1: Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius lived a hard, difficult life. 

“He was not strong in body,” the Roman historian Dio Cassius writes, “and was involved in a multitude of troubles throughout practically his entire reign.”

Marcus was surrounded by death and dying. 

He lost his father when he was three. In 149 AD, when he was twenty-eight, “he lost newborn twin boys,” Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman … continue reading