How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

Epictetus is never weary of showing how we should deal with what are considered misfortunes, which he does often by means of homely dialogues. Like the Christians, he holds that we should love our enemies. In general, in common with other Stoics, he despises pleasure, but there is a kind of happiness that is not to be despised. “Athens is beautiful

“Whoever embraces necessity count as wise, skilled in divine matters.” —EURIPIDES

This last advice is really just an application of the broader Stoic belief that, as Epictetus puts it, “what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about these things.”8 To better understand this claim, suppose someone deprives me of my property. He has done me harm only if it is my opinion that my property had real value.

“The task of a philosopher: we should bring our will into harmony with whatever happens, so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES