Pertinax, Pompeianus, Marcus Aurelius And His Generals: A Different Rome That Nearly Happened

Under Marcus Aurelius, patron saint of Stoicism, the Roman empire went from bad to worse. And much of that originates with Marcus all too stoic character: Marcus let his wife, the plutocrats, and events lead him by the nose, instead of taking manly command. History could have been different.

Some have reproached Julius Caeasar for not being revolutionary enough, but he, the head of the “Populares” Party, was revolutionary enough to die from it. The fundamental cause of Caesar’s treacherous assassination, while wearing the sacred clothes of Pontifex Maximus, was Caesar’s land redistribution law of 59 BCE: a law that Caesar had the Centuriate assembly passed(the national assembly of citizens) and which Consul Caesar immediately implemented… Something the Gracchi had failed to do…. And which the “Optimates” (the best) in the Senate never forgave.

Friend Ian Miller wrote in reply to Marcus was an ass: “The worst aspect of Marcus Aurelius was he was almost always out in the field as a commander of the army, and he wasn’t very good at it. He would have done a lot better to appoint a capable General as commander, and go back and sort out Rome. If the General was any good, he would be next in line and no Commodus.”

[For comparison, Augustus had outlawed Senators marrying ex-slaves (and also actresses). Marcus’ other top field marshall was NOT from the Senatorial class. By the way all these generals started their careers under Antoninus Pius, Marcus’ predecessor, whom emperor Hadrian and the Senate had judged most worthy to become emperor, which he was for even longer than Marcus; Nobody probably would have judged the 18 year old Commodus worthy of succession… except for Marcus. ]

My answer to Ian: Absolutely correct. But Marcus didn’t want to sort out Rome. Instead of taxing the extravagantly wealthy Senatorial plutocracy, Marcus made a show of financing wars by selling palace’s cuttlery… Professional philosopher and chief stoicist Massimo Pigliucci, author of How to Be a Stoic, retorted to me that, had he tried that, he would have been assassinated… Well, no. Marcus’ two top generals were not from the plutocracy. [Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to handle life; he divorced soon after telling me Marcus did his best; actually Marcus didn’t divorce… and probably should have…)

While Marcus was fighting in south Germanic woods, the Mauri attacked and occupied Rio Tinto, which was a major catastrophe: Rome depended heavily upon all sorts of metals, even for defense. An emperor stripped the metal roofs of Rome to make weapons to fight the Muslims in the Seventh Century! Marcus didn’t behave as if he noticed. In general, Marcus was scared to disturb in any sense the ruling Roman plutocracy (not like say Caesar, who rolled and crushed it all over…)

Marcus had excellent generals. Some died in combat: Agricola? After the death of Agricola, filed marshall Fronto got a supercommand of Dacia. C0-emperor Verus had just died of the plague while he and Marcus went back to Rome. Fronto fought Germans, Samartians and Vandals. In the campaigning season of 170, Fronto’s luck ran out: “He fell, bravely fighting to the last for the Republic” (ad postremum pro re publica fortiter pugnans ceciderit). A field marshall (who had already served under Anoninnue Pius!) dying in combat!

The Senate approved a motion tabled by the emperor to erect in Trajan’s Forum (Rome) a statua armata of Fronto, an “armed statue”, a nude bronze sculpture of the hero, holding a spear…

In 175 general Cassius, a descendant of Seleucid kings, was proclaimed Roman emperor after the erroneous news of the death of Marcus Aurelius. Cassius had led two successful campaigns against the Parthians, even capturing their capital, Ctesiphon, in eastern Mesopotamia. The sources indicate he was encouraged by Marcus’s out-of-control wife Faustina, who was concerned about her husband’s ill health, believing him to be on the verge of death. She felt the need for Cassius to act as a protector in this event, since her son Commodus, aged 13, was still young. She also wanted someone who would act as a counterweight to the claims of Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, who was in a strong position to take the office of Princeps in the event of Marcus’s death… and who, married to Verus’ Augusta, Commodus’ experienced and elder sister, didn’t look favorably towards Commodus…

Born in Alba Pompeia in Italy, the son of a slave turned into freedman Helvius Successus, Pertinax became a grammaticus (teacher of grammar, literature, philosophy). He eventually decided to find a more rewarding line of work and through the help of patronage he was commissioned an officer in a cohort.

In the Parthian war he distinguished himself. That brought a string of promotions, and after postings in Britain (as military tribune of the Legio VI Victrix) and along the Danube, he served as a procurator in Dacia.[10] He suffered a setback as a victim of court intrigues during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, but shortly afterwards he was recalled to assist Claudius Pompeianus in the Marcomannic Wars. In 175 he received the honor of a suffect consulship… So Pertinax, one of the comites, compagnons of Marcus, was in perfect position to succeed him. … Until 185, Pertinax was governor of the provinces of Upper and Lower Moesia, Dacia, Syria and finally governor of Britain. He was elected emperor after the Commodus assassination.

Machiavelli in The Prince:”Pertinax was created emperor against the wishes of the soldiers, who, being accustomed to live licentiously under Commodus, could not endure the honest life to which Pertinax wished to reduce them; thus, having given cause for hatred, to which hatred there was added contempt for his old age, he was overthrown at the very beginning of his administration. And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil; for when that body is corrupt whom you think you have need of to maintain yourself — it may be either the people or the soldiers or the nobles — you have to submit to its humors and to gratify them, and then good works will do you harm.”

In ‘Romanitas’, a fictional alternate history novel by Sophia McDougall, Pertinax’s reign is the point of divergence. In the history as established by the novel, the plot against Pertinax was thwarted, and Pertinax introduced a series of reforms that would consolidate the Roman Empire to such a degree that it would still be a major power in the 21st century.

