How To Be A King in Your Lineage: All The Stoics Were Kings.
Legacy of Stoic Kings & Influence on Modern Leadership.
Revelation 1:5-6
And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
For those of us who live our lives in the real world, there is one branch of philosophy created just for us: Stoicism. It’s a philosophy designed to make us more resilient, happier, more virtuous and more wise–and as a result, better people, better parents and better professionals.
Stoicism has been a common thread through some of history’s great leaders. It has been practiced by Kings, Presidents, Artists, Writers and Entrepreneurs.
Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Aurelius. Frederick the Great, Montaigne, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Theodore Roosevelt, General James Mattis, —just to name a few—were all influenced by Stoic philosophy.
Most of us don’t live underneath a king and fewer of us still will ever be a king, at least in the sense of ruling a country by hereditary right.
Even Marcus Aurelius would have conceded that this is wonderful, for he understood that most kings were bad, and that the job was bad for most of the people who had it. Marcus Aurelius was a true philosopher king, but he wasn’t the first or the last amongst the Stoics.
Yet, the Stoics were still fond of the metaphor of the Sovereign and Sovereign has everything to do with power. Sovereign often describes a person who has supreme power or authority, such as a king or queen. So we can take for example, the Asantehene of Ghana, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.
God is described as "sovereign" in a number of Bible translations. In addition to describing ones who have power, the word sovereign also often describes power: to have sovereign power is to have absolute power—that is, power that cannot be checked by anyone or anything.
Musonius Rufus would say that a philosopher was inherently a kingly person, and Seneca would write that to be fit to rule one had to first rule themselves.
So when we look at the lives of the Stoics, that’s what we see. Men and women who were, to borrow a line from the Bible, diligent in their business and thus fit to stand before kings.
Cleanthes, carrying water to the gardens, as if it was philosophical business. Musonius Rufus teaching his students to have the strictest of standards in their rhetoric and writing. Cato insisting on honesty and transparency and accountability in government despite the corruption around him. Antoninus, who was in fact emperor, but so dedicated to the job, as Marcus Aurelius observed, that he scheduled his bathroom breaks.
But actually all the Stoics were of the same mold. Cleanthes was a manual laborer, but he carried himself like his work mattered, like he mattered. Cato, a man in command of himself, had no desire for the power that Caesar so destructively sought.
Epictetus was a slave but he knew he was freer than most of the men in Nero’s court, perhaps even more than Hadrian. As Epictetus’s teacher Musonius Rufus would say, “I believe a good king is from the outset and by necessity a philosopher, and the philosopher is from the outset a kingly person.”
We don’t have to hold supreme power to be supremely powerful. We don’t have to ‘wear the purple,’ as they said of the emperor, to stand out.
No, we just have to show up. Do a great job. Hold ourselves to high standards. We don’t need to be honored to be honorable. That’s not something the position gives, it’s something we give the position.
Through our discipline, our courage, our justice, our wisdom.
