Although the slave Epictetus was one of the principal Stoic writers, the emperor Marcus Aurelius's upper-class background is more typical of its devotees. Private cultivation rather than social action makes for the good life. "The world is rational, but it is only amenable to active intervention within the limits of the individual's capacity.
It is a kind of Platonism shrunk to a pursuit of private feelings and thoughts: Do the best with what you can control and refine, and let the rest go. Make the best of what can be humanly cultivated. The Stoics asked the Romans to realize that much that is encountered in life is beyond the individual's control. “The Stoics taught a life of restraint and control, the personal cultivation of learning, beauty, and reason.
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