A native of Antioch in Syria, Pompeianus was not from the Senatorial class. His father, Tiberius Claudius Quintianus, was a member of the Equestrian Order, the merchant and banking class of Roman citizens… And strictly below Senators, since Augustus made it so. His family first received their Roman citizenship during the reign of Emperor Claudius. Pompeianus was a new man (“novus homo”) as he was the first member of his family to be appointed as a Senator. Much of Pompeianus’ early life has been lost to history. He participated in the Roman–Parthian War of 161–166 under the commander of Emperor Lucius Verus, likely as a Legionary Commander. Sometime prior to the Parthian campaign, he was elevated to the rank of a Senator. He served with distinction during the war, earning him appointment as Suffect Consul for the remainder of the year 162 AD.

Following the completion of the Parthian campaign, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius appointed Pompeianus military governor of Lower Pannonia on the Empire’s northern frontier along the Danube River. He likely served from 164 until 168. In late 166 or early 167, a force of 6,000 Lombards invaded Pannonia. Pompeianus defeated the invasion with relative ease, but it marked the beginning of a larger barbarian invasion.

Late in 167 the Marcomanni tribe invaded the Empire by crossing in Pannonia. Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus planned to drive the barbarians back across the Danube River, but due to the effects of the Antonine Plague, that was postponed until early 168. Aided by Pompianius, the two Emperors were able to force the Marcomanni to retreat. Pompeianus’ military skills earned him the confidence of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and he quickly became one of the Emperor’s closest advisors. As the Emperors returned to their winter quarters in Aquileia, Lucius Verus fell ill and died in January 169. Following the death of Lucius Verus, Marcus Aurelius arranged for his daughter the Augusta Lucilla, Verus’ widow, to marry Pompeianus. As son-in-law to the Emperor, Pompeianus became a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. The Emperor even offered to name Pompeianus as Caesar and his heir, but Pompeianus refused to accept the title. Instead, Pompeianus was promoted and served as the Emperor’s chief general during the Marcomannic War. Under Pompeianus’ recommendation, the exiled Senator and fellow Parthian war veteran Pertinax was recalled and joined Pompeianus on his military staff.

Pompeianus’ successes during the Marcomannic War further distinguished him, with the Emperor awarding him a second Consulship in 173.

Marcus Aurelius died in 180 AD, and his 18-year-old son Commodus, Pompeianus’ brother-in-law, stayed Emperor. Pompeianus tried to persuade Commodus to remain on the Danubian frontier to complete the conquest of the Marcomanni, as planned by his father Marcus, but Commodus refused and returned to Rome in the autumn of 180. Commodus may well have been the son of one of these gladiators his mother was fascinated by… explaining in turn his fasciantion for the arena…

The relationship between the young emperor and the experienced general officer quickly deteriorated. In 182, Augusta Lucilla, Pompeianus’ wife and Commodus’ sister, organized an assassination attempt against the Emperor which failed when the assassin spent some time boasting of his incoming success to his victim, and who had commandited the elimination, which enabled Commodus’ bodyguards to eliminate him instead. Though Commodus executed Lucilla and other members of her family, she had engineered the (probable) myth of Pompeianus’s non-involvement, and thus made Commodus believe that her estranged husband had not participated in the conspiracy… Pompeianus was spared… While clearly Lucilla intended to make him emperor… (Who else? Pertinax?)

Pertinax, who was the Rome’s Urban Prefect at the time of the final elimination of Commodus, offered the throne to Pompeianus… who declined it, but resumed his Senatorial duties (prudently interrupted after Lucilla’s plot)

Russell Crowe’s character Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 movie Gladiator is very loosely based on a composite of Pompeinus and his fellow generals and Lucilla… the Lucilla plot succeeds… Novels have been written about Pertinax ruling Rome long enough to change its direction.

Could it have been done? Could Rome have been saved from itself? The key was to cancel slavery as queen Bathilde of the Franks did in 657 CE. She was not assassinated, but she manipulated from behind, and executed a lot, it is said, and it has got to be true…

Canceling slavery and forcing technology ahead in its stead. The Franks did it, but it took centuries to have a big impact. Or maybe not: after all, even while killing each other, the Franks were able to destroy the Goths, the Lombards and conquer and domesticate the Saxons push out Vikings (who were domesticated), Huns, Slavs, Magyars, and all sorts of god crazed Muslims. This had much to do with superior steel… And large specially bred battle horses… The Franks did at least three military things that Caesar had intended to do, and the Romans tried to do for centuries and failed: conquer, control and domesticate all Germans, in particular Saxons, Goths and Lombards… Destroy the Huns. Conquer and domesticate the Slavs, invade Eastern Europe, and exploit the mines there…

Peace is good, but victory is better!

Patrice Ayme

Marcus Aurelius Was An Ass

… Rome needed more than an ass to be pulled out of the ditch.

Stoicism is the most ubiquitous philosophy: wildebeest eaten alive by hyenas, practice it in the open plains of the Serengeti. We all die and suffer, so, at some point, we have to be stoics. But Stoicism as a daily regimen makes a civilization degenerate. Stoicism fostered by Roman emperors made their disgusting evisceration of the republic easier to swallow. As this pillarization of society was not enough (stoicism derives from stoa, a pillar), Roman emperors later fostered the slave religion which recommended turning the other cheek, whenever slapped..

Marcus Aurelius has been Stoic in chief for 18 centuries, a Taylor Swift for swifties singing in the praises of the  subjugation to plutocracy through appeasement. Marcus loved to write down notes expressing Greek Stoic pseudo-wisdom. The disingenuous opinion below that truth never hurts anyone is typical: those used to roll out really new truth know all too well that truth hurts. Genuinely new truth hurts those who proffer it and also those who receive it. So what Marcus Aurelius tells us by pretending that truth never hurts is that he never came across it. Nor should we. The truth about Marcus is that he was up to no good, and worse than his immediate predecessors. So Stoicism is just a gig leaf for gross incompetence. Let me elaborate.  

