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Alex Petkas on Pompey and Posidonius (Episode 128)
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The philosopher and the general. Stoic philosophy in ancient Roman history.
In this podcast, Caleb speaks with Alex Petkas about Pompey and Posidonius – the great Roman general and his Stoic mentor.
Both of their lives were epic in the greatest sense. They carry lessons for applying Stoic emotion management, cosmopolitanism, and, even, inquiry into the natural world.
https://costofglory.com/
(01:27) Seneca on Posidonius
(03:28) The World of Posidonius
(12:35) The Roman Civil War
(15:59) Pompey Meets Posidonius
(19:08) Stoic Cosmopolitanism in Action
(26:12) Paying Respects to the Philosopher
(31:04) The Rest of Pompey's Story
(32:14) Pompey's Stoic and Non-Stoic Attributes
(43:48) Posidonius on the Divine
(53:06) Fate Willing
***
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Transcript
Introduction to Posidonius and Emotions
00:00:00
Speaker
There's this great quote from Posidonius. He said, the cause of emotions, that is of disharmony and the unhappy life, I think emotions there, he means pathos. The cause of them is that men fail to be wholly consistent in following the diamond within them.
00:00:19
Speaker
the daimone or spirit that is akin to and of like nature with the power governing the whole universe. Welcome to Stoic Conversations.
Podcast Introduction with Guests
00:00:30
Speaker
My name is Caleb Andoveros and today I'm speaking with Alex Petkass, the founder and host of the Cost of Glory podcast. This is our second conversation. Thanks for returning. Great to be back, Caleb.
00:00:47
Speaker
Awesome. So today we're going
Seneca on Posidonius' Teachings
00:00:49
Speaker
to be talking about two great figures from ancient Roman history, Posidonius, a stoic, and Pompey, a military leader, statesman.
00:01:04
Speaker
and use these two characters as an entry point into thinking about Stoic philosophy and, of course, Roman history, generally. So we're going to be talking about two key figures from ancient Roman history, Posidonius, a Stoic and Pompey, statesman, famous general,
00:01:27
Speaker
And I wanted to open with a line from Seneca about Posidonius, and we'll start with talking about his life, who he was, because he is a lesser known stoic. We just don't have that many of his writings, unfortunately, but he is someone who Seneca was familiar with and indeed encouraged his friends' readers to read.
00:01:51
Speaker
So here it is. Live with Chrysippus, with Posidonius. They will make you acquainted with things earthly and things heavenly. They will bid you work hard over something more than neat turns of language and phrases mouthed forth for the entertainment of listeners. They will bid you be
Posidonius' Background and Influence
00:02:11
Speaker
stout of heart and rise superior to threats.
00:02:14
Speaker
The only harbor safe from the seething storms of this life is the scorn of the future. A firm stand, a readiness to receive fortune's missiles, full in the breast, neither skulking nor turning back.
00:02:30
Speaker
So I think that's a, yeah, that's what a line, what a, Santa cat is best. Yeah. Yeah. Some serious encouragement to, you know, read, read Chrysopus, read Posadonius and not just read them, but live with them.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, I love that line and Postodonius, it's funny, you know, he says it's more than just pretty phrases you're gonna learn from these guys, but Postodonius was also famous for actually being one of the Stoics who could write, unlike his buddy Chrysippus, well, not his buddy, you know, Chrysippus was a century earlier, so, but he, you know, he was a man who lived, he lived his beliefs, but also had a very,
00:03:19
Speaker
practical life that was itself, I think, worthy of emulation. So that's one of the reasons I find Posidonius so fascinating. Yeah. What's the world
Stoicism's Impact on Rome
00:03:30
Speaker
he grew up in? So Posidonius is, and we'll get to Pompey in a little bit, but he's a little older than Pompey by about 30 years or so.
00:03:41
Speaker
Postodonius grows up in Apamea in Syria. He's Greek, living in one of these Greek cities in Syria. He ends up being this figure though of international repute coming from this backwater in Syria. He ends up being somebody that
00:04:03
Speaker
a great classicist and scholar of religion, Arthur Darby Nock, called a sort of Goethe figure of his day. He's a polymath. He's a traveler. He's a writer. He's a political advisor. He meets some of the most important people of his day. So
00:04:22
Speaker
He, when he, sometime when he's a young man, he makes his, he falls in love with philosophy, I guess. He makes his way to Rhodes, this island off the coast of Turkey. And there he meets Pinnaitius, the great stoic of the previous generation. And meeting Pinnaitius, I think is really important for Posidonius' story because Pinnaitius is,
00:04:50
Speaker
kind of in the tradition of Diogenes of Babylon before him, one of these figures who met a lot of the great figures of his day, he was found his way to Rome, Penitius did and met
00:05:04
Speaker
Scipio Emilianis, that's Africanus the Younger, and was kind of an advisor to him. He went on diplomatic
Evolution of Stoicism in Rome
00:05:12
Speaker
missions with Scipio. He met a lot of Scipio's intimates. So, Pinatius is one of the members of this famed Scipionic circle.
