Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation

designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.

Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of

history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example,

and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

For more, visit Dailystoic.com. How the powerless become powerful.

Hadrian had everything.

He could do anything.

He commanded an enormous army.

He had access to the smartest advisors

and the most illustrious men in the world.

He could send for anyone, summon anyone. And yet here he was traveling more than 500 miles from Rome,

to the distant Greek city and Roman colony of Nicopolis, to attend the lectures of a former

slave. It's pretty incredible and beautiful, too,

no? There is something poetic about Hadrian, then the emperor, sitting like an eager student

at the foot of a man whose name literally just meant acquired one. And yet, in this instance, was the slave not then

the master? Was that not the powerless conquering the powerful? Marcus Aurelius, a lifelong student of

Epictetus and the adopted grandson of Hadrian, contrasted the great conquerors of the world against the

wise men of history, and he believed that the thinkers came out the better. Because he explained,

the philosophers knew the what, the why, and the how. Their minds were their own. Isn't that what

we're after? How can we seize that power? How can we reverse fortune

as Epictetus did? Well, that's what we're talking about this month here at Daily Stoic. We're

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