The Life of Musonius

Nero banished Musonius to Gyaros, the Alcatraz of the Mediterranean.

Source: Olaf Tausch/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0.

Stoic philosophy has exerted an important influence on the history of ideas, including on the thinking of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Adam Smith, and J. S. Mill.

In the field of mental health, Stoicism inspired what has become the most common form of talking treatment, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Aaron Beck (who passed away in 2021), the father of CBT, wrote that “the philosophical origins of cognitive therapy can be traced back to the Stoic philosophers.”

Musonius is one of only four primary sources on ancient Stoicism, along with Epictetus, whom he taught, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. But of the four, he is the most obscure or overlooked.

So, who was this great Stoic teacher?

Beginnings

Gaius Musonius Rufus (c. 25—c. 100 CE) was born in Etruria into a family of Roman equestrians.

As a young man, he went around inquiring into the health of people’s souls, suggesting that his sympathies then lay more with the Cynics than with the Stoics.

In later life, he established himself as a Stoic teacher in Rome.

When, in 60 CE, the paranoid Nero banished Rubellius Plautus, a Stoic and distant cousin of Nero, Musonius followed his friend to Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and only returned to Rome after his death in 62.

Second and third exiles

When, in 65, Nero learned of the Pisonian conspiracy, led by the senator Gaius Calpurnius Piso, to have him overthrown, he condemned 19 people to death, including Seneca. Though not involved in the plot, Musonius was banished to the barren island of Gyaros, the Alcatraz of the Mediterranean.

Exile, however, seemed to weigh lightly upon him, even on Gyaros, and one of his surviving lectures is entitled, Why Exile Is Not an Evil.

Exile, he says, does not deprive us of water, earth, air, or the sun and stars. Nor does it deprive us of human companionship. But by removing us from luxurious living, it can cure our bodies and souls of many ills.

More significantly, exile does not prevent us from caring for our real needs and acquiring virtue. On the contrary, it provides us with more leisure in which to study and do good deeds.

Resourceful people are resourceful no matter where they find themselves. Those who lack resourcefulness have vice, and not exile, to blame for their miseries. Ergo, it is vice, and not exile, that we should fear.

Musonius returned to Rome in 68, in the reign of Galba. In 70, in the reign of Vespasian, he accused and obtained the conviction of Egnatius Celer, who, despite calling himself a Stoic, had colluded with Nero in condemning the Stoic Barea Soranius and his daughter Servilia to death.

When, in 71, Vespasian banished all philosophers from Rome, his reputation rode so high that he was tolerated to remain—before being banished all the same into his third and longest exile, this time in Syria.

He returned to Rome in 79, in the reign of Titus, and died around 100 CE.

Teaching style

Musonius was a celebrated teacher. He exerted an important influence on his two most famous pupils, the teacher Epictetus and the polymath Dio Chrysostom (“Dio the Golden-Mouthed”).

To separate the wheat from the chaff, Musonius would often turn would-be students away, explaining to a young Epictetus that “the more one pushes the intelligent person away from the life he was born for, the more he inclines towards it.”

His school, he liked to say, was not some concert hall, where people came to be amused and entertained, but a hospital, where they came, in trepidation, to be treated. His students should expect to feel not pleasure but pain because they are sick and came to him in the hope of being cured. Thus, he measured the success of his lectures not by the applause that they received but by the shock and silence that they provoked.

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He quoted Homer after Odysseus had related the length of his labors: “Thus he spoke, and they all stayed softly in silence/And they were held by a magic spell in the shadowy hall.”

In his Discourses, Epictetus quotes Musonius as saying:

Am I to sit down and tell you clever slogans and sayings so that you praise me as you leave, even though the shoulder is no better than it was, the head still hurts, and the abscess and fistula remain? Do young men leave home for these reasons and leave behind their parents, friends, kinfolk, and property so that they may yell “hooray” when you utter witticisms? Did Socrates do this, or Zeno, or Cleanthes?

Musonius could be severe. By Epictetus’ own account, he once rebuked him for overlooking the omission in a syllogism (formal logical argument). Epictetus sought to excuse himself, saying, “It’s not like I burnt down the Capitol”—to which Musonius replied, “Idiot, the omission here is the Capitol.”

Musonius insisted that nothing good is acquired without pain. But if we think that the path of virtue is too arduous, let us consider the alternatives and how much more trouble people put up with for the sake of gain or how many ills they suffer for the sake of fame, even though these things are worthless.

The Lectures

Insofar as we know, Musonius did not work on anything for publication. However, two of his students wrote down his sayings and opinions. The Discourses, collected by a certain Lucius, form the basis of the 21 short lectures preserved in Stobaeus. But a second work, by one Pollio, has been lost except for fragments.

All in all, there remain 31 fragments (preserved in Stobaeus, Epictetus, and Aulus Gellius), as well as the 21 lectures, which altogether fit comfortably within 80 or so pages.

Musonius’ lectures are full of practical, everyday advice aimed at instilling virtue and include a lecture on home furnishings and even a lecture on hair. Men, he advised, ought to grow a beard on the grounds that the beard is the mark of manhood, on a par with a cock’s comb or a lion’s mane.

The beard became fashionable in Rome after the emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE) began sporting one, possibly in a bid to look more like a philosopher. As a young, clean-shaven man, Hadrian had attended lectures by Epictetus, who might have echoed to him Musonius’s musings on facial hair.

Besides facial hair, Musonius advocated a vegetarian diet (preferably raw and unprepared), functional clothing, and shelter of a kind that offers little more than the protection afforded by a cave.

He once gave a thousand sesterces to a man claiming to be a philosopher. When people told him the man was a charlatan, he let him keep the not-inconsiderable sum, explaining that money was exactly what he deserved.

To do philosophy, said Musonius, is to reason correctly, and to reason correctly is to behave or act correctly. The person who does philosophy thereby takes care of his country, family, and friends—in a word, everybody.

The person who does not do philosophy, even if he be a doctor, lawyer, or some such, is thoughtless, and thoughtlessness is very near to insanity.

Even if one rules only oneself, no one is more kingly than a philosopher or more fit to rule, because one cannot rule others unless one first rules oneself.

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories.