himself. Musonius supposedly said, but I will.
Another exchange captures Musonius' fighting spirit. We are told that Demetrius the cynic, who had been with Thracia during his last moments, encountered Musonius bound in chains and digging with a pickaxe on a chain gang for one of Nero's canals. Does it pain you Demetrius? Musonius was said to reply, if I dig the isthmus for the sake of Greece, what would you have felt if you'd seen me playing the flute like Nero?
The dates on this encounter make it hard to trust, but these stories nonetheless give us an insight into the reputation of Musonius' character. Whether he was providing for thirsty islanders or digging a canal for the benefit of Greece, the hardship of exile was not enough to break the will of a true philosopher.
But what of all the comforts he was deprived of? Musonius chose to think about what he still had access to, the sun, water, air. When he missed the amenities of Rome, friends, or the freedom to travel, he reminded himself and his fellow exiles that when we were home, we did not enjoy the whole earth, nor did we have contact with all men. And then he got back to spending his time on the island doing what he did best, finding opportunities to do good.
Because for a stoic, the chance is always there, even in the worst circumstances. As bad as exile or any adversity is, it can make you better if you choose.
Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondrous Show American Scandal. We bring to lie some of the biggest controversies in US history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle.
And in 1985, they announced their sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the space shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts, but less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster.
Follow American Scandal on The Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes, add free, and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in The Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today.
exile transformed diogenes from an ordinary person into a philosopher, he said later, speaking not of the stoic, but of the famous cynic from before Zeno's time. Instead of sitting around and synope, he spent his time in Greece. And in his practice of virtue, he surpassed the other philosophers.
Exile strengthened others who were unhealthy because of soft living and luxury. It forced them to follow a more manly lifestyle. We know that some were cured of chronic illnesses in exile. They say that others who indulged in soft living were cured of gout, even though they had previously been laid low by it. Exile by accustoming them to live more austerely restored their health. Thus, by improving people, exile helps them more than it hurts them with respect to both body and soul.
Musonius would have never been so conceited as to claim he was improved by his own exile, but the fact of the matter is that he was. Where did this incredible strength and skill come from? Musonius believed that we were like doctors, treating ourselves with reason, the power to think clearly, to get to the truth of a matter. That was what nursed that rock-hard, unbreakable citadel of a soul that he had. He was not interested in shortcuts, he said, or smelling salts that revive, but do not cure the disease.
And he was a serious proponent of the manly life that exile necessitated. When he was in Rome, even at the height of his powers, Mussonius sought out cold, heat, thirst, hunger, and hard beds. He familiarized himself with the uncomfortable feelings that these conditions brought about and trained himself to be patient, even happy while experiencing them. By this training, he said, the body is strengthened and becomes capable of enduring hardship, sturdy and ready for any task.
Exile did come and he was ready, body and soul. Good times returned as well. And for this, he was ready too. When Galba succeeded Nero in 68 AD, Musonius was allowed to return to Rome and resume his teachings.
His stature would grow over the next decade, and eventually, Epictetus, a long-suffering former slave of one of Nero's secretaries, would be added to the ranks of his students. Could a teacher who had experienced less adversity, who was less determined and self-sufficient, have reached a student like that, who had had such a difficult life? When the student is ready, the teacher appears, and sometimes the perfect student is exactly what is needed to bring out the best in a teacher.
Musonius had a habit of turning away students to test their resolve. We can imagine him trying this tactic on Epictetus, who after three decades of being told what he could and could not do would have risen to the challenge. A stone because of its makeup will return to earth if you throw it up in the air. Epictetus recounts Musonius telling him, likewise, the more one pushes the intelligent person away from the life he was born for, the more he inclines toward it.
Like Epictetus, Musonius had cultivated a distinct distaste for the rich and the corruptions of their money. So he liked to taunt them. We're told by one witness that Musonius once awarded a thousand vestigures to a charlatan posing as a philosopher. When someone stepped in to say that this man was a liar and unworthy of such a gift, Musonius was amused. Money, he replied, is exactly what he deserves.
One might think that after two painful exiles, Musonius would have spent some time lying low. That's certainly how Seneca or Cicero would have played it. Rome was in a state of flux and fear. Three more emperors would follow Galbot within months. But Musonius made no effort to hide what he thought was the right way to live. In fact, his entire approach was to be indifferent to whom was in power.
In the waning days of Vitelius' reign with the looming threat of Vespasian's armies marching on Rome, Musonius agreed to serve as an emissary to forestall the conflict. His partner in that mission, Arlenius Rustagus, who Thracia had advised with some of his last words, was wounded in a scuffle. Tacitus tells us that Musonius threw his own body into the fray and was nearly trampled to death by the troops he was attempting to warn against engaging in civil strife.
Musonius' calls went unhealed. In fact, he was heckled, and soon blood flowed in the streets. Vitalius was torn limb from limb by an angry mob, not far from where his predecessor, Galba, had died. Now, Vespasian was the emperor, and Rome was yet again under the command of a strong man.
Would Vespasian hold Musonius' service to the previous emperors against him? Would he be exiled once more, or finally killed for his association with the Stoic threat? None of these considerations had stopped Musonius from trying. None of it would break his commitment to what was right.
This commitment to justice, as it had for Cato, played no favorites. Not long after escaping with his life from the civil conflict between Vitilius and Vespasian, Musonius engaged in civil conflict of his own, in this case against a fellow stoic.
