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, visitdailystoic.com.

This answers the great unanswered question.

It was baffling and horrifying even then.

He was one of the worst emperors in the history of Rome,

no small feat considering some of the deranged and incompetent people who ascended to the purple over the centuries. In the early 200s A.D., the ancient historian Cassius Dio

wrote his Roman history, and he, like us, was fascinated by the great unanswered question.

What happened to Cometus?

How did the son of a philosopher king, the son of Marcus Aurelius,

bungled things so badly that he was assassinated in real life by a gladiator and his statues torn down?

Dio's explanation is a good one, and a cautionary tale for all leaders and

all of us. Before Marcus Aurelius died and passed the throne to Cometus, he set up what you might

call a board of directors, among whom were numbered the best men in the Senate, Dio writes.

Marcus knew firsthand how hard it was to step

into a great man's shoes, the danger of being Caesarified or dyed purple by the cloak of the

emperor. He knew he was nothing without Antoninus, Rusticus, Herodas Atticus, Fronto,

Sinna, and Apollonius. And so there he was on his deathbed,

arranging for the best and the brightest, to similarly advise his son. But their suggestions and

...