Writing notes to oneself regarding well-known wisdom was the fashion at the time: superior minds were supposed to jolt down these notes. Marcus Aurelius had top Stoic philosophers as teachers when he was extremely young, while he was the adopted son of emperor Antoninus Pius. Pius had a remarkably calm and long rule (138 CE to 161 CE, 23 years)… Pius didn’t harass Christians.

Stoicism was allowed to thrive during the Hellenistic dictatorships, because it was an innocuous philosophy which advocated to bear and grin through it all. Even Domitian, who hated philosophy for excellent personal reasons, tolerated Sotciscm, most of the time. 

In truth Marcus was an ass: he gave his 5 year old heir Commodus, the title and prerogatives of “Caesar”. I have long asked myself why he did this, when it blatantly contradicted the Stoicism that had been pounded into him. The usual explanation is that the throne was threatened (there were attempted coups). But to discourage this, Marcus had just to name full grown successors. This had been the case since Vespasian (with the exception of the anti-philosophical Domitian, who was assassinated). 

The explanation I found calls upon twisted psychology: Commodus was probably not Marcus’ biological son, or at least it could be thought that he was not… as it was notorious that Marcus’ wife Faustina the Younger slept around with gladiators and loved human blood flowing in the arena. Annia Galeria Faustina was the daughter of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius (so, formally the adoptive sister of Marcus).

Imagine: you are the master of the world, and your wife, who you can’t touch because of her pedigree, which is even more impressive than yours, is making fun of you and your stoicism. And you can’t do a thing about it… 

So what do you do as a good Stoic? You pretend that what is going on is not going on, and you punish all those who know about your humiliation by imposing the bastard son onto them. 

At 16, perhaps to keep the appearance that Commodus was really his biological son, Commodus gets full imperial powers as “Augustus”. This was a violation of a tradition established after the Flavian dynasty, a century earlier: the best was supposed to become emperor, not just the biological one. Marcus had a full contingent of generals to succeed him, including two who were superlative. One of the two, Pertinax, once a professor, would succeed Commodus. Also Commodus’ much older sister, long an Augusta, was left to try cleaning the mess Marcus had left, and lost her life in the attempt, thanks to Commodus. She was married to the other superlative general.

With so much superior choice at his fingertips, to replace him in the imperial function, that Marcus Aurelius chose the deranged Commodus as tyrant for Rome is truly baffling.   

Making a small child leader of the world was a complete violation of even the most outrageous Roman imperial traditions. It didn’t even happen under the most grotesque episodes of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (famous sons had to prove their worth and some died while in command of armies!)

Marcus’ unbalanced personality showed up in other ways: Marcus executed Christians for Christianism… whereas emperor Trajan, a general without pretension to elevated thinking had explicitly forbidden, 70 years earlier, to bother Christians for their Christianism. Under Trajan, Christians were able to exert their cult, as long as they didn’t break the law. 

Also it turns out that Marcus was an ass as a commander in chief: in 170 CE, the Rio Tinto mines, which were crucial for the entire empire, were overrun by the Mauri. This went on back and forth for a few years, and Rio Tinto didn’t recover until the modern era (the Franks, successors of Rome, conquered and found metal mines in Eastern Europe).  

Marcus courageously fought invading Germans… But he didn’t force the plutocrats to pay for the war. Marcus could have cracked down on the tax evaders: some of the top generals, and certainly Pertinax, an intellectual and son of a slave, were not too friendly to the hereditary plutocracy.

Marcus Aurelius is a celebrity, a poster boy of stoicism. Marcus’ stoicism helped him to not try hard to influence events which needed to be influenced. Trajan was not like that, but Hadrian and Antoninus Pius were. And Rome peaked under Trajan. Or at least the crucial metal production. 

What Marcus wrote was good, but Rome deserved better. And needed better to survive. Marcus, like today’s European Union, was basically a poser. He wanted himself to feel that he was a good person, probably because he knew he was not. Marcus, like contemporary Europe, struck philosophical positions advertizing goodness to hide the privilege, corruption and enfeeblement, which he empowered. 

Patrice Ayme

Enraged Stoics (Fall Of Rome, Part V)

MARCUS AURELIUS, REVEALED FOR WHAT HE WAS, HIS ENRAGED “STOICS”, and related context.

[One of my readers told me to remove a more offensive title which depicted better how I felt about Marcus Aurelius and his clueless critters. Otherwise she won’t read the essay!] Yes, I know, it is curious that people who call themselves “stoic” would actually be enraged. Yet, they are. How they were led to rage, under the guidance of your truly, is instructive, and reveals much on human nature. Basically, I revealed them the truth, knowing full well, they would explode (that makes little different from Daech, aka ISIL).

And, yes, I know, Marcus Aurelius is one of the most adulated celebrities, viewed as a top intellectual, a great stoic philosopher, a towering right of life and death emperor, etc. However, my word is stronger than his sword, the true philosopher knows.

There is nothing which enrage liars more than the truth, to all revealed.  By revealing to them the truth, namely that one who, to this day, is one of their greatest leaders, is a piece of mental trash, who led humanity astray, I brought them to the abyss, where, lemming like, they jumped passionately.

Rage permeates the human condition, and reveals its nature. It’s a failing of traditional humanism that it has not yet enlighten the causes of why this happens.