00:05:20
Speaker
that was, at least in Cicero's eyes and Plutarch's eyes, just a huge influence on Roman politics and bringing Stoicism to Rome and kind of translating it, making it cool and interesting to the Roman elites like Scipio, like Scipio's friend Rutilius Rufus, Gaius Lilius. Another person that was really important in Postodonius' story that's in the Scipionic circle is
00:05:49
Speaker
Polybius, the historian, not just historian, but Polybius is also a political philosopher. He wrote the histories of his time of the entire Mediterranean world from the First Punic War up until his day. And Polybius, book six, is his famous treatment of the Roman constitution that was read extensively and carefully by the US founding fathers. So
Posidonius' Scientific and Philosophical Approach
00:06:17
Speaker
That's Panitius's world. And he eventually retires to Rhodes. And it's like this world that Panitius kind of initiates Posidonius into first as a student. And I think later through his connections, Posidonius is able to to make a trip to Rome himself, which has interesting, interesting fruit from it.
00:06:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think of Pinatius as exactly one of these figures who bring Stoicism to the Romans.
00:06:49
Speaker
by doing that doesn't change the nature of stoicism, but changes some of the key focuses, I think. And you can see it in their lives where these are statesman type figures. They're thinking more about how you live that life well and bringing the tools of stoicism to the kinds of problems or questions that might emerge in that role. So one example of that is that we've talked on this podcast before.
00:07:16
Speaker
about Epictetus's role ethics. And Penaertius had an early form of that, that Epictetus was developing, which is not so much thinking about virtues as abstract type things, although they did that as well, but trying to make that bring the tools of philosophy to some of these concrete questions about what does it look like to be excellent in my roles, how do I choose these roles, and so on, which I think is one of the
00:07:43
Speaker
innovations one gets in Stoicism, the Roman kind of Stoicism in particular. Yeah. And I mean, some of the earlier
Posidonius' Histories as Philosophy
00:07:51
Speaker
Stoics, it's like all you could squeeze out of them as far as political philosophy goes is, oh, the wise man is the only one worthy to rule the state. Full stop. Yeah. So what does that mean? What does that role really look like? You know, the hard decisions you have to make. I think people like Panaitius
00:08:11
Speaker
maybe Diogenes of Babylon, certainly Penaiteus and definitely Postodonius are really trying to kind of flesh that out for the people that are turning to them for advice who are, you know, overwhelmingly the elites of their cities, the Roman nobles especially. So yeah, I think of it as like a translation of Stoic philosophy, kind of fleshing out of its practical implications.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So then, Posidonius, do we know why he became a philosopher? Like what drew him to Stoicism, as opposed to some other school, these kinds of these kinds of questions? That's a good question. And I'm not an expert on on everything Posidonius. But what I do know is he had this famous reputation for being a polymath. And
00:09:02
Speaker
You know, I think it might have something, I wonder if it might have something to do with the Stoics appreciation of nature. Postodonius was fascinated by kind of everything, but he made this kind of research tour all the way to Cadiz in Spain and studied the tides there. He measured the
00:09:24
Speaker
size of the sun and the moon and was interested in astronomy. I think you can see that as an outgrowth of his belief in the importance of nature and understanding it and all of its aspects and how it bears on human conduct. So I wonder if it might have something to do with that. But however he ended up getting interested in Stoicism, he was not a
00:09:50
Speaker
It's
Pompey's Challenges and Posidonius' Influence
00:09:51
Speaker
super doctrinaire stoic. There's an interesting quote. I think this is Galen. Whereas other stoics are prepared to betray their fatherland rather than their dogmas, Posidonius is prepared to betray the stoic school rather than the truth.
00:10:10
Speaker
So that was Galen's take on Postodonius, who he really admired. And I think you see that spirit of always questioning and experimenting through all of his writings, both the fragments that we have, both the natural philosophy aspects, but also his inquiry into human nature. And we'll get to his interaction with the Romans in a second,
00:10:38
Speaker
one of his great literary achievements was a history of his times. He's the only philosopher that we know of that wrote an extensive
Pompey Seeks Guidance from Posidonius
00:10:51
Speaker
history of his times, at least up to his period. And he basically wrote a continuation of Polybius. And again, I think that's in that spirit of, as one ancient rhetorician put it,
00:11:08
Speaker
History is philosophy by examples. So Postodontist is very much that guy. And I think that desire to find great examples and to see human nature pushed to its limits in the careers and characters of a powerful, this is one of the things that attracted him to Rome and got him involved with people like Gaius Marius and Sulla.
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The point about nature is an interesting one as some of the driving forces of what could attract him to Stoicism, being that he is a polymath interested in natural science, but also history. I wonder if part of that attraction to Stoicism is perhaps that it's systematic.
00:11:53
Speaker
uh, nature, which is, and it's focused on those three domains, you know, the physics, logic and ethics. Right. All of them being kind of expressions of, uh, of coherent metaphysics of the cosmos grounded by nature.
