Success made Marcus Aurelius better. It seems to have made Seneca worse. Marcus turned to philosophy in his twenties, was first selected for the throne as a teenager, and fully inherited the throne at age 40. Despite the truism that absolute power corrupts absolutely, he somehow managed to not only maintain his philosophical principles from the throne, but seems to have taken the opportunity to become kinder, more reflective, more generous, and more open-minded the longer he was in power.
Seneca, who was tutored in Stoicism from a very early age, had a promising career as a lawyer and then as a senator before two exiles (one for health reasons, the other on trumped-up charges) derailed everything. He finally got the success he craved later in life, when he was called back by Nero’s mother to tutor her son. Seneca became extremely powerful through this position, but it came at a high cost. He turned a blind eye to Nero’s excesses and may have been complicit in his monstrous crimes. He became preposterously rich, far beyond what any philosopher needed, and when Nero truly broke bad, Seneca did little to stop him.
Two examples that pose to us—as history has always posed—an essential question: Will success make us better or worse? Will getting everything we wanted confirm our virtues or allow our vices to flourish?
Success should, as it did for Marcus, make us nicer, make us more empathetic, make us more principled. It should not, as it did for Seneca, demand compromises we would have previously found abhorrent. It should not cause us to forget our friends and fall short of our ideals. It should be an opportunity to grow, not an excuse to regress (or, at least, to be ‘just as bad’ as our newfound peers).
Robert Caro, the biographer, has disputed the idea that power has to corrupt. Instead, he said, it’s more apt to reveal. It shows who we actually are. It proves that idea that the Stoics believed, that character is fate. Who we are determines what we’ll do… with success or failure.
So that’s the real question then: Who are you at the core? Will we like what this success you crave will reveal? Will you?
It was the early years of Marcus Aurelius that shaped him into who he became—he was fighting always to be the man philosophy wanted him to be. We try to tell that essential story in Ryan’s new book, The Boy Who Would Be King—and this is the last week to preorder it. We’re even throwing in a copy of the audiobook for free if you order it from the Daily Stoic Store. You can also get a personalized and signed copy too!
P.S. This was originally sent on March 5, 2021. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.