Sometime around 70 AD, he undertook the prosecution of a stoic who had been an informant for Nero against other stoics and contributed to the execution of another one. It was an epic case that pitted Mussonius not only against a stoic traitor, but also against Demetrius the cynic who had chose to represent the man.
It was a hard-won victory for justice in a time where such a thing had become rare. A remaining fragment from Mussonius captures why he would have pursued such a case. If one accomplishes some good, though with the toil passes, but the good remains, he said.
If one does something dishonorable with pleasure, the pleasure passes, but the dishonor remains. We must do the right thing no matter how difficult Musonius was saying. A stoic must avoid doing the wrong thing even if the reward for it is great.
Musonius must have known that this justice would come at a cost, no matter the verdict to attack an informant of an emperor, even one as reviled as Nero was a risky move. Perhaps wishing to be rid of the Stoics entirely a year or so later, Vespasian would issue a blanket banishment to all philosophers. Although Musonius was originally exempted, he would not long after be exiled personally by Vespasian for a term of three years.
The good Musonius had done remained while he himself was sent away. For what? We do not know, but it is fitting because Musonius would have shrugged off the reasons anyway. Was he angry? He certainly deserved to be. Now for the third time he was being driven away from his home, returning to life as a refugee, and why? Because a despot decreed that he must?
Even this Musonius found a way to be philosophical about. Another surviving fragment gives us a sense of his view. What indictment can we make against tyrants when we ourselves are much worse than they, for we have the same impulses as they, but not the same opportunities to indulge them? Or perhaps he recalled how his exile had gone before and the good that had come from it.
Do not be irked by difficult circumstances, he once said, but reflect on how many things have already happened to you in life in ways that you did not wish, and yet they have turned out for the best.
Once again in Syria, far away from home, Musonius held court and taught. Once again, he did what a stoic seeks always to do, to make the best of a bad situation. He may not have been able to reach or help the deranged sovereigns who controlled Rome, but he did find willing students abroad. In a lecture that Kings should also study philosophy, Musonius refers off-handedly to a Syrian king whom he advised.
Just as comfortable lecturing freed slaves as he was the grandson of Harrah the Great, Musonius kept his teachings the same no matter how powerful or powerless his students. As he had learned from his own struggles, there is no position so high or so low that it is not improved by the four virtues, justice, temperance, wisdom, and courage.
The ruin of the ruler and the citizen alike, Busonius told this king is wantonness. And so he spoke to this king at length about the power of self-control, the danger of excess and the need for justice. These were things he had experienced firsthand. In fact, it was these exact deficiencies in the parade of incompetent emperors that had brought him to Syria in the first place, so his lessons must have been convincing and deeply personal.
No doubt the king listened with the rap silence that Musonius had long ago defined as the sign of a student whose mind was being blown. Is it possible for anyone to be a good king unless he is a good man, Musonius asked? No, it is not possible, but given a good man would he not be entitled to be called a philosopher? Most certainly, since philosophy is the pursuit of the ideal good.
When Musonius wrapped up his lectures, the young king was spellbound and unlike those Roman emperors who had been so cruel to Musonius, he was grateful. As a thanks, he offered him anything, wealth, power, pleasure that was in his power to offer. The only thing I ask of you, Musonius replied, is to remain faithful to this teaching since you find it commendable, for in this way and no other will you best please me and benefit yourself.
Eventually, Musonius was recalled from exile by Vespasian's son Titus in 78 AD. Within a year, Titus was emperor, and within three, he was dead. His successor, Domitian, was another king who could have listened to the lessons Musonius had given to the Syrian king. Instead, Domitian chose to be violent, ruthless, and paranoid. Musonius persevered, now taking Epictetus on as a student and training him to become an equally formidable Stoic teacher.
Yet once again, an emperor had the Stoics in his sights. Eventually, in 93 AD, Domitian ordered a death sentence for Arulinus Rusticus for his support of Thracia many years earlier. He murdered the son of Helvidius Priscus, and then he killed the secretary who had owned Epictetus and helped Nero kill himself 25 years earlier.
Domitian even banished every philosopher from Rome, including Epictetus. If Mussonius was still alive by this point, it would have marked his fourth exile. Whether he survived until this final trial of fate or had died shortly beforehand, we don't know. Considering the murderous tyrants he had lived under, it is incredible that he survived this long into his 70s or 80s. Countless people in situations had conspired to break him, but each had failed.
He was repeatedly deprived of his country, he said, but no one would take away his ability to endure exile. No one can take away our ability to remain undaunted, which is why Musonius was committed to what he believed up until he drew his last breath wherever he drew it in Rome or on whatever rock he was sent to.
Philosophy is nothing else than to search out by reason what is right and proper and by deeds put it into practice. Musonius had said this, but more important, he had lived it. As an exile, as a teacher, as a husband and a father, and finally as a dying man. However old he lived to be simple longevity had never been Musonius' goal. Since the fates have spun out the lot of death for all the like one of his fragments explains, he is blessed who dies not late, but well.
Undoubtedly, whenever the end did come for Musonius, he was ready and ready to die well. The man who had witnessed the end of so many other Stoics, who had advised them in some cases to go when it was their time and others to hold on because they still had work to do, would have known that eventually his number would come up. He tried to live that way, saying it is not possible to live well today unless one thinks of it as his last.
And now his number was up and Musonius passed from this earth with the same dignity and poise with which he had faced all the adversity in his life. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.
If you like the Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on Wondery.com slash survey.
