Dear Reader,

Standing in line at the register the other day, I couldn't help overhearing the woman on her cell phone in front of me. Her mother had abused her. Her employer didn't appreciate her. Her husband didn't understand her. Her kids disrespected her. By the time she was done, I could have sworn I heard the sun was too bright outside and the birds were singing too loud.

Some things never change...If a citizen of ancient Greece or Rome were magically transported into the modern era, he would be astounded by the current state of agriculture, transportation, housing, medicine, architecture, technology, and living standards.


But humanity itself would offer few surprises. We remain the same flawed human beings we always were, struggling with the same deadly sins our ancestors wrestled with millennia ago.
That is why ancient philosophers still speak to us - if we listen. The wisdom of the classical world transcends place and time.


The Stoic philosophy, for example, dominated the ancient world for nearly 600 years, beginning in the late 4th century B.C.
Stoics believed that reason was supreme. Tranquility is only achieved, they taught, by suppressing irrational emotions - like regrets about the past - and accepting life's unavoidable disappointments and setbacks.
One of the great exponents of Stoicism was a slave named Epictetus, born around 55 A.D. in the eastern outreaches of the Roman Empire.