Unlocking Stoic Secrets with Marcus Aurelius

Can the teachings of an ancient Roman emperor guide us through the chaos of modern life? 

Join Fran from Melancholy Mentor and Evan from Mystery Mythos as we explore the profound insights of Marcus Aurelius and his "Meditations." We're diving into the stoic principles that shaped his life and how they continue to resonate today. 

In our latest episode, we reflect on how Marcus Aurelius' writings can be seen as affirmations rather than rules, offering guidance and perspective for daily life. His thoughts on change, mortality, and rationality mirror the essence of modern self-help philosophies, reminding us of the enduring nature of stoic wisdom. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism
• 10:17 Marcus Aurelius and Meditations Impact

Transcript

Fran: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Melancholy Mentor, where classic literature meets the vibrant world of radio plays. I'm Fran and I'm joined by Evan from Mystery Mythos. Together, we're your guides on this creative journey. During each episode, we'll dive into stories featured on the Melancholy Mentor channel, allowing fresh ideas to flourish, inspiring you to dream big and unlock your creative potential. Get comfy, open your mind and embrace curiosity. Let's get started.

Fran: 0:38

Hello, I'm Fran.

Evan: 0:40

And I'm Evan.

Fran: 0:41

And today we're highlighting the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. So each week we're highlighting an episode on the Melancholy Mentor YouTube channel, which features radio dramas, and this week it's the turn of Marcus. So the actual description that we've got on the video says welcome to the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a transformative journey into the depths of stoic wisdom and profound introspection. We invite you to explore the timeless teachings of Marcus Aurelius. And it goes on from there. So it's got quite an impressive write up on there and the video. Each of our episodes on the YouTube channel feature videos that go alongside of them, and this particular one is really lovely because it's got just the ocean waves just kind of gently rolling in, and it was actually filmed in dorset, which a lot of the films are. I filmed it myself in dorset and it's kind of looking towards um balmuth on the sandbanks, um stretch of pool, which is also known as millionaire's row. Yeah, yes, I know it's just really lovely. I particularly like this video, just the the angle of it and the way that the waves are rolling in. So we add videos to it as well, but we've also just recently started to add the addition of black screen um to go alongside with the radio dramas, for anybody that would just enjoy just a black screen for night time if they want to sleep to them.

Fran: 2:25

So back to marcus aurelius. I've got some facts about him here that I've written down. So marcus aurelius was born on the 26th of april 121 and he died on the 17th of march 180, and he was actually 58 years old when he perished. He's a stoic philosopher, and stoicism is something that flourished in ancient greece and ancient rome, and it kind of means to live in accordance with reason and nature. And you've got a little bit more about his teachings, haven't you? About the meditation?

Evan: 3:03

that he wrote.

Fran: 3:03

Yeah, I've got a little bit more about his teachings haven't you About the meditation that he wrote?

Evan: 3:09

Yeah, I've got a little fact.

Fran: 3:11

His philosophical development was heavily influenced by his tutor called Junius Rusticus, and he apparently influenced him and introduced him to the stoic principles um, I've also got that marcus married again forgive our pronunciations dom etic, domitica, cal of cal of villa, cal villa, and they had up to, it says up to 14 children. So possibly not all of them survived to adulthood, but I'm not too sure on that. Yeah, and while on campaign, possibly out persecuting christians, but that's another story, I'm sure. And between 170 and 180 marcus wrote his meditations in Greek and I've got a note here. He actually wrote them in a certain form of Greek and koine, so in koine greek, and it's spelled k-o-i-n-e. Koine greek. And he wrote 12 books of meditations and he wrote them as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. So his personal writings were circulated to a certain extent after his death. Not too sure how widely they were circulated and it does bring the question as to whether he ever meant them for public viewing or whether they were purely his own personal notes.

Fran: 4:51

He perished from a contagious disease, so it's maybe Antonine Plague which ended his reign as emperor, and the Antonine Plague is also known as the Plague of Galen, and it was a deadly pandemic Wow, which decimated a lot of the Roman Empire. Yeah great, I know it sounds absolutely horrific.

Evan: 5:17

Yeah.