00:12:10
Speaker
Right, right. And perhaps in some of these earlier forms, you would have seen that essentially turn into logic and metaphysics, but perhaps another more Roman spin on it is including much more of investigation into sort of the natural world, the day-to-day particularities of the social world as well. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, do you want to introduce our other character?
00:12:39
Speaker
Well, let's get to Pompey in a second. It's important to understand what Pompey is coming from when he meets Posidonius. So when Posidonius is at Rome, he witnesses famously
Cosmopolitan Approach to Pirate Crisis
00:12:55
Speaker
the beginning of the Roman Civil War.
00:12:58
Speaker
that is really important for Pompey's story. And just to give you a kind of pracy of what's going on, there's this Roman general Gaius Marius, who is in the 80s BC, kind of getting on in years, but the greatest man at Rome, he was a populist, kind of outsider to the aristocratic nobility. And a war breaks out in the East,
00:13:26
Speaker
And the Senate awards the command to this other politician, Sulla, who is Marius' former protege. But Sulla is just a diehard aristocrat and a conservative, optimum faction.
00:13:41
Speaker
And so they have a falling out. Marius basically tries through some constitutional alchemy to strip Sulla of his command and Sulla reacts by marching on Rome and capturing the city, declaring Gaius Marius a public enemy. This is like the first step of the first Roman civil war, which happens in the 80s.
00:14:02
Speaker
And then Sulla goes east to fight his war, thinking everything's fine, but Gaius Marius makes a comeback and he captures, he's back, yeah, and he's after blood. And he recaptures the city and he slaughters many of his enemies, not nearly as many as Sulla did later.
00:14:22
Speaker
But so Postodoneus meets Marius kind of on his deathbed and tells the story as Plutarch Marius' biographer recounts that basically Marius had this fever that ended his life and it kind of made him hallucinate. And even in his last days, he was sort of hallucinating and fantasizing about
00:14:45
Speaker
you know, commanding armies and ordering around his servants, like march up the hill, you know, just kind of crazy old man, completely driven, delusional by his own ambition, by his insatiable thirst for glory. And, you know, Postodonius would have considered that an expression of kind of our lower nature as opposed to our higher nature. And so Marius was like a great
00:15:09
Speaker
example of how the thirst for power can corrupt your soul. So he meets Marius there, he meets maybe he meets Sulla, he ends up befriending Cicero later. But all this to say that Postodonius, by the time that Pompey meets him, and this is several years later, he's already developed his reputation as being
00:15:36
Speaker
one of the wisest men in the Mediterranean. His writings are circulating. He's traveled widely. He's already been to Rome. He gets these people. And so it's in 67 BC that Pompey finally meets Posidonius. And I guess we should probably tell the story of why Pompey is on the island of Rhodes meeting Posidonius and what's at stake there. Yeah, what's he doing there? So Pompey is one of Rome's
00:16:05
Speaker
golden boys. He's a promising young politician general. He's around, he's in his late 30s, I think, at the time that he meets Posidonius. And he's been entrusted with this extraordinary command by the Romans against the pirates. Rome is facing this huge threat. There's this Mediterranean wide,
00:16:34
Speaker
pirate problem. They're seizing ships. They're terrorizing local inhabitants. They're marching on land and raiding. And it sort of seems in the way the Plutarch describes it, it seems like these guys are kind of organized and maybe in their eyes, they're not pirates at all, but freedom fighters.
00:16:53
Speaker
But they're sailing all around the Mediterranean and the last straw for the Romans is the various commanders have failed to get the problem under control.
Ethical Resolution of Pirate Issue
00:17:05
Speaker
But the pirates in 67, they get so bold that they sail into the port of Ostia at Rome, and they burn the ships, and they've also captured Consul's daughters, and it's just egregious. And so the Roman people vote this very uncommon, unprecedented, extraordinary command to Pompey as their greatest general of the time to control basically the whole Mediterranean Sea with just
00:17:36
Speaker
400 ships, which is a huge number, as many resources and troops as he needs to get the job done. And so Pompey, in very short order, he clears the pirates of the Western Mediterranean.
00:17:49
Speaker
But that's kind of the easy part because as everybody knows, the pirates have their bases, their kind of hives in the East and in Cilicia especially, but also in places like Crete and Syria, Phoenicia. But so Pompey, in the middle of his pirate campaign, he takes the time to go meet Posidonius to consult his wisdom.
00:18:16
Speaker
And Plutarch describes this scene, Plutarch, of course, Pompey's biographer. He describes a scene where Pompey arrives in Rhodes and he comes into the theater as Posidonius is lecturing on some logical problem and he just sits down to listen. But what Pompey's really there for is Posidonius's political wisdom, which I think is really
00:18:46
Speaker
important to consider. Positonius was seen as somebody who could really help you solve your problems if you're a politician, not just your ethical problems, but your political problems. And so together they cook up a kind of a scheme, at least that's how a lot of scholars interpret what's going on here, where, and this kind of gets into Positonius's political philosophy as a stoic, which I think is really interesting. You probably have talked about cosmopolitanism a fair bit on the show.
00:19:16
Speaker
So Postodonius believes that humans are all united by a common participation in the logos. We have a common kind of interest in nature. And that human beings, as he says, are not
00:19:37
Speaker
wild and piratical and vicious by nature, but can become accustomed to be that way through circumstance. And like wild animals, some of them can be tamed out of their wilder states. And he I think he presses that point home to Pompey. But another point that he's pressing home as a as a very learned historian of these regions in his recent history is
00:20:03
Speaker
You know, these men that are sailing around raiding the Romans are not just brigands. They're not just thugs. These are actually some of the leading citizens of their cities in former years. They're from great families with noble lineages. They have a real sense of themselves. They're very talented. They're very organized. And if things had been different, they might not have become pirates.
00:20:33
Speaker
because Rome has been waging these wars in the East Mithridates for decades and ravages and displacements, poverty, tragedy, famine that comes from war. The Roman tax collectors are often abusive and driving these people out of their inheritance.
00:21:01
Speaker
So Postodonia kind of fleshes out this picture for Pompey, I think. And Pompey develops this really unique strategy to try something different. But I think one of the things that, one of these signs that Postodonia kind of knows how to deal with these great men and their great egos, when Pompey is leaving Rhodes to go finish, execute on the plans they've come up,
00:21:28
Speaker
He says, any last advice, my friend in Postodonius quotes a line of Homer that sums up the heroic code. He says, always be the best and hold your head high above others. He's like kind of telling Pompey, go out there and kick butt and be like a Homeric hero. So I love that kind of humane
00:21:55
Speaker
expansiveness of Posidonius's ability to motivate people. Just really, really signature of his.
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. The use of cosmopolitanism, which is, in a sense, this doctrine that, look, we're all human beings. That means we share a common nature. We're all rational. And, you know, Postodonia is the same, essentially. I want to be like, put this into practice. You know, these
00:22:29
Speaker
pirates who are acting like primitive barbarians seem apparently irrational to the Romans, have some logic behind their actions. And you can see that in their circumstances and their history. Some of these pirates, as you say, were
00:22:47
Speaker
probably would have been excellent statesmen and in fact would be excellent allies with the Romans. And I like that a lot because it makes cosmopolitanism into something so practical, but also context specific. You have this sort of universal idea that needs to be applied in a way that's mindful of history and circumstances.
00:23:15
Speaker
Yeah. And in a way, it's not this fuzzy, everybody gets a blue ribbon philosophy at all. It's a very kind of realpolitik philosophy in a lot of ways. In this circumstance, at least, you know, Pompey doesn't want to sacrifice more troops than he has to. He wants to make the most of the talent that he has. And, you know, if he could make an ally of somebody,
00:23:38
Speaker
Rather than destroying them that might actually he could see that there's a there's a real cost-benefit calculus that works in the favor of such a planet So that's exactly what he does. You know, he has to He has to rough him up a little bit and he wins some battles. He captures a you know
00:23:55
Speaker
scary fortress on the south coast of Cilicia in Turkey, Korokessian, there's a siege, but they don't fight to the last man and, you know, all commit suicide. They surrender because he's already spared a few pirates and, you know, he's able to basically talk to these people.
00:24:20
Speaker
after he defeats a few of them and make diplomatic overtures. And the overwhelming majority of the pirates end up surrendering because rather than doing the usual Roman thing of saying, all right, we're gonna kill or enslave the men and then enslave the women and children.
00:24:40
Speaker
He offers them a settlement. He says, well, we've got these depopulated lands in Greece. We've got depopulated lands in Cilicia from the pirate wars. We've got depopulated lands even in southern Italy from the recent servile wars with Spartacus that Crassus fought.
00:25:02
Speaker
discussed in the biography I did of him on the cost of glory. And so they say that sounds a lot better than being slaves. And basically he makes honest men of them. And he ends up winning the pirate war, finishing it, solving the pirate problem completely that has been harrying the Roman interests for decades.
00:25:28
Speaker
in three months and it shocks the world. And I
Posidonius' Lasting Influence on Pompey
00:25:33
Speaker
think for Posidonius, he could say, well, that's the power of cosmopolitanism. It's about understanding the real nature of the situation and just applying that reason rigorously. So I love that story.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's a case where the ethics and the pragmatics are one, I think, which is a common counsel for I think one gets from many ancient Greeks and Romans, which didn't necessarily make such a strong division between what's practical and what's ethical as we do today. Right. Yeah, it doesn't always work out that way, but it doesn't always work out that way, certainly. So there's one more great anecdote about Pompey and Posidonius.
00:26:18
Speaker
So Pompey goes off. After this, he ends up being entrusted with this great war with Mithridates in the East. So Mithridates is still alive after Sull had defeated him, and Lucullus defeated him, but he's very slippery, and he manages to survive. And anyway, long story short, Pompey wins that war. It takes a few years, and he comes back on his way back to Rome. This is 63, 62 BC.