Emperor Antoninus Pius Ruled For Twenty-Two And A Half Years. Pius, A Stoic, Was The Immediate Predecessor of Marcus Aurelius. Yet, A Truly Wise Leader, Following Republican Tradition, He Nominated None Of His Numerous Male Descendants Successor-Designate (“Caesar”)

Just as the Buddhists had Buddha, the Christians love Jesus, and the Muslims venerate Muhammad, the Stoics are overwhelmingly psychologically dependent upon Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor, and their hero. (They have an even worse anti-hero to adulate, Seneca!)

Today I will demonstrate further why Aurelius was garbage. (Do I look enraged myself? Not really, but against Nazi-like cultish methods, only the strongest answers are appropriate. The case against Aurelius may be more serious than the case against all the monarchs of the Middle Ages, as second only perhaps to Aristotle, he generated them all. As I will show below.)

Stoics, in their admirative folly, tell a lot of (traditional) lies about Marcus Aurelius. That these lies are traditional does not excuse them, or transmogrify them into the truth. Confronted to the details making blatant that those lies, however much repeated on the Internet, are lies, would-be stoics use the traditional methods deriving from what I call “intellectual fascism”. (At least that’s coherent, as Marcus Aurelius described, one could say, invented, and sang the praises of that mental method I call “Intellectual fascism”.)

I have attracted the anger of bankers, Muslims, Christians, American fanatics, and many other critters such as “Antisemites”. Unfortunately, apparently overwhelmed by a mountain of evidence and scholarship, bankers and Muslims have become exceedingly quiet.

***

The Fascist Instinct:

The ancestors of human beings for many million of years were primates pretty much exposed, far from a thick tree cover. The survival of the genus depended upon adopting with gusto the  following behavior: when confronted to danger the whole group gathering together behind a leader, and acting as one. We will call that the “fascist instinct”.

(This depends upon a piece of mathematics observed in the wild: when two groups of predators fight, the side with the greatest total mass generally wins; by acting as one, a human group could overwhelm any predator; predators cannot afford injuries, so they avoid any potential prey potentially all too injurious.)

We do not know how a behavior, necessary for survival, becomes “hard wired”. (I have just argued against simplistic ways of doing so.) However, I think the “fascist instinct” (for want of a better phrase) is “hardwired”, whatever “hardwire” means.

I also think that the next big progress in humanities will consist in admitting that various “hardwired” traits of the human genus are actually demonic. So, instead of denying that they are there, we should recognize, own, manage, mitigate, domesticate, and civilize them.

Intellectual fascism is such a trait. Celebritism, the cult of celebrities is an aspect of it. It brings forth the confusion between knowledge and hero-worship. For example the discovery of gravitational waves was attributed to “Einstein”, a content-empty concept. In truth, gravitational waves should be attributed to field theory: any moving field source generates an energy wave radiating outwards (that can then be explained further; ironically, Einstein vacillated on the waves, for years, so he had not understood how simple they were).

***

Roman Emperors Were Generally Nominated by The Senate or Adopted By Their Predecessor:

An example is Tiberius, top general in the Roman empire, adopted son of Augustus. After Augustus died, Tiberius retired in the country and waited many weeks, until the Senate begged him to become Princeps (Tiberius was de facto already head of all Roman legions, thus imperator, from his long top military command).

Marcus Aurelius was the first emperor with a son. That’s completely false. For example Tiberius, the second emperor, had two full grown sons. Both followed the cursus honorum, and became famous generals: Germanicus reconquered the part of Germany lost by Arminius’ treachery, and in particular the locale where three legions had been lost in an ambush.

What was new, is that Marcus Aurelius used a logic that brought him to make his son a “Caesar” at age five. It is not that Marcus did not know right from wrong. He did. And what he did was obviously wrong. But, somehow, Marcus found a psychopathic LOGIC to justify his perverse action.

It was psychopathic logic, because it explicitly contradicted the explicit wisdom to choose the next emperor very carefully, if possible among the most meritorious youth after they received the best education (as Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus had been selected, and educated by the famous Grammaticus Fronto).

***

Even With An Imperator Cum Princeps, Rome Viewed Itself As A Republic;

Indeed, the truth has been in plain sight, so many can’t see it:  Why? One has to know first this striking fact: until after Diocletian’s rule, around 300 CE, the Roman Imperium was actually a Republic.

Historians have come to use the word “Principate” to qualify Rome until 300 CE. Because the Imperator was also “Princeps”, the first man in the Senate. Right now in the USA, the Vice-President is first man in the Senate: as President of the Senate, the vice president has two primary duties: to cast a vote in the event of a Senate deadlock and to preside over and certify the official vote count of the U.S. Electoral College. The distinction between “president” and “prince” is that between “sits first” (president) and “takes first” (princeps/prince).

The Republic was supposedly going on, and “imperator”, supreme military command on a set of legions, was a military title from centuries of Republic. There were cases, during the Republic, when imperators saluted each other, with the “imperator” title.

***

A Professional Philosopher Makes A Correction:

“Patrice,

once more, your statements are incorrect. It isn’t that Marcus was the first emperor to have a son reach adulthood, but he was the first emperor of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty dynasty who had that opportunity.

And one more time: drop talk of fascism and psychopathy, it is adding nothing to the discussion.”

Well, dear Massimo, if you want to dine with the devil, you will need a longer spoon. I replied this:

During the Nerva-Antonine dynasty, an important qualification to become emperor was to be a stoic.

Emperor Hadrian adopted in 136 CE one of the ordinary consuls of that year, Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who took the name Lucius Aelius CAESAR. Lucius did not look the most qualified, and historians suggested he was Hadrian’s natural son. After another successful consulship in 138 CE, Lucius died (of natural causes).

