The Marcus Aurelius Quote Steven Pressfield Couldn’t Ignore

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In this episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast, host Ryan Holiday and author Steven Pressfield explore the profound meaning behind Marcus Aurelius's epigraph 'Life is

Key takeaways

• Marcus Aurelius's quote 'life is warfare and a journey far from home' carries both literal and metaphorical weight—reflecting his physical travels as emperor and the existential struggle of human life.

Main topics

• Marcus Aurelius's quote in *Meditations*
• The role of epigraphs in literature and creative inspiration

Notable quotes

'Life is warfare and a journey far from home.' – Marcus Aurelius

Conclusion

The episode underscores the enduring power of Stoic wisdom, particularly through Marcus Aurelius's words,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode. Speaker 1 (0:19) of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Do you know what an epigraph is? Not an epitaph. An epitaph is what goes on your tombstone. Also the name of maybe the greatest newspaper in the history of the United States, the Tombstone Epitaph. No, an epigraph is the quote that goes like in the front of a book or maybe at the top of a new chapter or a part one, part two, part three. I love epigraphs. If you've read any of my books, you know I'm a sucker for epigraphs. You know, part of how I research is no, because I'm just always collecting these little things and I don't always know how or want to integrate them into the text. I want to sort of sit it there. It's like it's kind of capturing the theme. It's a meditation. It is the inspiration for the chapter I'm writing. I did epigraphs quite a bit in, I mean. My first book has an epigraph. One of the ones I'm proudest of is the epigraph to Conspiracy, which has a quote from Walker Percy's Lancelot, one of my favorite books. I didn't do epigraphs as much in the Virtue series. I did, you know, one at the beginning of the book, and then there's one for part one, part two, part three, but I didn't do one, you know, at the top of every chapter, trying to practice a little discipline. Apparently it comes from the Greek word epigraphae. which is the act of inscribing or inscription. It's funny, I pulled up the Merriam-Webster definition of this just so I made sure I had it exactly right. It says a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest a theme. And then it has like recent examples from the web and it's quoting a Vulture article from November 2025. And it says, That's the bitter epigraph that opens this invigorating first episode of Death by Lightning and one important aspect of the book on which the miniseries is based, Candace Millard's Destiny of the Republic. Speaker 1 (2:22) I just love that because like that is one of my favorite books. Destiny of the Republic is an incredible book by Candice Millard. It's not as good as River of Doubt, but it's pretty damn good. I want to say two things on epigraphs real quick. Number one, I have found so many things that I love through epigraphs. To me, one of the things an epigraph is a chance to do, it gives an author or writer a chance to kind of co-sign or endorse or go like, hey, this is cool. You've heard of this. Maybe also to go like, hey, I'm cool. I've heard of this. But the point is, I'm always marking books, circling the thing that's mentioned in the epigraph going, ooh, I want to hear more about that. I never heard. It's just a great way to discover stuff. It sends you down a rabbit hole. But also, I feel like epigraphs have set the tone for what I'm reading and then also set the tone for what I'm writing. Okay. So for what we are going to talk about today, I was struck. reading Steven Pressfield, one of my favorite writers. His new novel, The Arcadian, which is incredible. It's part of this series he's working on. You maybe read the first book in this series, which I raved about, A Man at Arms. There are just very few people who do historical fiction better than Steven Pressfield. I am the acknowledgement, not the epigraph of one of his books, The Daily Pressfield. But so I pop open The Arcadian. And I noticed, boom, Marcus Aurelius quote as the epigraph, life is warfare and a journey far from home. So the difference, to be clear, pertaining to Steven Pressfield, the difference between an epitaph and an epigraph would be epigraph is Marcus Aurelius saying life is warfare and a journey far from home as the front page to the Arcadian. An epitaph is something Steven. quotes, I have it on my wall on the other side of this wall here. He quotes the famous epitaph to the Spartans at Thermopylae in Gates of Fire on the last page. Go tell them stranger passing by here, obedient to their laws, rely. Which I went and saw last summer in Greece. So I knew I was going to love this book because, first off, the Marx Reel is done. But that's one of the most fascinating... and revealing passages and meditations because you can read it both philosophically and literally. It is one of the few biographical notes from Marcus, although it's easy to miss, which is what we're going to talk about in today's episode. So Steve and I are nerding out a little bit about a Marcus Aurelius passage, which is not something I necessarily expected we would do when he came out. But as I said, Steven Pressfield, if you don't know his stuff, I don't know what you're doing with your life. Turning Pro, The War of Art, The Warrior Ethos, Gates of Fire, Daily Pressfield, and then the new one, The Arcadian. Oh, he signed a bunch of them while he was here. He's amazing. Had an incredible life. Let's just get into it. Here we go. So your book starts with a Marx-Tribulus epigraph, which is one of my favorite quotes in meditations. He says, life is warfare and a journey far from home. And I, the first time I read this, took it as being metaphorical. And then I was, 10 years ago or so, I gave a talk in Budapest and I was flying into Budapest. And so I was like, I know nothing about Budapest. And I was like, I should read about it. And so I'm reading about it on the airplane. This is embarrassing, but I'd already written two books about Stoic philosophy at this point. And it hit me that Marx really said been to Budapest. As I'm reading like the Wikipedia page, I go, wait, we're so far from Rome. This is insane. How could the emperor of Rome been in Budapest? And then I go down the shrapnel. I'm looking at this map of like the known travels of Marx. I mean, he dies in Vienna. And I go, oh, that quote that life is warfare and a journey far from home. Like it hit me in a new way because I had the physical manifestation of how far he had traveled. And then I realized I think he was being a lot more literal than I took that quote to mean. Oh, Speaker 2 (6:39) I took it the opposite way. Okay. I thought I know the guy traveled long ways, you know, journey far from home. And to me, talk about reincarnation. Yes. I mean, I'm sure I think the same metaphor you thought. Far from home is our place among the stars, you know? And life, here we're down in this purgatory where there's warfare. Speaker 1 (7:00) Oh, I see. And we're a long Speaker 2 (7:01) way from our real home beyond the stars, you know? That's Speaker 1 (7:05) a very interesting interpretation. That Speaker 2 (7:07) was how I saw it. Now, maybe he probably didn't mean it that way. No, Speaker 1 (7:09) I mean, I think it's probably working on a bunch of different levels. And he probably also means, like, life is fighting and arguing and struggle. And, you know, it's lonely and you're... takes you away from home. But I mean, he spends the majority of his reign or large chunks of his reign, you know, fighting with the Roman army in these frontier provinces. I think it works on both levels, but you go, oh, this guy wasn't dealt the hand that he wanted to be dealt. He Speaker 2 (7:37) had Speaker 1 (7:38) a nice palace. He Speaker 2 (7:39) always had Speaker 1 (7:39) a Speaker 2 (7:39) great way of, Speaker 1 (7:39) yeah. Speaker 2 (7:40) But he didn't get to live Speaker 1