00:26:45
Speaker
And he visits, he wants to visit Posidonius, who's meant so much to him, et cetera. So he lands on roads and he hears Posidonius is ill, he's indisposed in his house and so Pompey makes a kind of pilgrimage to the house of Posidonius. And instead of like, so the normal thing, if you're a victorious consul,
00:27:11
Speaker
You have these lictors, these bodyguards who carry the phascase, the rod axes, symbols of power. And they're also kind of bludgeoning weapons. So the normal thing, if a consul wants to come and pay you a visit, the lictors will bang on the doors of your house with their phascase and they say, open up.
00:27:29
Speaker
the name of the SPQR. So Pompey has those lictors lower all of their phosgates and not do any of that and kind of take off some of the insignia of imposing power. And he calls out politely and enters and very, very significant sign of deference for a Roman general to do this. And then he basically has to come and visit Posidonius in bed.
00:27:58
Speaker
And Posidonius is having this kind of paroxysm of gout. He's got, you know, excruciating pain in his feet and his knees. And Pompey says, well, my friend, it's great to see you again. I'm so sorry that I won't get to hear you lecture, but it was so meaningful to me. And Posidonius sits up and he says, nonsense.
00:28:26
Speaker
Far be it for me to allow a man of your stature to come and visit me and leave empty handed.
00:28:33
Speaker
And so he delivers, Pompey apparently liked to tell this story later in life. Cicero preserves it for us, and he says, as the great man used to recount about his visit to Posidonius. So this made a big impact on Pompey. Posidonius gives him this speech about the nature of the good. He says, nothing is good, which is not honorable. And I kind of think of that as Posidonius kind of
00:29:03
Speaker
entrusting Pompey with this key piece of wisdom that he's going to need for what he's about to face when he gets back home because the hardest part of being a Roman general as many generals discovered people like Lucullus
00:29:18
Speaker
is when you come back home, you are, especially if you're victorious, you face tremendous amounts of resentment and envy from your fellow nobles who, you know, you think you're better than us now, like, well, because you are in the eyes of the Roman society. So Pompey's got big, big problems to face after his victorious time in the East. And that's another
Pompey's Ambition and Stoic Conflict
00:29:41
Speaker
story that ends up
00:29:43
Speaker
with his war with Julius Caesar 10 years or so later. But I love that that episode. And I think Pompey was, you know, he's not he's not a stoic, a doctrinaire. He's not faithful to stoicism. He's not he doesn't study philosophy necessarily, but
00:30:00
Speaker
He wants to be a good man. He wants to be perceived as being a just man, as a benevolent man. And I think he has some more claim to that than a lot of the great figures of the time. You know, he has this reputation for settling disputes and being just to his enemies in the East, his former enemies, at least. So I love that episode about, you know, Poseidonis again, kind of knowing what people specifically need for the trials that they face.
00:30:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I suppose Postodontist is also an example of someone aiming to capture that truth. He's imparting what's good, what is noble, what's evil, not pain, but the lack of nobility.
00:30:47
Speaker
And apparently, as he was discoursing to Pompey, he would he would periodically get seized by these pangs of agony. And he would just say, ah, pain, you may hurt, but I will never admit that you are an evil addressing his pain as though it were as though it were something else. Yeah, that's awesome. It's interesting because Pompey returns and in a sense does all the right things, but is not rewarded, not rewarded for it by the Roman.
00:31:15
Speaker
Roman aristocrats. He abandons his army. Not abandons, of course, but doesn't march in the show force. As far as I can tell, it's relatively deferential, but it doesn't pay off.
00:31:29
Speaker
That's right. Yeah, he has all kinds of headaches trying to get his veterans awarded and trying to get all of his settlements in the East awarded. And that's basically the Senate ends up pushing him kind of into the arms of Julius Caesar, who is a populist himself, but knows how to get things rammed through the political system, whether the Senate likes it or not. And so Pompey ends up having to make some difficult compromises that the people blame him for. I mean, it's the kind of things that
00:31:58
Speaker
politicians face, you know, a lot of people were counting on Pompey. So, I mean, he had his own dignity to think of, but also the interest of so many people that were counting on him. It was challenging to be, to say the least. In what ways do you think he was not a Stoic or maybe didn't take some of Posidonius' counsel to heart? Of course, it's somewhat speculative, but where does he act in an un-Stoic ways, if you will?
00:32:30
Speaker
Give Poppy some credit. He was very good at controlling his emotions in the moment. He was never seen to fly into a rage at insults. He was the most grand figure of his day and people were constantly heckling him and insulting him. And I think that
00:32:58
Speaker
I mean, any would often just have to deal with this and face it unperturbed, like a stoic, like somebody trying to restrain their emotions because they know the consequences of... It's the classic tyrant. Once you reach the heights of power, you start to lose it and lash out at people. And to his credit, Pompey really kept that in check. I think...
