The Virtue That Made Marcus Aurelius So Great

Marcus Aurelius did not come out of the womb a leader. Nor was he an emperor ‘by blood.’ In fact, when first told he was to be king, he wept—thinking of all the bad and failed kings of history.

So how did he get from there to philosopher king? Book 1 of Meditations shows us. The first ten percent of the book—Debts and Lessons—thanks people who groomed him into one of history’s greatest leaders. He knew it—without his philosophy teachers and rhetoric teachers and, most importantly, his mentor Antoninus Pius, he wouldn’t have became who he became.

In this episode Ryan Holiday recounts one of the greatest stories in human history and talks about how Antoninus Pius taught Marcus Aurelius the most important virtue of all.

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