Meditations

by Marcus Aurelius

The standard modern biography of Marcus is A. R. Birley, Marcus Aurelius (1966; rev. ed., New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987),

The upper-class education that Marcus enjoyed is described by S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

E. Champlin’s Fronto and Antonine Rome (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980) is the best modern study of Marcus’s teacher.

Glen Bowersock’s Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) is a fundamental study of intelle...

Finally, mention should be made of two modern novels set in the Antonine period, Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean (1885) and Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian (1951). Neither should be mistaken for a primary source, but each is, in its different way, a masterpiece.

The best introduction to Seneca is probably the Letters to Lucilius, of which a selection is available in Letters from a Stoic, trans. R. Campbell (New York: Penguin, 1969).

Epictetus’s Discourses and the Encheiridion are available in the Loeb series in a translation by W. A. Oldfather (2 volumes, 1925). The Encheiridion has also been translated by T. W. Higginson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955).

Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius, trans. M. Chase (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), is a thoughtful reconstruction of Marcus’s philosophical system.

My colleagues in the Department of Classics at the University of Virginia, and in particular my department chair, John Miller, made it possible for me to take course relief during the fall semester of 2001, when much of the work was completed.

There is no sign that he ever questioned slavery as an institution. If asked, he would no doubt have responded that “true” slavery is the self-enslavement of the mind to emotion and desire (cf. 8.3, 9.40, 11.30); actual bodily slavery is merely a condition to be accepted and endured, like nearsightedness or a cold.

To avoid the public schools, to hire good private teachers, and to accept the resulting costs as money well-spent.

This is always super interesting

To write dialogues as a student. To choose the Greek lifestyle—the camp-bed and the cloak.

To read attentively—not to be satisfied with “just getting the gist of it.” And not to fall for every smooth talker. And for introducing me to Epictetus’s lectures—and loaning me his own copy.

And to have learned how to accept favors from friends without losing your self-respect or appearing ungrateful.

Gravity without airs.

Self-control and resistance to distractions.

The sense he gave of staying on the path rather than being kept on it.

His constant devotion to the empire’s needs. His stewardship of the treasury.

The way he handled the material comforts that fortune had supplied him in such abundance—without arrogance and without apology. If they were there, he took advantage of them. If not, he didn’t miss them.

Find this really intriguing

Not prone to go off on tangents, or pulled in all directions, but sticking with the same old places and the same old things.

You could have said of him (as they say of Socrates) that he knew how to enjoy and abstain from things that most people find it hard to abstain from and all too easy to enjoy. Strength, perseverance, self-control in both areas: the mark of a soul in readiness—indomitable.

That I wasn’t more talented in rhetoric or poetry, or other areas. If I’d felt that I was making better progress I might never have given them up.

That whenever I felt like helping someone who was short of money, or otherwise in need, I never had to be told that I had no resources to do it with. And that I was never put in that position myself—of having to take something from someone else.

That when I became interested in philosophy I didn’t fall into the hands of charlatans, and didn’t get bogged down in writing treatises, or become absorbed by logic-chopping, or preoccupied with physics.

Throw away your books; stop letting yourself be distracted. That is not allowed.

Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses,

Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.

People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?

When it allows its action and impulse to be without a purpose, to be random and disconnected: even the smallest things ought to be directed toward a goal. But the goal of rational beings is to follow the rule and law of the most ancient of communities and states.

life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion. Then what can guide us? Only philosophy.

getting the most out of ourselves, calculating where our duty lies, analyzing what we hear and see, deciding whether it’s time to call it quits—all the things you need a healthy mind for … all those are gone. So we need to hurry. Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding—our grasp of the world—may be gone before we get there.

And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure.

Like this phrasing: anyone with “a deeper sensitivity”

You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What are you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.

To stand up straight—not straightened.

Your ability to control your thoughts—treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions—false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it.

Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us.

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth.

In todays parlance: keep your books, your journals, and your pens ready

Stop drifting. You’re not going to re-read your Brief Comments, your Deeds of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the commonplace books you saved for your old age. Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.

Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind.

Plato

No random actions, none not based on underlying principles.

People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within.

So keep getting away from it all—like that. Renew yourself. But keep it brief and basic. A quick visit should be enough to ward off all <…> and send you back ready to face what awaits you.

It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.

But your conversion should always rest on a conviction that it’s right, or benefits others—nothing else. Not because

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able—be good.

The tranquillity that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do. (Is this fair? Is this the right thing to do?)

“If you seek tranquillity, do less.”