00:33:26
Speaker
I'm working on through the details of his falling out with Julius Caesar and the kind of political deadlock that ends in the civil war in 49 between the two of them that Pompey ends up losing. But he does end up basically in this position against Caesar where
00:33:48
Speaker
In order for Caesar's in Gaul and trying to be restored back to the Republic, trying to reenter Roman politics on his own terms, and Pompey, the Senate's trying to oppose Caesar and prosecute him when he gets home.
00:34:05
Speaker
And Pompey wants to help Caesar out, they're friends, but Caesar is his junior colleague. Caesar is five or eight years younger than him and Pompey just cannot tolerate at the end of the day the idea of being an equal to Caesar. He will not allow Caesar to come back and he will not help Caesar out unless Caesar shows
00:34:30
Speaker
deference unless it's kind of on Pompey's terms and that that truncates a lot of the details, but I think there's there's some I read somewhere that Posidonius spoke of Pompey's exceeding empty
00:34:45
Speaker
lust for glory later in his years. So maybe he kind of ended up disappointing Pompey later on by sort of not seeing that the thing that he needed, that the state needed him to do, that the Republic needed was for him to acknowledge that Caesar was now his equal, whether he liked it or not, because it was either that or civil war. And Pompey chose civil war. He really dug his heels in. And he might have been listening to bad advice, but that's what ended up happening.
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's
Ambition as Motivation and Downfall
00:35:16
Speaker
interesting. I suppose you do have that just drive for glory, which is always that double-edged sword where it can be something that propels one towards
00:35:31
Speaker
a kind of greatness or virtue, but of course also carries with it these extreme, extreme risks that one overindulges in. That's why Seneca and Marcus Aurelius are always going after ambition. Usually they describe it as a vice, not something that's admirable in others. Right. You might need it to achieve great things,
00:35:58
Speaker
But if it controls you, but if, but if you aren't able to step back from it, when it really counts, you'll, you might end up destroying yourself as so many great men did. So yeah, I think that one of the reasons that they talk so much about ambition is they, they, they know it's power within themselves. They're trying to restrain it within themselves.
00:36:22
Speaker
They know it within themselves. They also, they're in the Roman court. They probably see the top, the most ambitious people in the world, and they can see what that does to people's character, both the positive and the negative aspects of that. Yeah, yeah. Certainly, and Postodonius himself saw a lot of this in his day. Yeah, it's also interesting how the focus, I think, of that, what we usually translate as
00:36:52
Speaker
ambition and say Marcus Aurelius is the love of others opinions, which is not necessarily how we use that word today. I describe someone who's ambitious as someone who they're seriously dedicated to some projects and venture and maybe wanting good reputation is a part of that, but it's not opinion loving.
00:37:16
Speaker
Often, I think, Marcus Raelis is talking about, you feel of doxa or something of that sort, which is a kind of ambition, but not the same thing. Interesting. The other Greek word that I think of most frequently for ambition is philatemia, the love of honor. That can be a positive word in a lot of contexts in Greek. I think this points to the ambiguity of ambition because
00:37:45
Speaker
In a Greek city state, as at Rome, the way that the polity motivates action on its own behalf, motivates its great men to go and lead armies and cough up the funds for a trireme, for example, is through honoring. That's what the city can give you in exchange for your great sacrifices and your financial input to the city.
00:38:11
Speaker
And so you need people to respond to that value system of the honor economy, but people who are uncompromising in their desire for honor are also the very people that rip the city apart. So there's some kind of like opposing molecular forces of ambition, keeping it in check.
00:38:41
Speaker
Maybe. All right, right. Yeah.
Pompey's Alignment with Stoic Values
00:38:43
Speaker
Solve for the equilibrium, I suppose. Mm hmm. What's that what's that? Right. Should I think also go back and highlight some some ways in which Pompey was stoic and is worth emulating, I think, and one you that came to mind when I was listening to your most recent episode two on his life is that relationship between him and Julia.
00:39:10
Speaker
which he seemed to take seriously in a way that was rare for many great men taking their marriage seriously as something that deserves some amount of emulation. I think there's probably that thought that so many people in that position don't have.
00:39:26
Speaker
the time or the interest to do that kind of thing. Well, I suppose he shows that what's possible, at least for many people to perform their role well, even at the highest levels, as it were. Yeah. Pompey had a lifelong reputation as being a faithful husband. He had he was a serial faithful husband. He had five wives. But Julia was supposed to be the best. That's Julius Caesar's daughter.
00:39:55
Speaker
And, but, you know, I think it was widely talked about that Julia is like young enough to be his daughter and oh, it's this old man with this young woman, isn't that a little bit? They were talking about it in those terms in that day. But what balanced it out for public opinion was that Julia really seemed to have
00:40:21
Speaker
Likewise, true love for Pompey. They really loved each other and they would spend time together. And it was because, as Plutarch says, Pompey was a really charming and affectionate, not just that, but faithful husband. And he took their relationship very seriously. He wanted to have children with her. He already had some children from a previous wife whom he divorced because she was unfaithful.
00:40:50
Speaker
And so he demanded that from his own wives, which was, you know, not a standard that every Roman husband upheld. And certainly
Posidonius' Religious and Spiritual Values
00:40:59
Speaker
not a standard that they imposed for the most part of themselves.
