Stoicism

In his book, How To Think Like a Roman Emperor, Donald Robertson tells us that the Romans believed that the burning of incense might protect a family from falling ill. Marcus Aurelius, who bravely refused to flee Rome as other leaders had, would wake up each day to a surreal smelling city—a mixture of the putrid smell of dead bodies and the sweet aroma of incense. As Donald writes, “for over a decade the scent of smoke of incense [was] a reminder to Marcus that he was living under the shadow of death and that survival from one day to the next should never be taken for granted.” Life is short. Nature is brutal. Epidemics are unsparing. We are still—for all our medical advancements—just pagans hoping, praying with our silly devices, that we will be skipped. And maybe we will. But maybe we won’t.