At eleven, the heir to a Roman brickworks fortune chose to wear a rough Greek cloak and sleep on the floor to imitate ancient philosophers. This episode follows Marcus Aurelius from that villa on the Caelian Hill through Hadrian's multi-generational adoption scheme that forced him into the imperial succession, the tug-of-war for his mind between the rhetorician Fronto and the Stoic Rusticus, and his unprecedented decision to share the throne with Lucius Verus.

The hosts then cover the cascade of disasters that hit his reign: the Tiber flood and famine, the Parthian invasion, Germanic tribes crossing the Danube, and the Antonine Plague that killed an estimated five to ten million people. They examine his currency devaluation, the auction of palace treasures, his legal work protecting orphans and slaves, the private Greek reflections written  ...