Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

Where does it get you? People have been doing the same things for as long as there have been people. That's what you

realize when you walk the streets of Pompeii, which we were just talking about. We have people

buying fancy real estate to impress others. We have people chasing trends. We have people

writing their names on walls. We have people waiting in line at street vendors. We have people trying to get out of the heat.

You have people going to the gym. In short, you have all the things that Marcus Arealis lists in his

haunting passage about the things that happened in the age of Vespasian. He talks about how back then,

just as now you had people doing the exact same things, marrying, raising children,

getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering,

boasting, distrust, and plotting, hoping others will die, complaining, falling in love,

putting away money, seeking high office and power. But the haunted part of that passage, which was an observation

about the final third of the first century a.D. is the last line. And that life they led is nowhere

to be found, he writes. The age of Vespasian ended in June 79 AD. Four months later, so too did Pompeii, and it was buried after the devastating

eruption of Mount Vesuvius. So you think about the people who accumulated those impressive

states in that pretty little city. You think about the things people argued about or the parties

they threw. You think of the offices they sacrificed for,

the favors they did and hoped for, and in an instant they disappeared, as they easily can for us, too,

as they inevitably will for us too. That's the final lesson from Marcus. Survey the record of other

eras, he says,

and see how many others gave their awe and soon died and decomposed into the elements that formed them.

But most of all run through the list of those you knew yourself,

...