The Emperor and the Slave

One had been a tortured slave, the other an emperor. And yet… “It is remarkable that Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are completely at one on all philosophical questions,” wrote Bertrand Russell. “This suggests that, although social circumstances affect the philosophy of an age, individual circumstances have less influence than is sometimes thought upon the philosophy of an individual. Philosophers are usually men of a certain breadth of mind, who can largely discount the accidents of their private lives; but even they cannot rise above the larger good or evil of their times. In bad times, they invent consolations; in good times, their interests are more purely intellectual.”