Emperor Antoninus Pius, predecessor of Marcus Aurelius, had two natural, recognized sons: Marcus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus and Marcus Galerius Aurelius Antoninus. However, the emperor Antoninus Pius did not name them Caesars during their childhood or adolescence. That would have been… unwise.

Antoninus’ two sons died young without issue. However, their sister Faustina the Younger had thirteen children, and their descendants are attested in the Fifth Century. As Antoninus had the longest reign since Augustus, he could have named a direct descendant Caesar (as Marcus would do). Antoninus was a stoic.

Marcus Aurelius differed from his numerous imperial predecessors in two ways: he did not adopt a qualified, adult heir. He also nominated a very small child as heir (a royal habit which would reappear in the Fifth Century, and thereafter through the Middle Ages).

This is not a full case against Marcus Aurelius. His attitude against Christians was also a disaster.

***

If You Want Civilization To Survive, Reject Celebritism, Intellectual Fascism, etc., & Embrace Direct Democracy:

Marcus Aurelius sank the Roman Empire, just as surely as the Captain of the Titanic sank the Titanic. His designation of the baby Commodus as Caesar, heir-designate, at the grand old age of five, tells us he was no wise man. However much he repeated like a parrot in Greek what Greek philosophers had said before. Thus he covered his tracks for 19 centuries, but as Donald Trump would point out, here I am, to say the obvious.

The rage of the professed ‘stoics’, confronted to my naked truths with whom I crush them, tells volume. First it says that Stoicism falls short. Half of humanity lives in East Asia, and should not scoff too fast. East Asia is permeated with Buddhism and its variants and fellow travellers (Confucianism). One can viewed all these as forms of stoicism. Or, more exactly, forms of stoicism a la Marcus Aurelius. (It’s not that Aurelius influenced them directly; it’s more that to the same problems, the same solutions.

Marcus Aurelius, as world dictator, devised a system of mind compatible with his elevated role as fascist-in-chief. Many a ruler in East Asia, and their obsequious servants, such as Confucius, were drawn to the same broad conclusions.

Thus (much of) Stoicism-Buddhism-Confucianism can be viewed as an overall mentality (there are variants of the three of them which differ wildly.

As long as We The People do not admit that individuals are prone to failure and demonicity, always, we will not progress to the sort of perfection we now need for survival as a genus of mind.

That packs of stoics can exhibit the ugly side of man, reminiscent of an angry pack of hyenas, is no wonder. When a pack of hyenas of roughly equivalent mass confront a pack of lions, they attack. However confronted to one of a few humans, they flee. Why? Even hyenas know that humans are the worst of the worst, in some most important ways. And that’s why stoics love Marcus Aurelius: because he was the worst of the worst, under Stoic guise, he was ready to lead them, straight into the Middle Ages, and its hereditary absolute power, from father to new-born babe.

Marcus Aurelius, the first hereditary king? Yes. A philosopher? No.

Patrice Ayme’

Marcus Aurelius, INTELLECTUAL FASCIST: Why Rome Fell (Part VIII)

Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (“Marcus Aurelius”) is generally revered both as emperor and philosopher. Both attitudes are grievously erroneous, and have a bearing to what very serious people have considered, ever since, as the highest wisdom to be embraced when trying to lead civilization, or the individual lives which sustain it. I will presently roll out some (new) reasons why the Marcus Aurelius’ cult is so wrong.

What endangered the Roman State? The question has been considered since the Third Century’s turmoil, the time of the “Barrack Emperors”, which started with the elimination of young emperor Alexander Severus, for buying the Germans, instead of crushing them.

In 360 CE emperor Julian explained why Christianism was bringing Romanitas down. Christians worshipped a secondary and “evil God” (and that the Serpent, bringing knowledge, was “good”!). Julian removed Christianism’s extravagant privileges (such as the right to execute heretics). However, Julian ruled only three years as Augustus (after 5 years as “Caesar”, subordinate emperor). Immediately thereafter, the Christians came back with great vengeance, burning libraries to the ground.

Inventor Of Intellectual Fascism Catches Flies With Philosophical Honey

The thesis that Christianism, as practiced and implemented at the time, nearly destroyed civilization is obviously superficially true, and was supported in detail by Gibbon in the Decline and Fall of Rome (written in the eighteenth century). However, destruction-by-Christianism not the whole story. In truth, it’s plutocracy which brought Rome down, through a succession of ever more dreadful instruments to insure its reign. Christianism was only plutocracy’s latest weapon of civilizational domination (which brought destruction). Political and intellectual fascisms had arrived centuries earlier, rabid theocracy was only a twist therefrom.

Marcus Aurelius, emperor from 161 to 180 was the last of the “Five Good Emperors” (his abominable son succeeded Marcus at the grand old age of nineteen). Marcus is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. Generally revered, he will be condemned here as a stealthy, sneaky, subterraneous yet explicit proponent of INTELLECTUAL FASCISM. Marcus’ elevation of Intellectual Fascism to a virtue explains a lot of things, from the “Fall of Rome” to the present sorry state of world governance.

I agree that this is shocking, and all the little ones will run for cover, squealing: Marcus Aurelius has a saintly, superficially justified reputation (and that, per se, is revealing: Marcus is a bit to philosophy what Einstein is to physics: a naked emperor whom the commons imagine fully dressed; critters prefer to have 140 characters anchored by a few celebrities they adore, like simple baboons adore the alpha females and males).

Even more shocking, Stoicism is supposed to be the behavior one adopts when a victim of fascism. Thus Stoicism is a behavior one would not expect from a proponent of fascism…. Until one realizes that, precisely, stoicism is, par excellence, the behavior in the masses which makes fascism possible. So Marcus fed what made him possible.