00:41:02
Speaker
And I think it's also interesting, speaking of Pompey's women, he likes to have intellectuals around, even though he wasn't an intellectual himself, he liked to have Cicero around, he liked to have this guy Theophanes of Mitalini around, he gave Theophanes citizenship, he was another historian, kind of a peer of Posidonius. And his last wife, Cornelia of the Metelli,
00:41:29
Speaker
She was famed for being a woman of great learning. Not so much Plutarch comments that she had that unappealing officiousness, which which studies bring to young ladies. That's how they thought of it in those days. So it's funny. But yeah, so he's I think he appreciates that part about Cornelia, that she that she's studying philosophy and literature and
00:41:57
Speaker
So you could point to that as another stoic aspect of Pompey that even if he's not doing metaphysical problems, he likes to be around wise people. He likes to get the input of people who study these things and at least hear them out. Right, right. Do other connections come to mind along this front in ways that we haven't mentioned? Pompey's either influenced by stoicism
00:42:27
Speaker
put the philosophy or related ideas into practice? Well, he was a big upholder of public religion. People think of Julius Caesar as the Venus guy. He's just claimed descent from Venus, who was the mythic founding goddess, mother of Aeneas.
00:42:54
Speaker
from the Virgil's Aeneid. But Pompey was sort of the first to lay his claim to Venus of the two of them. When he got back from the East, he built this great temple complex to Venus. It actually wasn't really a temple. It was a theater which was crowned by a little temple on top because the Romans had these laws against making permanent theaters. He built the first permanent theater for the Romans. But he called it a temple of Venus.
00:43:23
Speaker
But he had a special affinity for the goddess Venus, who was not just a goddess of, for the Romans at least, not just goddess of erotic love, but also a goddess of charm and rhetoric. So I think that's an interesting thing to think about. And this does connect with Postodonius too, if we want to go back in that direction. Postodonius was really interested in religion himself.
00:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder if you could say more about that, you know, interested in religion, what does that look like? Postodontist had a had a take on
00:44:01
Speaker
ancient Jewish history that Moses was this Egyptian priest who got fed up with the anthropomorphism of traditional Egyptian religion and just led a kind of revolt and left Egypt and established his own religion. He didn't think Moses was a Jew per se, but that he kind of invented Judaism by
00:44:27
Speaker
starting a new religion and colonizing Judea and founding this aniconic religion in the Temple of Jerusalem. And that, in Positonius' eyes, it later got corrupted by people who
00:44:46
Speaker
you know, superstitious people inventing things like dietary laws and the mosaic clock. So he didn't he didn't like everything about Judaism and also, you know, acquisitive priestly class conquering their neighbors and such. He didn't quite approve of that. But but he really appreciates. I think he had visited the temple in Jerusalem. He he said even to this day, even if nothing nothing's perfect. And there's certainly things to object to about Judaism. They managed to
00:45:15
Speaker
instill this sense of reverence and awe that you can't get in other temples, that whenever you bring in these anthropomorphic gods like we have among the Greeks and Romans, even though Positonius would be no advocate of abolishing them or changing public cult, he saw that, in his view at least, anthropomorphism in
Posidonius' Legacy and Historical Philosophy
00:45:35
Speaker
the divine sort of cheapened and vulgarized religion, I think is really fascinating.
00:45:43
Speaker
But Poseidonius had a really, really high opinion of divination, not of every kind of, you know, soothe saying and fortune telling practice, but he believed that people who are close to their death have particularly clairvoyant dreams if their souls are prepared.
00:46:09
Speaker
This might be a parallel that you can draw with Pompey. Actually, Pompey was noted for being kind of superstitious and skittish and listened a little too much to the omens in Cicero's opinion. Got it, got it. But there's this great quote from Posidonius. He said, the cause of emotions that is of disharmony and the unhappy life, I think emotions there, he means pathos,
00:46:39
Speaker
The cause of them is that men fail to be wholly consistent in following the Dymone within them. The Dymone, or spirit, that is akin to and of like nature with the power governing the whole universe. So I wonder if you could connect that with Paniteus and Role Ethics. For Posidonius,
00:47:02
Speaker
I think as an outgrowth of cosmopolitanism, that means that everybody kind of has their own role to play, right? And you have a unique diamond, but that diamond is also a reflection of like the divinity within, and you need to be in touch with that divine part of your nature.
00:47:24
Speaker
And where people go wrong is they listen to this part of them that is divorced from the divine, that is the irrational part of the soul, the unhappy, the godless part, as he calls it, our lower animal principle that drives us to glory without questioning whether it's just, for example. So he had a high opinion of certain aspects of religion, not everything about traditional religion, to be sure.
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I had no idea that he had the hypothesis that Moses was an Egyptian priest. I didn't know he was either the source or one of the believers in that. That's really cool.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah, so that's a quote at passages from Strabo, who is also a practicing stoic. But people, a lot of scholars agree that he's getting this from Posadonius, who he quotes extensively. So it's kind of hilarious. Yeah, that's really funny.
