How A Stoic Would Respond To A Tyrant

It was on the senator's way into the Senate that the emperor stopped him. He basically told him to shut up, to stop criticizing the regime. The senator said, "It's my job as a senator to do and say what I think." So, the emperor threatened to remove him from the Senate. And so, the senator said, "That's well and good, but while I am a senator, I will continue to do my job." And so, the emperor Vespasian fixes the Stoic philosopher Helvidius Priscus with a stare and says, "If you don't stop, I'm going to have you killed." And Helvidius says, "You do your job, I'll do mine." This is what courage looks like. It's not performative, it's not even public. It's the politician putting not just their job, but their life on the line to do what they think is right. As rare [music] as this was in the ancient world, I think it's rarer still today. And I want to talk about this story a little bit because I think it provides us some valuable lessons about courage, real courage, that we can apply here in the present moment. People think that the Stoics were teaching us to become emotionally detached, numb spectators, even as the world burns around them. And this is emphatically not what Stoicism is or was. And Helvidius' example is proof of precisely that. I think it needs to be said, the Stoics believed in and believe in courage, public courage, the courage to tell the truth, courage to do your duty, the courage to stand out, [music] the courage to stand firm, even when there is power and pressure and fear, even when your interest [music] is in compromising. And very few people embodied that more than Helvidius here in this example. Helvidius is a Roman senator who lives in the 1st century AD. He's not born into some super [music] powerful, important family. He's not emperor, he's not a general. He's just in many ways your ordinary politician, but someone who came to believe that philosophy and indeed public service came with obligations. He wasn't interested in Stoic philosophy because it would make him more resilient or more productive because he was attracted to the riddles and the puzzles of it. He studied philosophy and he put it into practice because he believed it prepared you for moments like this because it was a philosophy for the man in the arena. It would be nice if life was soft and safe and everyone got along, but it didn't, right? You're going to have moments where comfort collides with your conscience, where it collides with [music] your career, where there is corruption and temptation, and it's probably safer and better to do what everyone else is doing. For Helvidius, philosophy was armor. It was preparation for this moment, a moment which is not unique in history where the most powerful person in the world tries to silence you or tempt you or challenge you or corrupt you. But here, the emperor comes to him and says, "Stop getting in my way." [music] Where the emperor comes to him and says, "Be silent." Where does he draw this fortitude to say, "Why don't you make me?" Now, this story about Helvidius, it comes to us from Epictetus. I think Epictetus is an interesting source here because Epictetus, who was a slave, was owned by someone who was high-ranking [music] in Nero's court. So, Epictetus would have seen lots of Roman politicians, lots of wealthy, powerful, important Romans, and he would have seen how they debased themselves out of fear of Nero, out of greed, wanting to profit from Nero, lack of backbone and spine. And so, for him to call out this example with Helvidius, I think is illustrative because he would have seen the opposite of it far more than he would have seen examples of it. Vespasian is not the worst emperor of Rome. Certainly, he wasn't anywhere near as bad [music] as Nero or Caligula or even Claudius. He's not as bad as others, but clearly, like so many authoritarian rulers, like so many strongmen, he did not appreciate criticism or opposition, especially public opposition. We have this even in democracies, right? The president calls and you don't want to be on the wrong side of the most powerful man in the world. The problem with this is that good governance requires opposition. In fact, by rubber-stamping, by being a sycophant, by not speaking the truth when you see it, you are actually doing the emperor or anyone you serve a grave disservice, right? The whole story about how the emperor has no clothes, it's a funny story we tell kids. The true moral, the true lesson of that story is like the emperor is is being taken advantage of and then not being well served by everyone around him who's afraid to hurt his feelings. He's not getting the truth that he is in fact embarrassingly naked and exposed. In the American system, ambition is supposed to check ambition. There is supposed to be by zealously guarding your prerogatives, by being a senator, by not rubber-stamping, by speaking up, by criticizing, by saying I don't think that's a good idea, or hey, that's illegal, or hey, that's morally wrong, you are actually not just doing your job, you are operating as [music] an important check on power. And we know that unchecked power ultimately hurts not just the leader but the public at large. The context of their interaction comes on a day where Vespasian, we can deduce, is trying to ram [music] something through the Senate, which was largely a performative body anyway, and he asks Helvidius not to attend. And he's probably asking him not to attend because he knows he's going to oppose it. Vespasian doesn't want the opposition, and so he doesn't want an opponent there. But Helvidius says, "Look, I'm a senator. I have to show up and do my job. I'm not going to, by absenting myself, tacitly approve what you're doing." So just hear, this is remarkable, right? He's not going along to get along. He's not playing by the fake rules. It's not about him either. In fact, he probably doesn't enjoy the opposition or the conflict. He's just saying like, "Look, I was elected by the people. I was appointed to this position. I have to do this job. This job comes with duties [music] and responsibilities, and I can't abandon them just because it's inconvenient for you or, more importantly, just because you asked me not to." Then, what does Vespasian do? He escalates. He says, "Okay, if you come, just don't speak." Helvidius says, "My job is to speak." He says, "If you don't ask for my opinion, if you don't do something I disagree with, then sure, I'll remain silent." But again, look at the logic here. The logic here is duty and responsibility. He's not like relishing the conflict or the disagreement. He's not doing it because, "Oh hey, this is good for my career. This plays well to the media. You know, this is red meat for my base." He's saying like, "Look, I got to do what I got to do." And so, again, Helvidius and Vespasian are in this inevitable conflict because one doesn't want the person to do the job, and the other person is insistent that they do their responsibility and their duty. And I think this is the essence of Stoic philosophy, and it's something that we are sorely missing here today. Managing your finances is difficult, especially when the world is as crazy as it is. But Wealthfront makes that effortless. 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And that's the test. It's easy to be virtuous when virtue is rewarded, when virtue is celebrated, when virtue is very well understood. It's easy to be honest when the honesty is safe or there are no stakes. But what happens when you have to say [music] something that you know someone doesn't want to hear, right? They say it's not a principle unless it costs you money. Doing the right thing [music] when it costs you, that's what we're talking about. And it's here that Vespasian makes those stakes explicit. [music] He threatens Helvidius with death, which is power that the Roman emperor has. And death at the hands of the Roman Emperor, as Jesus could attest, or Seneca, Helvidius' friend, could attest, is very often extremely painful. [music] And yet, even so, staring down his own fate, Helvidius says, "You do your job, it's not going to prevent me from doing mine. If you think that as the emperor you [music] have to kill me over saying and doing what I think is right, so be it. I'm going to be a senator up until my final [music] seconds on this planet." And that act of devotion, that act of duty and responsibility and courage, is something that has echoed down through the ages. He's basically saying to the emperor, "You can control whether you punish me, but you don't get to decide whether I betray my values. You can kill me, but you can't make me debase [music] myself. You can't make me be someone other than I want to be." That's something only we can do to ourselves, and that is what stoicism is. I think this is so important, right? Stoicism is not silence, it's not complicity, it is not powerlessness, right? It's not avoiding conflict at all costs. It's not pretending that injustice doesn't matter cuz it's happening far away, or it's happening at levels far above us. It's not emotional suppression, and it's certainly not dodging responsibility under the guise of cultivating inner peace. The Stoics believed we had duties to ourselves and duties to other people. This is where the virtue of justice comes in. Courage and justice are related to each other. The Stoics believed we have a duty to truth, to society, that if they swore an oath, if they said they would do something, if they believed that they were put here to do a task, they wouldn't let anything get between them and that task, even if that would cost them, even if they'd be criticized for it, even if they'd be attacked by it. And so, the Stoics consistently found themselves in opposition to corrupt and tyrannical rulers. Now, Seneca plays more of a dual role in Nero's time, and he is rightly flayed by this. Not just by historians ever since, but by people in his own time. He was contrasted with, say, Thrasea, who is just a perpetual thorn in Nero's side as a senator, as Helvidius was. And actually, this group of Stoics becomes known as the Stoic Opposition. And time and time again, they stood up when they saw something that was happening that was wrong, when they saw someone breaking the law, breaking the rules. And this goes back to Cato, who is the mortal enemy of Julius Caesar. Again, Thrasea in the time of Nero. Agrippinus has this sort of perpetual hereditary hatred of demagogues and tyrants. And then, of course, we have Helvidius confronting Vespasian as well. So, these are not detached spectators. These are people who are living their philosophy publicly. They have a political philosophy, and then they have their actual philosophy, and they're applying these things even when it is not safe to do so. So, this version of Stoicism that it sometimes you see people talking about on the internet is just wrong. This one that's like, "Stay out of everything. Don't care. None of this matters. Focus on yourself. Why are you being political? It doesn't make a difference. You're going to offend some of your audience." I get this all the time. But, this is just totally wrong. If your version of Stoicism makes you passive in the face of corruption or injustice, that is not Stoicism. That's cowardice. That is self-protection with a philosophical label. Stoicism isn't just like posting nonsense on the internet, right? Like, I think it's really important that the criticism that Helvidius is doing has real stakes to it. Like, he's not tweeting about this. Like, he's saying it to the emperor's face. He's doing it when it actually costs him. He is engaged and active. He's not lobbying this from another country, from far away, from safety. He is doing it in the arena. He's doing it in the room where these things