Marcus Aurelius Podcast Interview

The podcast has arrived

This project was always meant to be a podcast. The only thing stopping me has been the production cost and time. I started with text-only interviews to get something out into the world while I accrued the resources to make the podcast happen.

And the time has come.

Thanks to recent advances in generative AI tools (image generation, face animation, realistic text to speech), I was able to create a live-action interview with a historical figure for a fraction of the cost of doing it in real life.

It’s not perfect, but it’s only uphill from here. The tech will get better, and quality will keep going up.

I kind of suck at podcasting to be honest, but hopefully you enjoy the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius.

Historical accuracy is very important to me so that this podcast can be relied on for learning. So the transcript has full citations and is entirely written by humans (me) without any AI involvement.

(If you just want audio, you can listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.)

Transcript

DKB: So your full name is Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus? Did I get that right?

MA: You can just call me Marcus.

DKB: Marcus, I’m honored to meet you. For listeners who don’t know you, Marcus Aurelius was an emperor of Rome, and the last of the five good emperors.

But these days he’s mostly known as a stoic philosopher and the author of Meditations.

MA: Which was actually just my personal journal that I told them to burn.

DKB: Well it’s a good thing they didn’t burn it, because a lot of people have found it helpful.

Thanks to Meditations, you’ve achieved long-lasting and widespread fame. After almost 2000 years, your words are still read by millions.

How do you feel about the fame and impact you’ve had?

MA: I think fame is worthless. People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too, and they’ll eventually be forgotten.

¹

So many great names have already been lost to history.

And even if the people who remembered you were immortal and remembered you forever, what difference would it make to you? 

And I don’t just mean when you’re dead. But even while you’re alive. What use is it to get praise and be famous?

DKB: So you don’t care about fame and legacy. What matters to you then?

MA: The only thing that matters is living in accordance with nature. I focus on what nature demands, and I don’t waste my time on anything else.

²

Nature designed rational beings for each other’s sake. It designed us to help each other. So to harm other people is to go against nature.

To lie is to go against nature too, because nature is synonymous with Truth. It’s the source of all true things.

There are some things nature is indifferent to. And if we want to follow nature, we need to share that indifference.

Nature doesn’t privilege pleasure over pain, life over death, or fame over anonymity.

DKB: Really? I thought it was natural to be selfish, and pursue pleasure. How is it natural to be honest and kind and indifferent to pleasure?

Like, those are the things people have to try hard to achieve. It feels like it’s against our nature to try to live up to these ideals.

MA: I think we’re getting confused by the language here. When I’m talking about human nature, I’m talking about what it is that distinguishes humans from other animals. It’s the abilities that nature gave to humans specifically.

³

Even plants can focus on survival. Even wild animals can experience sensations and be driven and controlled by their desires.

What’s unique to humans is our rationality.

What’s unique to the good man is the ability to welcome whatever fate sends us. The ability to preserve our spirit by being honest and just.

Do you want to do what benefits you as a rational being? Or live like any other animal?

The choice is yours.

DKB: So you’re saying that pursuing sense pleasures and selfish desires is not in accordance with human nature, because any animal can do that. And what’s unique to humans is our rationality and self-control.

Which is interesting because that’s what pretty much every religion has said about this.

Like the Bhagavad Gita says “They live in wisdom…who renounce every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart. Neither agitated by grief, nor hankering after pleasure, they live free from lust, and fear, and anger…”

And Buddhism, Christianity, and everything else, they all basically say the same thing on this topic. That the lusts of the flesh and sense cravings are something to overcome and transcend. Something that will tempt you and threaten to pull you off the path to heaven.

MA: Sins committed out of desire are worse than ones committed out of anger. An angry person abandons reason because of some external factor. They’re more like a victim of wrongdoing.

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But someone motivated by desire and pleasure is more self-indulgent. They rush into wrongdoing all on their own.

The mind is the ruler of the soul, so it should remain unaffected by the desires of the flesh. Turn your desire to stone, and keep your mind centered on itself.

DKB: It feels like embedded within your philosophy is the idea that nature itself is something good. That it’s something we should want to live in accordance with.

MA: Everything is interwoven in a holy web. Everything moves with a single motion. Everything helps produce everything else.

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There’s one law and substance that all rational beings share.

Just as you hear people saying that “the doctor prescribed this medicine for him”, you can say “Nature prescribed illness for him”, or the loss of a limb.

DKB: Like nature prescribed me losing my life savings on dogecoin.

MA: Yes! It does that sometimes.

But there is a single harmony, and fate forms a single purpose.

So let’s just accept it, like we accept what the doctor prescribes. It may not always be pleasant, but we take it anyway, because we want to get well.

Whatever the nature of the whole does is good for every part of nature. Whatever happens to you is for the good of the world. And what happens to a single person is for the good of others.

Each of us needs what nature gives when nature gives it.

And no nature would bring something about that wasn’t beneficial to what it governed.

DKB: That’s a beautiful philosophy. And a beautiful way of looking at the world. Choosing to see everything that happens as serving some benevolent purpose.

I want to take a step back and talk about your life a bit.

There were many Roman emperors before and after you. And a lot of them were bad rulers. They tortured people. Or they focused on wine and women and didn’t actually do their jobs. They were just messed up in some way.

But you were a great leader. You didn’t let the power go to your head. You had absolute power over the most powerful empire in the world, and you were not corrupted.

This is a very rare thing. So I’m curious to hear your thoughts on why you didn’t end up like so many other emperors.

MA: I think I was very lucky to have great parents, teachers, and role models around me when I was younger.

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My mother was very generous and kind. She was also very rich, but lived a simple life instead of getting carried away by luxury. 

My great grandfather convinced the rest of my family that I should have private tutors instead of going to public school, which turned out to be a great move.

I learned philosophy, leadership, and so much more from all those tutors.

But my biggest role model was my adopted father, the emperor before me, Antoninus Pius. He taught me compassion, hard work, and persistence.

He taught me to be indifferent to superficial honors. He spent no time on self-indulgent building projects. He didn’t care about fancy food, or the cut and color of his clothes. He was content with the basics in living quarters, bedding, clothes, food, and servants.

He handled all the luxury he had as an emperor without arrogance, and without apology. When things were there, he took advantage of them. When they weren’t, he didn’t miss them.

He never lost control of himself or turned to violence. He approached everything logically, in a calm and orderly fashion, but decisively.

He tolerated people who openly questioned his views, and was delighted to have other people improve his thinking and ideas.

He kept me from being arrogant and made me realize that even in a palace, you can live without a troop of bodyguards, gorgeous clothes, lamps, sculpture and all of that. That you can behave like an ordinary person, without seeming careless as a ruler.

I hope that when my time comes, my conscience will be as clear as his.

DKB: It’s wonderful that you had great parents, teachers, and role models to inspire you and guide you when you were young.

I think for the average person we don’t necessarily start off on the right track, and we end up having to course correct our lives later on. How much harder do you think it is to become virtuous when you don’t have such inspiring role models and great people around you?

MA: You don’t need anyone’s permission or support to live a virtuous life. It’s entirely up to you. You don’t need great parents and tutors and all that. You just need to decide to be good, because no one can stop you but yourself.

⁷

No matter what your circumstances are, you can be a good person. I like to say “Even in a palace, it is possible to live well.”

DKB: I think people listening might not appreciate how hard it is to be an emperor and be a good person at the same time. They might think “Wow, you were so rich, and lived in a palace, and had it so easy. Of course you turned out fine.”

But a normal person doesn’t have the ability to order a gallon of wine every hour, get a new girl every night, or torture anyone you want.

You could have anything you want. You’re the most powerful man in the world. So you have the temptations of a normal person multiplied a thousand times.

So in some ways it’s much harder to be a good person as an emperor than as a regular person.

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But whatever your circumstances, it is possible to be good.

MA: We all have the potential to live a good life, and no one can keep you from living in accordance with nature.

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Just focus on doing the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. No matter what anyone else says or does, your task is to be good. Be like an emerald repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.”

And don’t assume it’s impossible to live well just because you find it hard. If it’s humanly possible, then you can do it too.

