Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hadrian had everything. He could do anything. He commanded an enormous army. He had access to the smartest advisors and the most illustrious men in the world. He could send for anyone, summon anyone. And yet here he was traveling more than 500 miles from Rome to the distant Greek city and Roman colony of Nicopolis to attend the lectures of a former slave. It's pretty incredible and beautiful too, no? There is something poetic about Hadrian, then the emperor, sitting like an eager student at the foot of a man whose name literally just meant acquired one.
And yet, in this instance, was the slave not then the master? Was that not the powerless conquering the powerful? Marcus Aurelius, a lifelong student of Epictetus and the adopted grandson of Hadrian, contrasted the great conquerors of the world against the wise men of history, and he believed that the thinkers came out the better. Because, he explained, the philosophers knew the what, the why, and the how. Their minds were their own. Isn't that what we're after?
How can we seize that power? How can we reverse fortune as Epictetus did? Well, that's what we're talking about this month here at Daily Stoic. We're studying the life of Epictetus. July is going to be Epictetus month. It's going to be a deep dive into the life, the lessons, the legacy of one of history's greatest philosophers. And if you want to join us, you want to go deeper, we'd love to have you. We did this guide on Epictetus and we're doing kind of a book club about him. And I'd love to have you in there. If you want to learn how to read Epictetus, sign up right now at dailystoic.com slash Epictetus course.
I'll link to it in today's show notes, of course. But basically, it's this structured campaign to help you engage with Epictetus the way he's meant to be engaged as a teacher of practical daily tools for living. The same things that Hadrian was trying to incorporate in his life that I'm trying to incorporate in my life in thousands of Stokes all over the world are after as well. I think what we find in Epictetus is action over theory, right? We find sort of universality. Of course, he's also got his share of modern champions. And so we're going to explore all that in How to Read Epictetus at Daily Stoke Digital Guiding Course and...
We'll be having a big conversation about it, which I would love to see you in. As I said, dailystoke.com slash Epictetus course, and we'll get into it. Talk soon.