How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

Who Should Read This

This book is built for a specific reader: someone who is dealing with real psychological difficulty — anxiety, anger, grief, fear of death — and wants more than platitudes. If you have tried therapy or considered it, Robertson writes from that world. He is a practicing cognitive behavioral therapist, and every chapter translates Stoic exercises into language that a therapist might actually prescribe.

If you are a philosophy reader who already knows Marcus Aurelius well, this book will still surprise you. Robertson brings clinical precision to passages in the Meditations that most commentators gloss over. His reading of Marcus’s relationship with anger, for instance, goes far beyond the standard interpretation and offers specific cognitive techniques that Marcus likely used but never spelled out.

If you want a general introduction to Stoicism, this is not the most efficient choice. Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life covers more ground more quickly. Robertson goes deep rather than wide, and the depth is the point.

The CBT Connection That Changes Everything

Robertson’s central argument is not that Stoicism influenced CBT, though it did. His argument is more specific: the Stoics were already doing cognitive behavioral therapy, just without the clinical framework. When Marcus Aurelius writes about separating his judgments from external events, he is describing what a modern therapist would call cognitive restructuring. When Epictetus tells his students to examine their initial impressions before accepting them, he is teaching what CBT calls cognitive defusion.

This is not a loose analogy. Robertson traces the direct lineage: Albert Ellis, who created Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (a precursor to CBT), was explicitly inspired by Epictetus. Aaron Beck, the founder of CBT, arrived at similar techniques through clinical research. The Stoics got there first through philosophical inquiry rather than controlled trials.

What this means practically is that the exercises in this book carry dual validation. They are grounded in a 2,000-year philosophical tradition and supported by modern clinical evidence. That combination is rare in the self-help landscape.

The Biographical Framework

Each chapter anchors a Stoic technique to a specific period in Marcus Aurelius’s life. The chapter on desire and addiction is set during Marcus’s education, when his teachers helped him abandon youthful excess. The chapter on pain management is set during the Marcomannic Wars, when Marcus was physically ill and commanding armies from the front. The chapter on death is set in Marcus’s final years, as plague devastated his empire and his own body failed.

This structure works remarkably well. Philosophy presented as abstract principle can feel lifeless. Philosophy presented as something a real person used to survive war, plague, betrayal, and chronic pain carries an entirely different weight. You stop asking whether Stoicism is theoretically sound and start asking whether you could use it to handle what you are actually facing.

Robertson does take liberties with the historical record where documentation is thin, filling gaps with informed speculation. He is generally transparent about this. The biography serves the philosophy, not the other way around, and readers seeking strict historical scholarship should pair this with Pierre Hadot’s The Inner Citadel.

The Key Techniques

Cognitive Distancing

The most immediately useful skill in the book. When you feel a strong emotion — anger at a colleague, anxiety about a presentation, grief over a loss — Robertson teaches you to notice the judgment embedded in the emotion and create space between yourself and that judgment. Not to suppress the feeling. Not to argue with it. Simply to observe: “I notice I am having the thought that this situation is terrible.” This tiny shift from experiencing a thought to observing a thought changes the emotional equation dramatically. Marcus practiced this constantly, and Robertson explains exactly how to replicate it.

The View from Above

Marcus frequently imagined looking down on the world from a great height, watching human activity as if observing ants. Robertson frames this as a specific therapeutic exercise for anxiety and excessive self-importance. When your problems feel enormous, mentally zoom out until they occupy their actual proportion within the sweep of time and space. This is not dismissal. It is recalibration.

Functional Analysis of Anger

Rather than telling you not to get angry (which is useless advice), Robertson walks through Marcus’s approach: ask what the anger is trying to accomplish, whether it will accomplish that goal, and what it will cost you. Usually anger promises justice and delivers regret. Marcus did not suppress his anger. He examined it until it no longer made rational sense to act on it.

Contemplation of the Sage

The Stoics recommended imagining how an ideal wise person would handle your current situation. Robertson makes this practical by using Marcus himself as the reference point. When facing a difficult conversation, a betrayal, or a health crisis, ask: how would someone with Marcus’s training and character respond? Not what would they feel — what would they do?

What It Does Not Do

Robertson is not interested in productivity, optimization, or success in the modern entrepreneurial sense. If you are looking for Stoicism as a competitive advantage, Ryan Holiday’s books are a better fit. Robertson’s Stoicism is clinical and therapeutic. It is designed to reduce suffering, not to increase performance. These overlap, but the emphasis matters.

The book also assumes you are willing to engage with biographical narrative. If you prefer pure instruction — exercises and frameworks without historical context — A Handbook for New Stoics or Irvine’s book will feel more efficient.

Read This If…

• You are dealing with anxiety, anger, or grief and want philosophy that functions as therapy
• You find Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations compelling but cryptic and want someone to unpack the psychological techniques behind the text
• You are interested in the connection between ancient philosophy and modern cognitive behavioral therapy

Skip This If…

• You want a broad overview of Stoicism — this goes deep on Marcus specifically
• You prefer pure exercises without biographical narrative
• You are looking for Stoicism as a productivity or leadership framework

Start Here

The next time you feel a surge of anger or anxiety, pause and try this: instead of saying “this is terrible,” say “I notice I am having the thought that this is terrible.” Say it out loud if you are alone. The addition of “I notice I am having the thought that” creates a gap between you and the emotion. It does not eliminate the feeling, but it gives you a moment to choose your response rather than being carried by the reaction. This is cognitive distancing, and Robertson builds an entire therapeutic framework around it.