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Hey, I'm Cassie Depeckle, the host of Wunderies Against the Odds. In our next season, Amelia

Earhart wants to make history by flying across the Atlantic alone, but brutal weather and

malfunctioning equipment could leave her lost at sea. Listen to Against the Odds on Amazon

music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help

you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some

of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

This is how reading is supposed to go. It was sometime around the year 141 AD that

Junius Rousticus gave Marcus a really a gift. In addition to all the things he would teach

this young future emperor about character, about truthfulness, about getting to the point,

about forgiveness, Marcus would recall most gratefully Rousticus's gift of the remembrances

of Epictetus, which he supplied to me out of his own library. How well-worn this copy

must have become. As Marcus would say, Rousticus had taught him never to be satisfied with

just getting the gist of things he read, but encouraged him to read deeply, repeatedly

and forcefully, considering how many times Marcus quotes Epictetus in meditations for memory.

It's likely that he treated this copy of discourses like a Bible, returning to it time and time

again. Certainly, by the time Marcus died, there must not have been much left of this prized

possession so well-traveled it would have been and made of such fragile materials. Rather

than the rich leather volumes we are used to seeing in private libraries and museums, the

...