So let me severely criticize, as deserved, the following passage of Marcus Aurelius kindly provided by Massimo Pigliucci:

“There are four principal aberrations of the superior faculty against which you should be constantly on your guard, and when you have detected them, you should wipe them out and say on each occasion thus: this thought is not necessary; this tends to destroy social union; this which you are going to say comes not from the real thoughts — for you should consider it among the most absurd of things for a man not to speak from his real thoughts. But the fourth is when you shall reproach yourself for anything, for this is an evidence of the diviner part within you being overpowered and yielding to the less honorable and to the perishable part, the body, and to its gross pleasures. (Meditations XI.19)”

[I don’t understand Marcus’ last sentence, he seems to take himself for god, but that’s besides the points I will make, so I will ignore this obscure sentence. I will address the two “principal aberrations” accented above. They define what wrecked the Roman State, what will wreck any state, and any civilization: intellectual fascism in its purest form for the first one, and even explicit political fascismo for the second.]

“This thought is not necessary.” Says Marcus Aurelius. The emperor calls the apparition of ‘unnecessary thought’ one of the “four principal aberrations”. Sorry, Your Highness. When is a thought not necessary? When it’s not necessary to Your Excellency? And if a thought is necessary, what is it necessary for? Necessary to worship you and your kind, such as your five year old son, Commodus, whom you made a Caesar then, such a genius he was? No Roman emperor had been that grotesque, prior to you. Is that a non-necessary thought?

Is a thought then necessary when it embraces the desire of been guided by only a few thoughts reigning over the entire mind, just as Marcus Aurelius reigned over all men? In other words, is a thought necessary, and only then, when it embraces intellectual fascism? Or is that the big “stoic” philosopher thinks like the general of an army (something he was)..

Another of the Marcus’ “four principal aberrations” is lying… or more exactly “you should consider it among the most absurd of things for a man not to speak from his real thoughts”. In other words, the idea of “bad faith”. To trash and condemn Bad Faith is good. Many philosophers have done it, all the way up to Sartre. But then notice that Marcus Aurelius puts ‘unnecessary thoughts’ in the same category as “Bad Faith”.

Marcus also frowns on as a ‘principal aberration’: Any “thought [which] destroys social union”. Thus “social union” is part of the leading intellectual principles which should rule on the realm of ideas, just as Marcus Aurelius rules on men.

Now, any mental progress will disrupt brains, thus the “social union”. A society which knows “social union” and no revolution is condemned to stagnate mentality until the situation becomes uncontrollable. And this is exactly what happened to Rome the day Marcus died and his teenage son succeeded to him. A spectacular fall, driven by his son Commodus’ fateful decisions, in a matter of days, from which the Roman State never recovered.

Marcus Aurelius had decided that embracing intellectual fascism was the highest behavior, and imposed for more than two decades on 25% of humanity. I would suggest removing that element, that drive to mental shrinkage, from modern stoicism.

Those who know the history of the period with enough detail will not be surprised by my scathing critique. Instead they will realize that this was the missing piece to the logic of the disaster which befell civilization.

Indeed, immediately after Marcus Aurelius’ death Caesar Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus (“Commodus”), at the grand old age of 19, inverted all his father’s decisions (after saying he won’t).

Where did Commodus’ madness come from? Commodus, had been named “Caesar” at age 5… by his father, the great stoic parrot. How wise is that? It would feed megalomania, and indeed, Commodus was much more megalomaniac than the present leader of North Korea.

Commodus was accused of being a megalomaniac, in his lifetime. Commodus renamed Rome Colonia Commodiana, the “Colony of Commodus”. He renamed the months of the year after titles held in his honour, namely, Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus, Exsuperatorius, Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, and Pius. Commodus renamed the Roman Senate the Commodian Fortunate Senate, and the Roman people were given the name Commodianus.

Cassius Dio, a senator and historian who lived during the reign of both Commodus and his father wrote that, with the accession of Commodus, “our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.” Soon, it would descend even lower, in part because Marcus’ poisonous ideas would be revered so much.

It is probable that Marcus Aurelius was assassinated by his 19 year old son (officially Marcus died suddenly of the “plague”; but sophisticated poisons were well known, and had been used before in imperial affairs: Tiberius, the second Roman emperor, did not realize, for more than 15 years, that his two own adult sons, both of the most famous generals, had been poisoned to death by Rome’s prefect Sejanus: that was revealed after Sejanus tried a coup, and his accomplices talked). Commodus would kill his own sister shortly after his accession (she had opposed him).

In a way, Marcus’ assassination was well deserved. His superficially noble, but deeply despicable stoicism, and his brazen advocacy of political and intellectual fascism enabled Roman plutocracy to own the entire empire as if it were its own colony.

Whereas imperator Trajan had brought up taxes on the wealthiest to make education free for poor children, Marcus Aurelius went the other way: he did not have enough money to pay the army, when savage German tribes were trying to cut the empire, civilization, in two.

Some may sneer that I am condemning Marcus Aurelius for an unfortunate passage or two. Not so. Marcus’ entire work, both in philosophy, and as imperator, is an extension of his fundamental view that thinking should be restricted to what was useful. As if one could know in advance what thinking will be useful for. In his context, to boot, what Marcus meant by “useful” was what was useful to him, the one who proffered the thought.

Thought reduced to what was useful to just One, the One? How much more stupid and immoral can one be?

Nowadays, we face the fast rise of colossal inequalities which foster impoverishment, be it material, intellectual, or even cognitive. We have to realize that some of the apparently wisest, most respected and ancient philosophy is fully compatible with, and an engine of, this lamentable development.

Philosophy, poorly done, is the ultimate propaganda for the demise of the many by the self-chosen few.

Patrice Ayme’

Against Emotional Shrinkage

Is Rejecting The Human Condition Wise? Or Simply Inhuman?