DKB: One thing I learned from another stoic book

¹⁰

is to focus on internal goals instead of external goals.

Internal goals are ones that you have complete control over, and external goals are affected by other people, and random chance. 

Focusing on external goals is setting yourself up for disappointment since you can’t really control the outcome.

But internal goals are entirely up to you, so you can always succeed at them if you choose to. Virtue is an internal goal. It’s something you have complete control over. No one else can have any effect on it.

MA: Nothing that happens in anyone else’s mind can harm you. If other people hurt you, then that’s their problem. Their character is affected, not yours.

¹¹

If someone despises you, that’s their problem. Your problem is not to do anything despicable.

If someone hates you, that’s their problem. Your problem is to be kind to everyone, including them.

You can just choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed. And if you don’t feel harmed, then you haven’t been.

DKB: Unless they pull out a knife and stab you, then I don’t think you can choose not to feel harmed.

MA: But even then you aren’t really harmed. The mind remains undiminished by pain.

¹²

Epicurus said that pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep in mind its limits, and don’t magnify them in your imagination. Stop perceiving the pain you imagine, and you’ll remain completely unaffected.

When you’re in pain, the most important thing is to make sure it doesn’t disgrace you or keep you from acting rationally or unselfishly.

Everything is either endurable or it’s not. If it’s unendurable, then stop complaining, because you’ll be dead soon and the pain will end. And if it’s endurable, then stop complaining and just endure it.

DKB: Interesting that you’re quoting Epicurus, considering that Epicureanism is a rival, and kind of an enemy of Stoicism. I remember reading a quote like “Civilizations are born Stoic and die Epicurean.”

MA: I only care about truth, not who says it. Some of the things Epicurus says are very wise.

DKB: Fair enough. But yeah, pain can’t prevent you from being virtuous. Other people can’t prevent you from being virtuous.

You seem to have this intense self-focus and sense of responsibility, where you really don’t care what other people do to you or say to you.

MA: It never ceases to amaze me that we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

¹³

There is a special peace of mind that comes when you stop caring what other people say, or think, or do, and focus only on what you do.

You shouldn’t be put off by other people’s comments and criticism. If it’s the right thing to do, then do it. Don’t be distracted by others following their impulses. Just because other people are doing the wrong thing doesn’t mean that you have to be an idiot as well.

And you shouldn’t be seeking praise either. Beautiful things are beautiful in themselves. Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it?

And take a closer look at all those people whose approval you long for, and see what their minds are really like. Do you really want the approval of people who despise themselves?

If you enter the minds of the judges you’re so afraid of, you’ll see how much they judge themselves.

DKB: My life got a lot better when I just stopped caring what people think. But you can’t always ignore people, and sometimes they can cause you serious harm. 

MA: If someone else makes a mistake, then correct them gently and show them where they went wrong. If you can’t do that, then the blame lies with you.

¹⁴

To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. Remember that they are human too, and they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead soon anyway. And above all, that they haven’t really hurt you.

When someone injures you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come out of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, in which case you have to excuse them. Or it may be different, in which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion.

There’s also an aspect to this where you have to accept reality. To expect a bad person not to harm others is like expecting babies not to cry, or horses not to neigh. What else could they do with that sort of character? If you’re still angry then that’s your problem.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself that the people you deal with today will be ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and unfriendly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But we are all rational animals that share the same nature. We were born to work together like the two rows of teeth. So to feel anger or turn your back on someone is unnatural.

You’ve made mistakes yourself, so you’re just like them. And you don’t know for sure that what they’re doing is wrong. You have to know a lot more about a person before you can judge their actions with real understanding.

Above all, remember that kindness is invincible. What can the most vicious person do if you keep treating them with kindness? 

Don’t allow yourself to get angry at others. When you start to lose your temper, remember that there’s nothing manly about rage. It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being. That’s who has strength, not the angry whiners.

DKB: As we’re talking about dealing with other people, you know, one thing I think has happened to Stoicism these days is that it’s more focused on self help and living your own life better. That’s what people think when they hear “Stoicism”.

