The ancients did not leave the traveler at the crossroads. They gave him a compass. The Stoic called it the Aim: the measure of life’s direction.

The Stoics were brutal in their clarity. Wealth, fame, comfort — all were indifferent (adiaphora). They might be preferred, but they could never make a life good. Only virtue could. Wisdom, courage, justice, temperance, these alone defined the summit.

Zeno laid the foundation: virtue is the only good, vice the only evil, all else indifferent. Chrysippus sharpened it: pleasure entices, pain distracts, but the wise follow reason alone.

Cleanthes, his successor, offered the image: “The willing soul follows reason as the willing beast its guide”; to resist is to be dragged behind the rope of necessity.

Marcus Aurelius ruled an empire, yet turned nightly to his journal, reminding himself that dignity, not ease, was his aim. Epictetus, born a slave, taught emperors the same: fortune may strip everything, but not the freedom to live with reason.

Nietzsche, centuries later, heard the same truth in harsher music: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Purpose, not pleasure, is the compass. Pleasure flickers. Purpose endures.

Virtue does not promise happiness; it promises dignity. It does not always feel good, but it makes you good. This is eudaimonia: not comfort but clarity, not ease but direction.

The summit cannot be bought. It must be climbed, by choice, by reason, by aim.