In “Against Invulnerability”, philosophy professor Todd May has walked some of my way, and I will help him with some of the rest (empathy in action!). Here is Todd, in the New York Times, for “The Stone”, a succession of rather stony essays in philosophy:

“Like many of us, I am often troubled. I am distressed by my failure to be more than I am: a better philosopher, a better family member, a better person. And I know that if I could take a little more distance on the daily goings-on in my world that trouble me, I would probably be better in many if not all of these ways. This knowledge leads me to think of those philosophies that counsel rising above the things that disturb me so that I may arrive at a tranquil state of mind. Philosophies like Buddhism, Stoicism, Taoism, and possibly Epicureanism (the ancient philosophy, not its modern association with pleasures of the flesh) offer different ways of achieving such a tranquil state, and so they are tempting. I believe, however, that for most of us they are a false if beguiling path.”

Chameleons Are Not Stoic, They Anticipate The World

[Chameleons are found in the Namibian desert, not just tropical rain forest; there they have to cover huge distances in search of prey… while avoiding to become dinner, so they change colors just as fast as they run across. The chameleonic way of life is not Buddhist, just begging inertly for crumbs from the rich, dressed in bright orange.]

Let me applaud Todd May. There was some predictable screaming on the Internet from Stoics and Buddhists, claiming for both that they do not shun emotions, but bears them.

However, that’s somewhat besides the point. Indeed, not enough is, in crucial situations, the equivalent of not at all: if a plane tries to fly, and it does not have enough speed, it crashes.

Stoicism and Buddhism, and the sort of Fatalism connected to Christianism (Dieu le veut!) or Islam (Inch Allah) have crashed civilization repeatedly (at some point, before a crash, Buddhism controlled most of India).

Here is more of what the heroic (by academic standards) Todd says:

“Buddhism, at least in its official doctrine, argues that if we abandon our desires by coming to understand the true nature of the cosmos and follow the Noble Eightfold Path, the end of suffering will follow. Stoicism similarly (but distinctly) counsels that we rid ourselves of emotion, and similarly (but again distinctly) offers a path of recognition of our place in the universe to help us get there. I do not wish to claim that either or both of these or related doctrines are mistaken. Instead, I want to say that most of us, when we really reflect upon our lives, would not want what is officially on offer, but instead something else.”

But the author is right on target on his main point, the excellent notion of “invulnerability“:

“In their official guise, these doctrines are examples of what I am going to label “invulnerabilism.” They say that we can, and we should, make ourselves immune to the world’s vicissitudes. What is central to invulnerabilist views is the belief that we can extricate ourselves from the world’s contingencies so that they do not affect us. We are capable of making ourselves immune to the fortunes of our bodies, our thoughts, and our environment, and we will live better or happier or more pure lives if we do so. Whether the task involves the abolition of desire, the elimination of emotion or the recognition of the ultimate oneness of all things, the guiding idea is that we can and ought to make ourselves invulnerable to the world’s vagaries.”

Todd makes implicitly the point that, fundamentally, the invulnerabilists deny the human condition:

“For invulnerabilist views, what matters is only the present. After all, as they argue, the present is all there is, and therefore the only thing we can have an effect upon. Moreover, we can only be assured of having an effect upon ourselves in the present. Our effects upon the world are always uncertain. The task of invulnerabilism, then, is for us to inhabit the present fully and without reserve, letting go of the grip of our past and our desires for the future. Only if we do this can we render ourselves immune to the predations of our psychological tendencies, tendencies tied up with hope, regret, expectation and mourning.

Invulnerabilism recommends that we secrete a distance between ourselves and the world so that ultimately it cannot touch us.”

This is all very true. Its major defect is that it denies what the brain is made for. The brain is made for predicting the future. Even a chameleon’s brain anticipates the future, as it focuses, and prepares its tongue. Stoics, Buddhism and the like, want to have no tongue, and no focus on anticipation. They want to amputate us, please help! Are they why there is so much plutocracy, and nobody is doing anything about it?

As I have argued for years, that, by reducing emotions, one reduces the human condition, and, thus, the very ability to reduce pain. Invulnerabilists are self-defeating. Todd touches upon that:

“Most of us want to feel caught up in the world. We want to feel gripped by what we do and those we care about, involved with them, taken up by them. The price of this involvement is our vulnerability. We must stand prepared to feel the loss of what we care about, because that is part of what it means to care. Caring requires desiring for the sake of others, which in an uncertain world entails that that desiring can be frustrated.”

Stoicism, as defined by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius is centered on trying to achieve emotional detachment from what one cannot change.

Of course the problem is that one finds out what one cannot change from thinking, and thinking arises from emoting. So, if you don’t emote right, or not enough, you won’t think right.

By insisting that acceptance and tranquility are the most important, somehow most noble moods, invulnerability theories shrink the imagination, and mental reach.

Thus making acceptance and tranquility into a religion dwarves the human spirit into a shadow of its former self..

Are we going to accept infamy, too, because we cannot change it?

Marcus Aurelius is exhibit number one. Somehow he decided that he could not change the old way to select an emperor, and it had to be simply the son of himself. Thus he named his own son Commodus on a whole succession of honors by the age of 12, then made that boy a Consul, and finally co-emperor by the age of sixteen (16).

The son was Commodus, one of the most atrocious Roman emperors, and certainly the worst one (he gave up huge chunks of the empire, next to its core).

Marcus Aurelius, and the four emperors before him had been selected on merit. But merit and performance, selecting the best, were apparently antagonistic to Marcus Aurelius’ acceptance and tranquility.

Marcus Aurelius ought to have cracked down on plutocrats who did not pay enough taxes to sustain the army, then engaged in desperate defense. There, again, Marcus opted for acceptance (of infamy) and tranquility.