And they ignore all of the stuff about being selfless, and civic duty, and trying to build a better world and contribute to humanity.

I think there’s a lack of focus on social responsibility, which is an important pilar of Stoicism that’s neglected these days.

MA: It would be a shame for someone to focus only on improving their own life, and ignore the larger human project that they’re a part of. All rational things are related, and to care for all human beings is part of being human.

¹⁵

I have great respect for the members of the Stoic Opposition like Thrasea and Helvidius who fought to oppose the rule of tyrants like Nero, even if it cost them their lives. Emperors Vespasian and Domitian saw the Stoics as enough of a threat to banish them from Rome. 

These Stoics weren’t people who were just trying to have a calm mind. They were fighting for a better world, and willing to die for that fight.

DKB: I think being willing to die for a cause represents the highest level of conviction, and it’s the most selfless thing you can do.

You participate in society by your existence, so participate in its life through your actions. Any action not directed towards a social end, directly or indirectly, is a disturbance to your life, an obstacle to wholeness, and a source of dissension.

¹⁶

If you don’t have a consistent goal in life, then you can’t live it in a consistent way.

People who work all their lives, but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse towards are wasting their time, even if they work hard.

You need a goal, and that goal should be a civic one. If you direct all your energies toward that, your actions will be consistent, and so will you.

And when you help people, you shouldn’t expect anything in return. What do you expect from helping someone out? Isn’t it enough that you’ve done what your nature demands? Do you want a salary for it too?

It’s as if your eyes expected a reward for seeing, or your feet for walking. That’s what they were made for. They’re performing their function. Humans were made to help others. When we help others, we’re doing what we were designed for. We’re performing our function.

You know, we’re all part of this great big whole. But sometimes we end up separated.

A branch cut away from the branch beside it is cut away from the whole tree. A human being separated from another is cut away from the whole community. The branch is cut off by someone else. But people cut themselves off, through hatred, through rejection, and don’t realize they’re cutting themselves off from the whole civic enterprise.

When you tear yourself away from unity, you can reattach yourself, and become a part of the whole once more.

DKB: Maybe the right framing is that we should help ourselves first, and solve our own problems. Because if we don’t do that, then we definitely can’t help anyone else. 

But once we do solve our own problems, we should figure out how to help everyone else.

MA: Helping yourself is important, as long as you don’t forget that you’re human, and you have a responsibility to help humanity as well.

DKB: For people who are in the “self help” stage, where they’re trying to get their own lives in order, what advice do you have for them?

MA: Don’t do the cliche thing and go traveling to “find yourself”.

People try to get away from it all by escaping to the countryside, or the beach, or the mountains. This is idiotic. You can get away from it all anytime you want by going within.

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Nowhere you can go is more peaceful, and more free of interruptions, than your own soul.

So get away from it all like that. Renew yourself. But keep it brief. A quick visit should be enough to send you back ready to face what awaits you.

DKB: I traveled to try to figure my life out and “find myself”, and it really doesn’t do anything. But you see some pretty sights.

MA: Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life. Stop being aimless. Stop letting emotions override what your mind tells you. Stop being hypocritical, self-centered, and irritable.

¹⁸

If you want peace of mind, then do less. Or more accurately, do what’s essential. Most of what we do or say is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more peace. Ask yourself every moment, “is this necessary?”

The only thing to fear is doing something contrary to human nature. Wash yourself clean with simplicity, humility, and indifference to everything but right and wrong.

Everything you’re trying to reach by taking the long way round, you could have right now in this moment. If only you’d stop sabotaging yourself.

People also need to get better at accepting reality.

Epictetus said that as you kiss your son good night, you should whisper to yourself “He may be dead in the morning.”

DKB: Yikes. That is a bit harsh. Some people might say that words have power and you shouldn’t be saying things like that.

MA: I shouldn’t be doing what? Talking about a natural event? Is fate tempted when we talk about grain being reaped?

¹⁹

You shouldn’t be surprised that a fig tree produces figs. A doctor isn’t surprised when his patients have fevers.

A healthy pair of eyes should see everything that can be seen and not think things are too bright.

A healthy sense of hearing or smell should be prepared for any sound or scent.

And a healthy mind should be prepared for anything. The one that keeps saying “Are my children all right?” or “Everyone must approve of me” is like eyes that can only stand pale colors, or teeth that can only handle mush.

DKB: We should be prepared for anything, but things still hurt though. And we still run into obstacles along the way, and deal with hardships, and problems.

MA: When you face hardship, remember that the thing itself is no misfortune at all. To endure it and prevail is good fortune. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it.

²⁰

Nothing happens to anyone that they can’t endure.

People might obstruct our tasks and impede our actions, but they cant impede our intentions and dispositions. We can accommodate and adapt. 

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

If you accept the obstacle and work with what you’re given, an alternative will present itself.

Nature takes every obstacle and impediment, and works around it. It turns it to its purposes and incorporates it into itself. In the same way, a rational being can turn each setback into raw material, and use it to achieve its goal.

DKB: What about when everything sucks, and you don’t have the motivation to do anything. Like you can’t even get out of bed in the morning.

MA: When you can’t get out of bed in the morning, tell yourself “I have to go to work, as a human being. What do I have to complain about if I’m going to do what I was born for? Or was I created to huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

²¹

DKB: But it’s so nice under the blankets sometimes. I just want to lay there forever.

MA: So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, birds, and bees going about their tasks, and putting the world in order as best as they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being?

²²

We have to sleep to survive, but nature set a limit on that, just like with eating and drinking. You’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But when it comes to working, you’re still below your quota.

When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic as human being is to work with others.

Also, one more general thing is to surround yourself with virtuous people. So when you need encouragement, you can think of the qualities people around you have. This one’s energy, that one’s modesty, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are embodied in the people around us.

And you can follow the advice from Epicurean writings, to think continually of one of the great people of the past who lived a virtuous life.

DKB: That reminds me of how Seneca says to read philosophy books, and have people like Pythagoras and Aristotle as your closest friends. They’re never too busy to see you, they have a lot to teach you, and they’re great role models.

But anyway, this is a lot of advice to take in, and it sounds very hard to live the way you’re describing. I’ve been trying to follow some Stoic principles for a while now, and I still fail all the time.

MA: This is all very hard, and you will fail along the way. I’m nowhere near perfect. I fail all the time.

²³

But don’t feel exasperated, or defeated, because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. Get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human, however imperfectly, and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.

DKB: Thank you for all this great advice. 

The last thing I wanted to talk about was death.

You’ve dealt with death a lot in your life. Many of your children died. You had to fight wars to defend Rome where many soldiers died. You had to lead Rome through a horrible pandemic. Which is something I can relate to, because I lived through a pandemic recently as well.

So what do you do in the face of death? It’s an essential part of the human experience, and something we all have to deal with sooner or later.

MA: Firstly, we should remember that life is short.

²⁴

Think of all the things you’ve been putting off and procrastinating. And remember there’s a limit to the time assigned to you. If you don’t use it wisely, it will be gone and will never return.

You can keep on degrading yourself and your soul, but soon your chance at dignity will be gone. Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up. Don’t live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Be good while you’re alive and able.

Every day more of our life is used up. But even if we live longer, can we be sure that our mind will still be in tact?

We need to hurry, not just because we move closer to death every day, but because our understanding and our grasp of the world may be gone before we get there.

DKB: This reminds me of Seneca’s essay, On The Shortness of Life. The opening passage is something like “It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste so much of it. Life is long enough for us to achieve our wildest dreams, but we waste so much of it that it ends up feeling short.”

It’s always good for us to be mindful of how we use our limited time, so we can live better while we’re still here.

But what about actually accepting death? How do we come to terms with our inevitable fate?

MA: Don’t look down on death but welcome it. It’s one of the things required by nature, like youth and old age. Like a new set of teeth, or the first gray hair. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life.

²⁵

A thoughtful person should not await death with indifference, impatience, or disdain. Simply view it as one of the things that happen to us. The same way you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb, that’s how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment.

