The Emperor Hadrian never had a son, so he devised a very specific succession plan. He adopted a 51 year old man Antoninus Pius so that he adopts Marcus in turn and Marcus will have at least 5 yrs of training. In fact, Antoninus Pius instructed Marcus for 23 years of incredible unprecedented apprenticeship.
Marcus said one of the most important things he learned from Antoninus was his own advanced planning - well in advance and his discreet attention to even minor things, his constant devotion to the Empire’s needs. Antoninus taught Marcus that you don’t necessarily need to be the brightest, you just need experience, you just need training. You don’t need everything to happen the way that you want, you just need to anticipate and prepare and that’s exactly what Marcus did.
A healthy mind, he reminds himself should be prepared for anything. We should be like a wrestler, waiting poised and dug in for sudden assaults, which is why Marcus practised that idea of premeditatio malorum envisioning what could go wrong, and having to plan for it in advance. And then of course Marcus could not have been prepared without his mentor. What an extraordinary job, Marcus’s tutors and mentors did for him.
By the ordinary analogies, Renan writes of the fact that so many leaders throughout history had spiralled into corruption. Marcus could have turned out to be the very worst. So how did his guardian succeed in forming such a man.
The answer Marcus had a single master whom he revered above them all, and that was Antoninus, the most beautiful model of a perfect life. Renan writes that our potential is in proportion to our faculty for admiration and Marcus’s regard for the stepfather under whom he trained for those 23 years was boundless.
He praised his mentor for his compassion and gentleness, his hard work, his persistence, his constancy to his friends, never getting fed up, never manipulated or playing the game of Imperial favourites. He had unshakable adherence to decisions once he had made them.
Marcus said - listen to anyone who could contribute something worth, while treating people according to their merits and have a sense of when to press and when to back off. The best way to learn is by example and Marcus’s decision to attach himself to Antoninus and to really listen, was the key to his greatness.
But this yielding to experts, is another key lesson. Marcus’s shrewd and careful personnel selection as one biographer puts it is worthy of study by any person in a position of leadership, Marcus broke the mould and filled his staff with talent, not aristocrats or cronies or sycophants he searched for and brought in the best, and then he actually listened to their advice.
When the Antonine plague began, Marcus immediately hired Galen, the most famous physician in polymath of antiquity, to lead medical lectures and anatomy demonstrations. He said he wanted to elevate the intellectual tone of his court, and it was Galen whom he empowered to lead the efforts to combat the plague, the smartest medical minds of his time.
This, in particular, Marcus wrote, is what being a great leader requires the willingness to yield the floor to experts in oratory, law, psychology, whatever, and then support them energetically so that each of them could fulfil their potential.
And this idea of helping people fulfil their potential by getting the best out of them is key. It can be hard for smart and talented people to put up with the limitations of those around them. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan had this problem, they were so good. It was frustrating that their teammates weren’t as talented, or dedicated. Marcus may have struggled with this too but he came to understand that not everyone had his gifts. and they needed to find a way to be able to work with others.
We are told by the historian Cassius Dido, so long as a person did anything good. Marcus would praise Him and use him for the service in which he excelled, but to his other conduct he paid no attention for when he declared that it was impossible to create such men as one desires to have. And so it is fitting to employ those who are already in existence, for whatever service, each of them may be able to render as leaders we have to work with others, where they are. We have to help them get the most out of themselves but ultimately we can’t change people, we have to focus on what is in our control while they focus on what is in their control and that is all that is possible.
This idea of owning that of blaming yourself first is key, the causes of things are complicated. Rarely does a project go exactly how we’d like it to go. So we point the finger at other people at unfair conditions at the weather, the advice we got, but actually the causes of things are quite simple, at least according to Marcus and the stoics, because to them the fault is always ours.
