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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts,

audio books that we like here recommend here at Daily Stoic and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend.

We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to your actual life.

Thank you for listening.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast.

Sena is the most fascinating of the Stoics because he's the most complex. He's the best writer. He's the most clear about sort of what a Stoic should be and shouldn't be.

And yet his behavior, his action, his life is incredibly complex. Right. He works for a Neuro. He's banned. He's exiled by one emperor for supposedly cheating with the emperor's sister. Right.

He becomes extraordinarily wealthy. It's all very complex. There's a couple book recommendations here in this regard, dying every day by James Rom, who's been on the podcast a couple times to care that in the Painted porch.

Emily Wilson's biography on Sena, the greatest empire is fantastic and fascinating. I would love to have her on the podcast. I've asked many, many times.

And another one somewhat selfishly is lives of the Stoics. I dig in and do a considerable deep dive on each of the major Stoics.

Zeno, the founder, a pectetus, of course, Cato, Cicero, Marx, Relius, and Sena. And I kind of try to give in the book, I try to give each one of the Stoics like a name, a superlative that kind of describes who they are. And I call him Sena, the striver.

Because inside the sort of a steer Stoic, there's also this person inside Sena, that wants to be great, be famous, be remembered forever. He would love that we're talking about him today, whereas Marcus purported not to care at all.

So that's what we talk about in today's episode. I'm actually bringing you a whole excerpt of me doing, I'm bringing you the life of Sena, my version of Sena, his life in lives of the Stoics, which I co-wrote with my dear friend and creative partner, Steve Hanseman, who I did the daily Stoic with.

You can pick up lives and Stoics anywhere, books or so, you can get the audio book, which this is pulled from. So thanks to Penguin Random House Audio for letting me grab that. And you can get signed copies at store.dailystoic.com. I'm really proud of this book. Sena was one of the people I really sunk my teeth into. I think that'll come across here. So here is my life of Sena, enjoy.

Well done. You've sorted through the embarrassment of riches that is the modern podcast landscape and found me Rob Briden on my podcast. In this series of Briden and I talk to among others, Harry Hill, Ben Elton, Charlotte Church, Steve Cougan and Dame Harriet Walter. And that's just a few. We tend to chat for about 45 minutes to an hour never longer.

It's terrific conversation, reminiscent, sweat appropriate and exchange of anecdotes. So do join me Rob Briden wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes of Briden and are available early and ad free on Amazon Music or by subscribing to Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.

Sena the striver born for BC died 65 AD origin Corduba Spain.

It would please Lucius and theus Sena very much to know that we are still talking about him today. Unlike many of his fellow Stoics who wrote of the worthlessness of posthumous fame, Sena craved it worked for it, performed for it.

Right down to the last moments of his life and the theatrical suicide that would rival Kato's. Unlike Jesus who was born the same year as Sena in an equally far flung province of the Roman Empire, there was little meekness or humility in Sena. Instead, there was ambitious and talent and a will to power that not only rivaled but surpassed Cicero's.

Contemporaries may have believed that Cicero was a better writer and speaker, but Sena is the more widely read figure today for good reason. No one has written more cogently and relatively about the struggles of a human being in the world, their desire for tranquility, meaning happiness and wisdom.

The readership of the essays and letters Sena wrote over his long life has not only eclipsed Cicero's but in the long run likely all the other Stoics combined as well, just as he had aimed all along.

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