A given action that stops when it’s supposed to is none the worse for stopping. So too with the succession of actions we call “life”. If it ends when it’s supposed to, it’s none the worse for that. The time and stopping point are set by nature.

When we end an activity, or follow a thought to its conclusion, it’s a kind of death. And it doesn’t harm us. Think about your life: childhood, boyhood, youth, old age. Every transformation is a kind of dying. Was that so terrible?

And the length of your life really doesn’t make a difference.

Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die “tomorrow or the day after”. Unless you were a complete coward, you wouldn’t start a fuss about which day it was. What difference could it make? Now recognize the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small.

DKB: We might have life extension technology soon and live to 500 years instead of 80 though.

MA: You’re from thousands of years in the future right? Is anything really that different in your time than what I’m talking about?

²⁶

Or is it the same story of empire succeeding empire?

Observing life for forty years is as good as a thousand. Would you really see anything new?

Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life.

If you’ve seen the present then you’ve seen everything, as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance. The same form. All of it.

Socrates had a good line about death during his trial where he said:  “You are much mistaken, my friend, if you think that any man worth his salt cares about the risk of death and doesn’t concentrate on this alone: whether what he’s doing is right or wrong, and his behavior a good man’s or a bad one’s.”

DKB: Socrates is such a funny guy.

MA: He’s the best.

DKB: His trial is just such a meme. For those who don’t know, Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, which really just means teaching them to question the dumb politicians and making them look bad.

And in his trial, instead of just being chill, and getting off with a light sentence, he argued that he was actually doing God’s work, and was actually a public benefactor to the city, and should be rewarded with free meals. 

And then they sentenced him to death. And he was given the chance to run away and escape, but he just stayed and drank the poison like an absolute legend.

MA: He really set the standard for dealing with death.

²⁷

Fear of death is fear of what we may experience. It’s either nothing at all, or something brand new. But if we experience nothing, then we can experience nothing bad. And if our experience changes, then our existence will change with it.

But really, dying is not that big of a deal.

Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won’t be able to do “this” anymore?

You’ve lived as a citizen in a great city. Five years or a hundred, what’s the difference?

To be sent away from it, not by a tyrant or dishonest judge, but by Nature, who first invited you in. Why is that so terrible?

It’s like the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor, and the actor complains that they’ve only gotten through three acts.

Yes. This is a drama in three acts. That’s the length decided by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine.

So make your exit with grace, the same grace shown to you.

DKB: With that, I think it’s time to make our exit from this podcast with grace.

MA: Can I add one more thing?

²⁸

Stop listening to podcasts about what the good man is like, and just be one.

1. Meditations 4.19, 7.6

2. Meditations 10.2, 9.1

3. Meditations 3.16, 6.16, 3.6

4. Meditations 2.10, 5.26

5. Meditations 7.9, 5.8, 10.20, 6.45

6. Meditations 1.1 - 1.17, 6.30

7. Meditations 6.58, 5.16

8. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: The Stoic Ideal

9. Meditations 11.16, 6.2, 7.15, 6.19

10. A Guide to the Good Life

11. Meditations 4.39, 11.13, 4.7

12. Meditations 7.33, 7.64, 10.3

13. Meditations 12.4, 4.18, 5.3, 4.20, 7.62, 8.53, 9.18

14. Meditations 10.4, 7.26, 7.22, 12.16, 2.1, 10.30, 11.18

15. Meditations 3.4, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoic_Opposition

16. Meditations 11.21, 2.7, 10.6, 11.8, 9.42

17. Meditations 4.3

18. Meditations 4.24, 7.20, 12.1, 2.5, 11.34

19. Meditations 11.34, 10.35, 8.15

20. Meditations 4.49, 5.18, 5.20, 8.32, 8.35

21. Meditations 5.1

22. Meditations 5.1, 6.48, 11.26

23. Meditations 5.9

24. Meditations 2.4, 2.6, 3.1

25. Meditations 9.3, 12.23, 9.21, 4.47

26. Meditations 7.49, 9.37, 6.37, 7.44,

27. Meditations 8.58, 10.29, 12.36

28. Meditations 10.16