We are the ones who chose to listen to the advice, we are the one who left the outcome up to chance, who didn’t plan for the contingencies, whose expectations set us up to be disappointed. Marcus’s rule was blame yourself or blame no one. And that was something else he learned from Antoninus, his willingness to take responsibility and blame. As soon as you blame other people, you have compromised your integrity, and you’ve handed over your power and Marcus his greatness, was that he declined to do that.
But he did spend ample time reflecting, while his predecessors enjoyed peaceful and prosperous reigns, fate, it seems, wanted something else to test Marcus. Wars, floods, famines, plagues the loss of loved ones. It was one obstacle after the next, and it didn’t let up for 15 years. And so shortly after becoming Emperor Marcus took up a habit that he kept his entire life he called it a soothing ointment. That’s how he referred to the process of journaling. We think he liked to do it in the morning in his tent, whether it was on the frontlines in Germania or the palace in Rome wherever he happened to be. He stole a few seconds to sit down and reflect in his journal. We see Marcus, reviewing his actions and behaviours and seeing how we can do better.
We see him reminding himself, over and over again that he can leave this alone that he doesn’t need to have an opinion about this, that he doesn’t have to take this or that personally that he doesn’t have to say something, that he doesn’t have to complain or criticised, that he can put the blame on himself that fame and money and power are worthless.
Who knows what kind of man Marcus would have been without carving out this time for stillness and reflection in who knows what kind of leader you will be without doing yourself. And who knows what Marcus would have been had he not cultivated the ability to turn obstacles into fuel.
Hardship is universal, but it can be perceived in many different ways. We can see something as a failure as unfairness as the end of a conversation, or we can train ourselves to see this as an opportunity as grist for the mill, as a chance to learn, as a chance to practice endurance, patience, resilience, struggle. Marcus Aurelius believed in the latter approach.
As he wrote, our in-ward power when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims, he turns obstacles into fuel as a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of a fire is absorbed, consumed by it and makes it burn still higher. It’s not about resigning ourselves to tip out, meaning in about making something of it about seeing the opportunity inside an obstacle.
And of course, this takes courage. Courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. Each and every situation the stoics believed called for one of these four virtues. But to the stoics, courage was the greatest virtue. Being brave enough to take a stand, to risk one’s own neck to counter adversity with wisdom and temperance and justice.
Marcus stayed and braved the deadliest plague of Rome’s 900 year history and reassured the people not only by his presence but through his actions. He was not one of those leaders that hid. He was Churchill during the Blitz, inspiring people to keep calm and carry on. And this was not some short threat, it lasted for 15 years and he endured it without complaint. He was the perfect embodiment of what stoicism means to us today.
He didn’t get rattled, he didn’t panic, he kept himself strong for others, and he insisted on what was right and never what was politically expedient. He was resolute. He was courageous and he loved it and everyone else. Stoicism is not just about improving yourself, it’s about improving the world. It’s about helping and caring for others. Marcus said he learned that a leader must be free of passion, and yet full of love, on nearly every page of his journal Marcus talks about it.
You have to care about other people. You can’t do this alone. You were put here to work with others, you have to look after human beings. The fruit of this life is good character in unselfish actions. Marcus would have agreed with that headline of a recent article I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people, a leader has to care about their followers, they have to care about the consequences of their actions they have to care about making a difference.
He says the goal of stoicism is to be full of love, how much more on the nose, do I need it. And whatever position of leadership you occupied, that’s the prevailing belief of Marcus’s life that we must be strong, we must be wise, we must be eager to learn, but ultimately we must care about other people and do what is right, waste no more time talking about what a good man or woman is like, be one. There is no better expression or embodiment of stoicism of Marcus’s reign as Emperor, as his leadership style.
That’s what stoicism is: being a great leader is about what you do, It’s about the acts of wisdom, self control, justice encouraged. It’s not the act of talking about these things, or reading about them, or writing about them, just that you do the right thing. Marcus reminds us with his actions. His words, his legacy. The rest doesn’t matter.
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