happen. That really matters, too. It's easy to just criticize from the outside. But, how are you really putting your ass on the line with these things? That's part of this, too. Helvidius isn't just this like gadfly eccentric contrarian. He's not just trying to get attention. He's not just trying to build his brand as like a countercultural figure or something. Again, he is part of the system. He's engaged in the system. He is participating in the system, but it's there that he is speaking [music] and saying these truths. It's so easy to be an outsider. Again, like today, it's easy to be active on social media or say, "Hey, I don't like what's happening in my country, so I'm going to move to another country." And maybe from there, then you're criticizing. No, no, no. Helvidius is [music] doing this from inside the tent as long as he's able to be inside the tent. And I think that's really powerful, too. Now, here's the part that we have to talk about cuz sometimes we sanitize these stories when we tell them. We round off the edges. So, I'd love to tell you that Cato won, triumphed over Caesar. He did not. He ended up dying on the floor of his house while Caesar triumphed. Thrasea is executed by Nero. [music] Agrippinus is exiled. Helvidius does not win over Vespasian, not in the strictest sense of that word. Vespasian [music] doesn't go, "You know what? You're right. I was being an I'm so bowled over by your bravery. I'm going to change my ways." Helvidius was not executed by Vespasian. He's later exiled by Nero and then ultimately executed by Nero. He pays the ultimate price for this. We'd like virtue to guarantee success. We'd like moral righteousness to triumph. It might be true that over the arc of history it bends towards justice, but that requires a lot of polling and it requires a lot of sacrifice. The Stoics did not think that courage alone would triumph, that you would always win, that just having your heart in the right place [music] is enough. But they did believe that trying to do the right thing and failing was better than preserving your hide or your career or your life at the cost of your honor and your values. [music] They understood betraying yourself, that going along to get along, that lying or that cowering in fear was a kind of death. For instance, [music] in the modern political context, to sell out but keep your seat or your office or your job is to lose something even more important, which is the value of that job, the dignity of that job. It's like they say in the Bible, what good is it to gain the whole world if you lose your soul. The Stoics know we don't control our leaders necessarily, right? Helvidius does not control Vespasian. He didn't get a vote in whether he was exiled or not. He could not defy death. But he does control whether he allows his fear or his self-interest or his greed or his love of having a seat at the table made his decisions for him. And that distinction matters. Helvidius doesn't ask, "What's going to happen to me? How's this going to work out?" He says, "What does my duty obligate me to do? What am I required to do here? What is the right thing?" And then he did that. You do the right thing, Aurelius says. The rest doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if it's cold or warm, he says. It doesn't matter if you're tired or well-rested. It doesn't matter if people appreciate and understand it or not. It doesn't matter if it's celebrated in your own time or vindicated historically or vindicated never. What matters is what your obligation, your training, your responsibility, your moral compass tells you to do here in this moment. [music] I don't really care what you do, whether you're an elected official or an ordinary citizen. It's all of our jobs, all of the time, to speak truth to power. And anytime we're given a chance, anytime we're in proximity of that power, our job is not to tell them what they want to hear, is not to try to keep things pleasant or fun. Our job is to speak up. You do ultimately have to pick a side, especially in times like this, especially when there are abuses and hypocrisy and injustice [music] and evil happening around us. This is specifically what stoicism is telling us to do and the great examples from stoic philosophy inspire us to do. Whether we're talking about Vespasian or Nero or Hitler or Stalin or anyone from the ancient world or [music] today, they are requiring, they are dependent on the cowardice of others. They are looking for you to compromise. They are looking for you to accommodate yourself. They are looking for you to do what they want you to do, not what you know you are supposed to do, not say what you are actually thinking and actually believe. So, just as much as we needed it then, we need it now. We need people who challenge the status quo. We need people who refuse to compromise. We need people who speak truth to power, people who do their jobs even when it's inconvenient, even at great risk to themselves, [music] even when it means they might lose said job or even when it means they might lose things that they cherish even more than those jobs. And I think that's a powerful example from 2,000 years ago that can inspire us today in our own moments. Most of us will not have to face an emperor, but sooner or later we're all going to face some kind of temptation where silence benefits us or someone is asking us to look the other way, when someone is asking us not to do what our job or our duty or our conscience [music] knows we need to do. And it's in this moment where character and philosophy has to come in, where it gets real. And that's the question that Helvidius' example leaves us with. Not how's this going to go for me? What are other people going to think? Is this going to be easy or hard? But what does my duty require of me here? What does virtue demand of me here? And if I'm not going to do it now, when am I going to do it?