The Romans did some terrible things. They conquered and pillaged. They enslaved. They executed and persecuted. The Stoics were more than just implicated in this–they were active participants. Rusticus, the beloved teacher of Marcus Aurelius, the one that introduced him personally to the writings of Epictetus, was the persecutor of Justin Martyr, sentencing him to a cruel and terrible death. Seneca was an enabler of Nero. They all owned enormous estates tended by slaves.
These are unpleasant things to think about. These injustices may have been commonplace then, but that doesn’t excuse them—they were still injustices, as the Stoics often acknowledged in their writings.
Yet these contradictions and cruelties are not what we talk about most of the time here at Daily Stoic. Is that a cop out? In a recent (and all-time best) episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, we talked to General Ty Seidule, a former professor at West Point and a retired United States Army brigadier general. In the episode, talking of his work to rename, and in some cases remove honors the Army has bestowed on various figures of the Confederacy, General Seidule makes a distinction between history and commemoration.
As a historian, he said, we have to look unflinchingly at the past, looking at the record of events as they happened. But commemoration—what we choose to celebrate and honor—is something different. One cannot deny the history of slavery and its ubiquitous and essential role in the history of America. One cannot deny the Civil War happened. One cannot deny the complexity of history, the complicated reasons people made the decisions they made or the context they made them in.
But when it comes to commemoration—the monuments and statues we put up, the stories we tell our children—we must be much more selective. His point transfers over to the Stoics. As students of history, we have to look at the whole scope of Greece and Rome, looking at the good and the bad, taking in and understanding all of it. And then as people trying to cultivate virtue in our actual lives, we have to, as Epictetus said, choose what handle to grab. We choose who to grab from the Romans–Caesar, who started a Civil War, or Cato, who died trying to preserve the Republic? We have to commemorate the values they stood for, even when they personally fell short. We have to celebrate what they did right—which was a lot—not just write them all off because they also did wrong. We have to make sure that when we look at Marcus Aurelius, we are celebrating him not for his power and his victories, but for his private struggles—his struggles to be decent and good, moral and just, to transcend the limitations of his time.
We can’t do hagiography…but we can still be inspired.
This newsletter is brought to you by 80,000 Hours.
If you care deeply about doing good, but aren’t sure how you can best contribute, 80,000 Hours can help.
Their career advice works with the best available evidence on how to find a job that’s a good fit for you and makes a big, positive difference on the world’s most pressing problems.
Find a career path that might be more meaningful not only to you but to the world with the (free) research-driven 80,000 Hours career guide.
