The Stoicism Secrets Of Marcus Aurelius - Donald Robertson - #497

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What's happening, people? Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Donald Robertson. He's a Stoicism historian, a psychotherapist and an author. Marcus Aurelius has become one of the most quoted and most popular philosophers in history. His meditations have helped millions of people to find solace in hard times and deal with setbacks in life. But which elements of his life and philosophy have been hidden from the public, and how many valuable insights are less widely known? Expect to learn why many of Marcus' quotes might be plagiarising lost texts from other philosophers, whether Donald thinks that Marcus took psychedelics during a sacred ceremony, just how crazy Emperor Nero was, what Marcus learned about not being seduced by fame, how the Stoics would advise people to deal with depression, and much more. Donald is one of the best communicators on the planet when it comes to history, philosophy, and especially Stoicism. The guy is a legitimate force of nature and I'm so glad to have him on the show again. You're going to learn so much today. Just sit back and enjoy this. The guy is phenomenal. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Donald Robertson.
Donald Robertson, welcome to the show.

**Donald Robertson** (1:38)
Well, hi, it's a pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to it.

**Chris Williamson** (1:41)
Nice shirt.

**Donald Robertson** (1:43)
Thank you. I love the fact that you like my shirt. I'm very proud of it. Just in case people can't make it out, we mentioned earlier, it's got alligators or crocodiles or something on it.

**Chris Williamson** (1:53)
Hardcore. So, Marcus Aurelius, this is the third book that you've now written on him in one form or another.

**Donald Robertson** (1:59)
I'm losing count, buddy. Like, it's too many books.
I've written three and a bit books on him. So I've also written chapters on him for other books, and I edited and wrote a preface for an edition of the Meditations. So yeah, and I wrote How to Think of a Roman Emperor, which was a self-help book. I did that graphic novel about him, which is just coming out, and then I did a prose biography of him for Yale University Press. So yeah, I think I need a break from Marcus Aurelius. I've started writing a book about Socrates now, but I haven't told anyone else yet about that secret.

**Chris Williamson** (2:37)
Apart from a few hundred thousand people on the internet now. Yeah, exactly. Are you Marcus Aurelius' number one fan, do you think? Or do you think that you're the most educated on him, or one of the most educated on him that's alive at the moment?

**Donald Robertson** (2:52)
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem like that much of a bribe, because I've spent so much time having to read his stuff. I must be one of the people in the world that knows the most about Marcus Aurelius, now just because I've spent so much time writing stuff about him. And I kind of thought I learned a lot about him. And then obviously when you write other stuff, you write from a different perspective, the graphic novel, I suddenly had to think, what did this look like? And what did that look like? And so it made me explore his life from a bit of a different perspective, I had to visualize it more. And I thought, well, now I know everything I need to know about him. But then when I did the more academic biography, that was to a more rigorous standard in a way. And I thought, no, I'm now doing research that's even deeper than I did before. So apparently there's always more to learn.

**Chris Williamson** (3:41)
So, Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor of Rome, but followed a Greek-born philosophy. Why?

**Donald Robertson** (3:50)
Yeah. Well, let's get into some obscure stuff then.
I can't be 100% sure, but I'm going to start speculating, Chris, right? I reckon it was to do with his mum, partly. That's one reason. So his mum, his father passed away when Marcus was, we think, about three or four years old. And so he was brought up to a large extent, although not exclusively by his mother. Now, his mother was a very wealthy and powerful woman. She was a construction magnate, believe it or not. And we know that because we have hundreds of bricks with her name stamped on them. She owned a brick and tile factory and clay fields that were used in construction. So she was a very wealthy and powerful woman, not like we might have kind of assumed, you know, in Roman times. And she had a kind of, she seems to have had an intellectual circle that surrounded her, like a salon of intellectuals at their house. And so she was a very well-educated woman. Here's a bit of trivia for you. Marcus Cornelius Fronto, who is Marcus' Latin retric tutor, and was considered the greatest Roman orator since Cicero, which is, you know, quite an accolade. We have a letter from him where he says to Marcus, he's writing to Marcus' mother in Greek, and he says, Marcus, kind of pathetically, could you check my grammar and vocabulary and stuff to make sure that it's okay before your mum reads it? So Fronto, one of the greatest intellectuals of the era, is kind of intimidated by Marcus' mother.