Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

Since the early Stoic leaders, Stoicism had been moving toward politics and the centers of power, but through their proximity to Octavian, Arius and Athenodorus suddenly wielded more political power than any Stoics in history. Under the reign of Augustus, the empire added more territory than in any preceding period. Its population surged to some forty-five million inhabitants. Augustus now commanded all of it, facing only the most nominal checks and balances, and behind him, as his board of advisors, were two Stoic philosophers. At one point, Arius was offered the position of governor in Egypt but declined it, one suspects because he had far more influence in his informal role with Augustus than he would even governing one of the largest provinces in the empire. He preferred instead to remain within sight of the emperor and help Alexandria from afar, not unlike, Plutarch notes, the way Panaetius helped Rhodes through his friend Scipio.

Augustus had begged Athenodorus to stay another year when he had attempted to resign, but it’s clear that he was deeply reliant on both teachers. We hear from the historian and statesman Themistius that Augustus claimed to value Arius as much as his powerful chief lieutenant, Marcus Agrippa. He valued Arius so much, he says, that he wouldn’t insult or inconvenience the eminent philosopher by dragging him “into the stadium’s dust” to watch the gladiatorial games.

Arius was close to Augustus’s family too, famously writing a consolation—a letter to a grieving person—to Livia, the empress, when she lost her son Drusus, that was more moving, Livia said, than the thoughts and prayers of millions of Romans. “Do not, I implore you,” he had written to her, “take a perverse pride in appearing the most unhappy of women: and reflect also that there is no great credit in behaving bravely in times of prosperity, when life glides easily with a favouring current: neither does a calm sea and fair wind display the art of the pilot: some foul weather is wanted to prove his courage. Like him, then, do not give way, but rather plant yourself firmly, and endure whatever burden may fall upon you from above; scared though you may have been at the first roar of the tempest. There is nothing that fastens such a reproach on Fortune as resignation.” Instead, Arius said, join us in remembering fondly the memories of the young man they had lost and think of the children and grandchildren still living.

The Stoics would have never argued that life was fair or that losing someone didn’t hurt. But they believed that to despair, to tear ourselves apart in bereavement, was not only an affront to the memory of the person we loved, but a betrayal of the living who still needed us.

That’s not an easy message to deliver to a mother who has just buried her son, yet Arius managed to do it with sensitivity and grace and a compassion that she was forever grateful for.

Although we have just an example or two of Arius’s realpolitik, we have much more evidence of his Stoic teachings. Several manuscripts of his writings survive—manuscripts that express not just his beliefs but summaries of centuries of Stoic doctrine. At the core of these writings are discussions of the four cardinal virtues: wisdom (phronesis

), self-control (sophrosune), justice (dikaiosune), and bravery (andreia

). Marcus Aurelius, very familiar with Arius’s legacy—both politically and philosophically—would put those four virtues on the ultimate pedestal. If we ever find something better than “justice, honesty, self-control, courage . . . if you find anything better than that, embrace it without reservations,” he wrote—they must be very special indeed.

To Arius, there was in fact nothing better than those four virtues. Everything that was evil lacked them and everything that was good contained them. Everything else was indifferent—or irrelevant.

In his writings, Arius sought to systematize all the commonly held virtues under this fourfold schema, as well as to account for their relation to other parts of Stoic doctrine. In doing it, he created a kind of road map for the aspiring Stoic, whether they were an emperor trying to control their passions or an ambitious young person setting out on a career in business.

His definitions were straightforward, essentially defining virtue as types of knowledge. As he simply defines it:

Wisdom is the knowledge of what things must be done and what must not be done and what is neither, or appropriate acts (kathekonta). Within wisdom, we’ll find virtuous qualities like soundness of judgment, circumspection, shrewdness, sensibleness, soundness of aim, and ingenuity.

Self-control is the knowledge of what things are worth choosing and what are worth avoiding and what is neither. Contained within this virtue are things like orderliness, propriety, modesty, and self-mastery.