Marcus Aurelius learned to turn his everyday experiences into metaphors for the art of living. In this article, Donald Robertson explains how Marcus drew upon his experience of sports such as the pankration, a bare-handed combat sport that combined wrestling and boxing, and the spectacle of gladiatorial bouts, as he recounts in Meditations. - Editor 

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Viewing challenging people as opponents in a combat sport (pankration) 

Marcus had boxed and wrestled as a youth. Later in life, he draws on his experience of fighting sports as an analogy for coping with challenging people. 

In the gymnasium, someone may have scratched us with his nails or have collided with us and struck us a blow with his head, but, for all that, we do not mark him down as a bad character, or take offence … So let us behave in much the same way in other areas of life: let us make many allowances for those who are, so to speak, the companions of our exercises. For it is possible, as I have said, to avoid them, and yet to view them neither with suspicion nor hatred. 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.20 

Analyzing difficult situations like dissecting moves in pankration 

Later he describes music as a metaphor for wrestling. 

Analyze a piece of music into its notes and ask yourself of each in isolation: “Does this overpower me?” the same is true in the pankration; if you analyze the fight into each individual move, it will seem less overwhelming. this with everything except with the good, with virtue. Dissect all external things objectively, into smaller parts, until they lose their power over your mind. 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.2 

Gladiators versus wrestlers 

Continuing his metaphor, he says that we should imitate boxers and wrestlers, rather than the gladiators. The gladiator lays aside the sword he uses, and picks it up again. But the barehanded fighter is always armed and needs only to clench his fist. (12.9) 

Finding beauty even in fearsome animals 

Marcus sought to find beauty even in terrifying situations, perhaps thinking here of the beast-fighters in the arena: 

The wise person sees beauty in all things, even if it is only as a by-product of something else’s beauty. He will even look on the fearsome gaping jaws of real wild beasts with no less pleasure than the representations of them in works of art by painters and sculptors. There are many such things that the foolish cannot appreciate but in which the wise can learn to distinguish a different kind of aesthetic value. 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.2.1-2 

Indeed, all things come from the same source, from nature, even the terrifying jaws of the lion and such things are but side-effects of the grand and beautiful. Do not be alienated even from these things but see them as part of the whole, and originating in the one source of all things (6.36.2). 

Responding with wisdom 

As a Stoic, his duty is to try to respond with wisdom and virtue in even the most banal environment, even when bored and confronted with something that seems the opposite of edifying to him. 

Marcus Aurelius does this by making meaning from the situation, like an artist, viewing the fighters and the animals as expressing something greater and more noble, providing him with a way to reconnect with his spiritual and philosophical values, to transcend the mediocrity of his surroundings, and to rise above the clamour of the baying crowd that surrounds him. 

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If you would like to know more about Marcus Aurelius, you want to read Donald’s forthcoming book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor https://amzn.to/2EG0aHf

 

 

 

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