Welcome to the Daily Stoic 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 dailystoic.com.

Who do you see? We don't think of the ancient Romans as living just like us, but in many ways they

did. A recent archaeological dig in Bulgaria found a Roman estate with a collection of household

mirrors. In the first century AD, Plenty the Elder wrote in his natural history about the invention

of glass mirrors, which means that Marcus Aurelius may have looked at himself in the mirror

in the morning, just like you did. What did he see? Of course, we have some idea, plenty of statues

of the man survive. There are also recent colorized renderings of Marcus that give us an idea.

But deeper than physical form, what did Marcus see? Did he like himself? Was he self-conscious?

Did he like his curls? Did he wonder what he looked like without a beard?

Which had become trendy since Adrian? Or on a deeper level, did he start to notice his age?

As we talked about recently, that may well be what our faces are for, to remind us of the passage

of time, to show us that we're not so young anymore. We know that in meditations,

Marcus was often frustrated with himself, that he didn't believe he was living up to his potential

or his philosophy, even though he had studied it for so long. Hopefully, those mornings in the mirror

were more positive, though. Marcus could have taken time to remind himself of what his job was,

that no matter what anyone else said or did, his task was to be good. Maybe he gave himself a wink,

prepared himself for the annoying and obnoxious people he was likely to meet that day,

smiling, knowing that he didn't have to implicate himself in their ugliness.

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