Control of Impressions — Echo of Marcus Aurelius (Part 2/12)

Three taps of a stylus on wax, and fifteen-year-old Marcus Aurelius learns that the shame burning through his chest isn't truth—it's a story he's telling himself about sounds that traveled through air.

After his rhetoric teacher Fronto dismisses his Cicero recitation as "mere accuracy," Marcus walks Rome's streets burning with shame—until Epictetus's words reveal the space between what happens and what we make it mean. He writes an angry response, then sets it aside. By morning, he sends something different.

136 AD. Marcus Aurelius is 15. Rome.