Fran: 5:19

The main themes, going back to Stoicism. The main themes of Stoicism are change, death, the shortness of life and the importance of a rational mind, avoiding the chase for pleasure and fame and accepting the course of nature, kind of other things. Other things, it's that kind of stoic thing. I wonder whether when Marcus Aurelius was writing his meditations and kind of living his life, whether he knew that it was stoic philosophy or whether it was, the phrase was kind of coined afterwards yeah, that's interesting yeah, whether it was just a way of life at the time.

Fran: 5:59

Have you looked much into Stoic philosophy?

Evan: 6:08

Yeah, I did. I was watching some videos on YouTube about it. Yeah, so I know I know little bits.

Fran: 6:19

Yeah, I think that a lot of it is very similar to modern day personal development or self-help books.

Fran: 6:27

so kind of think sometimes that the the nature of human beings, we go through cycles, don't we? So we kind of get this sort of almost enlightenment of you know levels within our own personal development and our own emotional intelligence and our understanding, and then we go through this crisis again and, you know, reach for the teachings or reach for the books or reach for the help, and it's like a cycle that we kind of ebb and flow through throughout. And when you go back to a lot of this very, very early stuff, it's very similar to a lot of the teachings in kind of self-help and personal development and I'm like, like we've always had this knowledge. Yeah, it just seems to be a thing that we've always had this knowledge and we've repeatedly forget that we have this knowledge and then go through these these lifetime cycles of of this journey to then learn it again yeah, it comes out again, doesn't it?

Evan: 7:20

like you say, it comes out in a different way or there's a different phrase or something, but it's like the same, the same thing, really yeah, it kind of originates from, from a very similar sort of foundation to it, like that one.

Fran: 7:34

I did look more into this, um, this antonine plague. There wasn't a lot else to be found about it, like what else that could have been. So because sometimes you kind of look at these, these ancient things, and it's very similar to possibly something like smallpox or you know they can do these diagnosis. Now there wasn't a lot else on this, just other than it being a really deadly plague, right, so more deadly than the Black Death, or I don't know, would it have been, might have been, who knows? Or I don't know, would it?

Evan: 8:04

have been Might have been who knows?

Fran: 8:06

I don't know. I couldn't find anything else about it the actual recording itself that we've got of Marcus Aurelius' meditations. Do you have any information about the actual recording that we've got?

Evan: 8:18

No, no, I couldn't find anything out about it. I was trawling around the internet but nothing. So I don't know.

Fran: 8:26

Because we a lot of these radio dramas we get from specific archives and put them together to say with the video with the black screen, and we kind of put them out on the YouTube channel and sometimes there's some information that comes with it. It's not always correct information, so we do extra research to try and find out, because we've had um some false information before given with these um particular recordings, haven't we?

Fran: 8:51

yeah but then look into, but a lot of them don't have much information to support it. We don't even know who's doing the reading or recorded. I do know from listening to this particular um set of meditations that it's a male voice. Sounds like a male voice reading the the marcus aurelius meditations. Um, who that voice belongs to? We have no information then, do we? No, idea, no even when it was recorded, there was no year or anything. No nothing no.

Evan: 9:24

No.

Fran: 9:24

Okay, yeah, that's fine. So what we'd love you to do is check out the Melancholy Mentor YouTube channel, and you can find the meditations of Marcus Aurelius down there. We're starting from these podcasts to highlight each of the episodes that we've got. So we're starting right from the beginning and we're working our way, working our way backwards to to get to the ones that we've got, most recent ones. So you're going to sort of find that when you look, there's a lot of radio dramas on there and just keep going down. And then, because we're starting from the bottom with this, with highlighting them, and we're going to be bringing one each week, yes, so, which is amazing, and if anybody listening to this has got any, if they know anything about the recording when they listen to uh, when you actually listen to it on the youtube channel, we would love some information. And if there's anything you'd like to share about marcus aurelius himself, his life as a Roman emperor, or his, his meditations and what that mean to you, we'd love to hear about that as well.

Fran: 10:29

Yeah, because it's something that I actually really like. I I quite often listen to this one while I'm going to sleep, because it's almost like affirmations, it's like a almost like a set of kind of I suppose there were rules at the time. I don't really take it as rules, I take it as kind of you can. You can take the bits out of it that resonate with you and that means something to you. Yeah, and I quite often take them as like little sort of almost like affirmation style things. Um, so anyway, thank you for listening and join us soon bye, bye.