00:48:27
Speaker
But that thought about the diamond, that sounds like these views about the stoic God, where what is God, God is nature, but nature is understood as reason with that capital R, that sort of
00:48:45
Speaker
propelling force that provides a kind of providence structure to the world. And we each contain aspects of it, a fragment of that God within us. And that's just exactly that, something we need to align with. And by doing that, then we are respecting our own reason and respecting the reason of nature as a whole.
00:49:12
Speaker
I think it's a really fascinating view. And I think that this ties in with Posidonius. I think it ties in with his very serious interest in studying the natural world and the therapeutic value of that, which is something that Nock at least credits as inspiring Seneca's natural questions, which is very much in the spirit of studying nature as a form of therapy.
00:49:41
Speaker
to understand the cosmos, to remove fear, to understand the divine within you through studying the divine order of the cosmos as a, you know, expression of nature. And it could be that Posidonius, as Nok claims, was to a large extent responsible for this
00:50:07
Speaker
Uptick you see an interest in natural philosophy among Roman intellectuals. You see it in Lucretius. You see it in Virgil's Georgics. Cicero translated Eratus's phenomena, this astrological poem.
00:50:22
Speaker
astronomical poem. And Nock, and his opinion is not to be sneezed at, he says, well, Postodone has kind of made this stuff cool in Rome. And I think that's, that's a very interesting thought to consider. And another really
00:50:41
Speaker
key aspect, I think, of Posidonius as a philosopher to kind of round it out is, again, just this emphasis. For me, this is a big takeaway from studying Posidonius, is how important it is for philosophers to study history.
00:50:57
Speaker
to really get into the examples of the moral quandaries that great men get themselves into and understanding the causes of things. That was a huge part of, I mean, it was a third of all of his vast voluminous writings were his histories of his times, which goes to show you how seriously he took this as an ethical subject.
00:51:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great example. I think it's not something that really took root in Western philosophy for some time. This thought that you must study history, be familiar with questions of society broadly in order to do philosophy well is something that we really don't start seeing again until Nietzsche. I think that's maybe a little bit too fast, but I think there is something to that where it was
00:51:52
Speaker
many of the Renaissance characters, I suppose you see it, of course, which is a period of time that Nietzsche is inspired for. But when you think about philosophers of the Western canon, often they're not as involved in history, or at least don't connect that to their philosophy. Yeah, you can see it some in Aristotle. Aristotle's school put together a lot of biographies and
00:52:18
Speaker
And in a way, all the constitutions that he commissioned, constitution of Athens being one of the only ones that survives, you could see that as a sort of historical endeavor. But for the most part, I think you've got a point like,
00:52:34
Speaker
History is seen as not philosophy, certainly, certainly with our lens today of academic philosophy, but somebody like Plutarch. Yeah, of course, Plutarch. I suppose, I mean, yeah, to be clear, I think the Romans took this up for sure. Yeah. And Plutarch is a good example of someone who. But still, that's that's moral philosophy. It's like applied philosophy. It's sort of less serious than the stuff that you're supposed to argue about in the classroom that is the real philosophers, philosophers stuff.
00:53:06
Speaker
Yep, yep, absolutely. Excellent. Was there anything else you wanted to add? This has been, there's been a lot of fun, Caleb. Yeah. I, uh, I've really enjoyed the opportunity to dig into Postodonius and I, uh, I think, um, there's a chance.
00:53:19
Speaker
that among the scrolls that we are able to decode now through this Vesuvius challenge that will unearth some lost texts of Posidonius and I have high hopes that that would that that will happen at some point in our lifetimes sooner rather than later hopefully but there's there's just such fascination to be found in his writings and I think he could really
00:53:48
Speaker
teach us all kinds of stuff, not just about stoicism, but about ancient peoples, lost peoples that we don't know about, studying the Celts, the Jews, the Armenians, the pirates, et cetera. So yeah, stay tuned. I hope to be following that on my own podcast and my newsletter. Yeah. Fate Willing. That would be amazing. Fate Willing. Yeah. And where should people go to check out your stuff?
00:54:13
Speaker
You can find Cost of Glory anywhere you get your podcasts. I'm on YouTube and all the platforms. On Twitter, I'm at costofglory and costofglory.com if all else fails.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah, and do check out the, um, the classic roller podcast. You've got that, those two episodes now on Pompey, I think shooting for one more and then have many episodes on some of the other characters we mentioned. Yeah, next up will be, we didn't even talk about, uh, Cato the Younger, who was Pompey's great, uh,
00:54:49
Speaker
I don't know. They had a troubled relationship. They were frenemies, mostly enemies, which, which is a really interesting stoic conversation. But, um, yeah, Cato, Cato will be next, hopefully coming out later this summer and maybe we can have another conversation around that when that happens. Let's do it. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Alex. Enjoyed it, Caleb. Thanks.
00:55:12
Speaker
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00:55:31
Speaker
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