Stoicism is comfort, but duty is not always comfortable.

Moods and emotions are at the root of thinking. Cancelling the former would cancel the later, and turn us into beasts. That would be counterproductive to the oftentimes loudly advocated aim, reducing human suffering (people behaving like beasts do not live optimal lives in the complicated civilization we have).

MOODS RULE THOUGHTS

Trying to reduce pain through invulnerability theories is a bit hypocritical, because one could swallow a great quantity of sleeping pills, or take other drastic measures, to achieve a pain-free coma… Or death, surely an end to suffering in this allegedly terrible world.

So why are these theories arise so popular? Two viewpoints, as usual: those of the masters, and those of the slaves.

A meta question ponders who pushed, and pushes these theories on the masses? The mechanism is obvious: it is easier to domesticate the emotion-deprived, and thus thought-deprived ones, than fully intelligent human beings.

Thus invulnerability theories and religions are actually optimal for great masters who want to have many emotion-less, inhuman little slaves, with reduced intelligence.

That’s why the masters love Buddhism and company. But then why do the small people love this mood which serves to oppress them too?

Acceptance and tranquility should not be the end-all, be-all. Except, of course, for people with frayed nerves living in denial. Or then people who wants to live gloriously.

Anger is crucial to crush infamy. Absolutely excluding anger is absolutely accepting infamy as a matter of principle. Instead one should follow Voltaire’s advice: “Il faut ecraser l’infame!”. One ought to crush infamy.

Some specialists of Asian sociology believe that a lot of the problems in Asia (for example the holocaust in Cambodia) originated with too much tranquility and acceptance for the intolerable.

Obsessively focusing on acceptance and tranquility is self-serving, as it persuades the beholders, and those who look at them, that they are good, elevated people. And yes, it gets hot and passionate, where civilization is progressing. Yes, as with a kitchen, it gets hot there. But those who stay out ought not to get the respect they crave for.

Get angry, expand thinking, crush infamy!

Patrice Ayme’

Stoicism Is All Too Natural

All we animals have to be stoic, at one point or another, whether we like it, or not, whether human, or not. At some point we have to decide that, whatever it is, will be, and that’s fine. This maximizes happiness. Especially in dismal circumstances. It’s all the eudemonia the abyss offers.

Stoicism is evolutionary given. It would not help to sustain ecology if prey animals systematically fought beyond any hope of surviving, as it would hurt predators (and thus kill them, as the job of predator is highly demanding). Without predators around, there is no more ecology.

Thus animals come complete with endorphins, pain killing hormones related to morphine. When the fighting is hopeless, endorphins suddenly permeate the prey, and it accepts calmly to be eaten alive. That’s often a very long process. It is striking to see an antelope resting on the ground, alert, head high, standing perfectly still, while a lion is feasting deep inside its abdominal cavity.

Hence evolution itself has selected stoicism as a strategy to reach an optimal ecology.

Experiments in human ethology have shown moral monism is a no-go: not all morality comes from just one moral principle. Far from it. Instead, human beings travel a vast moral manifold, with many moral strategies, as opportunity and necessity arise. Thus the attached philosophies are to vary accordingly. Philosophical pluralism is fact and practice. Yet, stoicism will always be a part of the mix (as it is evolutionary given, it’s part of what we are).

***

But one has to be careful not to confuse appropriate stoicism, and amor fati, with gross selfishness. Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and author of the Meditations is a case in point. He claimed, in his Thoughts that one ought:

“Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things that exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the structure of the web.”

Strange mumbo-jumbo.

Although this train of thought seems to partly anticipate ecological balance theory, the emperor’s motivation, according to all appearances, from historical evidence, was most base. If true, this is extremely shocking: Marcus Aurelius is often viewed as the archetype stoic, in his full glory.

And this is a warning to all those who get carried away with Stoicism, Buddhism, Zen, and the closely related Confucianism and “Inch Allah” religion.

If it’s all one movement, one may as well leave it alone, and go along with the flow. Thus Marcus Aurelius opted to not go into a complicated process to select the next best future emperor, as had been the tradition under the Antonine emperors (and how he himself became Princeps, Imperator, Augustus and what not).

It was simpler, more craftily stoic, to make his son Commodus Caesar at the age of 5, the youngest Consul ever at the age of 15. Then Marcus made Commodus co-emperor at the precocious age of 16. That teenager became perhaps the worst emperor ever.

Why? First, out of apparent stoicism, not to say epicureanism, Commodus gave up territory dearly gained on the Marcomanni, and that it was crucial for Rome to keep (as history showed within a generation).

***

Stoicism is the acceptance of what cannot be avoided, surrender. It has its place, but only as a mean to not hurt higher values which a disorganized frenzy could compromise.

One should not surrender, especially to evil, in a hurry, affecting haughty indifference. Doing so makes one an accomplice, a collaborator of evil. Stoicism is a help in the abyss, when hope is forever gone, and only pain is left. But stoicism is also an invitation to the abyss, if used inappropriately.

This is not just a problem for those who abide by Stoicism and Buddhism. The religions of Abraham celebrate the submission of their hero (Abraham) to the most monstrous deity imaginable, the one who asks him to slit the throat of his son. In other words, if the boss asks you for the worst crime imaginable, stoically submit.

This is immensely unacceptable to those who have the religion of man, instead of the religion of the boss, fascism.

Stoicism is one misappropriation away from accepting fascism, infamy, or both.

***

Progress is a more human value strategy than stoicism. All animals are prone to stoicism, as they muddle along. Only humans wish to rise well above Prometheus, and smash fate into a better world.

We created god(s), and should act accordingly.

Patrice Ayme’