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Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient

wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day 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.

Who are you studying? It's interesting to think of the Stoics from Marcus Aurelius to

Zeno reaching back through the centuries like links in a chain from Z to A as it happens.

Marcus studied Epictetus's life. Epictetus studied Musonius Rufus's. Seneca studied Kato's.

Kato studied Kato the Elder, his great-grandfather, who happened to be in the crowd when Stoicism

was first introduced to Rome from Greece by Diogenies. Diogenies studied in Athens under

Cricipus. Cricipus studied Clientes and Clientes studied Zeno and Zeno studied Socrates, whom

we might call the Godfather of the Stoics. Indeed, the lives of each of these Stoics influenced

the lives of the Stoics who came after them. Seneca would say that to study philosophy

was to annex the past into our own time. That each of us needed to choose ourselves a Kato,

someone to measure ourselves against, someone to inspire and call us to greatness. Several

of the Stoics did just that, even writing biographies of their heroes. Though it's important

to understand that this wasn't biography as we understand it today. Biographers of Antiquity

didn't care much about where Kato was born. It didn't matter fully whether Zeno washed

up in Athens in the year 312 or 302 BC. It is not history's I am writing but lives,

Plutarch would say. And in the most glorious deeds, there is not always an indication of

virtue or vice. Indeed, a small thing like a phrase or a just often makes a greater

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