# 13 The Wealthiest Stoic *Week 3, Day 1 of [[00 The Wealthy Stoic Course]]* #source/course << [[12 Week 2 Tips and Tools - The Wealthy Stoic|Back]] | [[14 Keep A Spartan Attitude To Money|Next]] >>  ## Content [[Marcus Aurelius]]' role model of a rich life was his mother.  In Book 1 of [[Meditations (Book)]], Marcus writes about his mother Domitia Lucilla. He writes about “her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived—not in the least like the rich.” One of Marcus’ biographers confirms that Marcus’ mother was positively unusual. Imperial Romans, were told, > “while paying lip-service to the spartan austerity of republican Rome, were not notable for their self-denial; they also believed in conspicuous consumption and, by living thus while possessing such a great fortune, Domitia Lucilla was in effect distancing herself from her class’s dominant ethos.” From the late Roman collection biographies known as the _Historia Augusta_, we learn that as a boy, Marcus slept on the floor then “at his mother’s solicitation, however, he reluctantly consented to sleep on a couch strewn with skins.”  [Brand Blanshard adds](https://geni.us/6lEbl) that he never developed much of an interest in money or the luxuries money could have afforded him. Instead, he liked to spend time on his farm, in a simple woolen tunic. When he visited the philosophers in Alexandria, he dressed like an ordinary citizen. When money was given to him, he signed it away to those who needed it.  We’re told that when Marcus learned he had been adopted by the emperor Hadrian, he cried. He didn’t want to leave his mother’s house for the royal palace. He didn’t want to live like the rich.  ==Marcus knew, it’d been proven time and time again in history, that living in the palace—the unlimited power, the unlimited amounts of money, and the unlimited number of sycophants—changes a person==. It would take a person of “irreproachable virtue,” as biographer Ernest Renan put it, to not be corrupted by “a condition which we may suppose was unreservedly exposed to all the seductions of pleasure and vanity.” Marcus was 39 years old when he inherited the throne. The first thing he did with absolute power? He voluntarily gave away half of it and named his step-brother Lucius Verus co-emperor. It was not something Hadrian asked him to do. “The notion was entirely Marcus’s,” another biographer writes. “The idea of joint emperors was to become commonplace in the fourth and fifth centuries, but at this juncture was a definite innovation.” Giving to others—whether his power, his money, or his possessions—became characteristic of Marcus’ reign. Even though the emperor has unfettered control over Rome’s budget, Marcus never acted like he did. “As for us,” he once said to the Senate about his family, “we are so far from possessing anything of our own that even the house in which we live is yours.” As happens with very quotable writers, there are many [[Marcus Aurelius]] quotes that Marcus never actually wrote. But one presumptive Marcus quote rings true. He didn’t write it, but it jells not just with what he did write, but with how he lived: > “[[The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away]].” In [[Meditations (Book)]], he _did_ write, > “That whenever I felt like helping someone who was short of money, or otherwise in need, I never had to be told that I had no resources to do it with. And that I was never put in that position.” **What a beautiful definition of a rich life: ==to not need help from others and to be able to help others.==** **Watch Instagram [video](https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClZYcNhJvtT)** 📺 As we’ve said, to the Stoics, money was a preferred indifferent—if forced to choose between riches and poverty, the Stoic chooses riches. Because, as [[Seneca]] observed, **the Stoics looked at virtue as a kind of craft or trade and at money as a tool of the trade**. So the Stoic prefers a supply of money, [[Seneca]] writes, “[[Prefer a supply of money to supply greater scope to practice virtue|to supply greater scope for him to practice his virtue]].” **Which is exactly what we see throughout Marcus’ life. Marcus used money as “an aid to virtue,” to quote Ernest Renan once more. Marcus used his money to help the “common good,” a phrase he uses more than 80 times in [[Meditations (Book)]].“The fruit of this life,” he believed, “is good character and acts for the common good.”** For all “persons who value the art of getting wealth,” ==we point to [[Marcus Aurelius]] as proof that philosophers can be rich, that money and power can be an aid to virtue, and that [[What you get is in proportion to what you give]].== --- ## Activity **What can you do to "aid a virtue"?** What is something that you can do to give back to your friends, family, coworkers, or community? Is there something you've been wanting to do for someone but didn't know how to approach it? How can you add _giving back_ into your definition of wealth? --- ## Workshop How do your money habits affect the people around you? Have you ever noticed how your money habits affect people around you? How do your money habits make you feel about _yourself_? Do you feel like wealth measures how well you are living your life?