MeditationsMarcus Aurelius
About Meditations
The of Marcus Aurelius were never intended for publication. They are private notes, written in Greek during military campaigns on the Danube frontier, in which a Roman emperor reminds himself how to live. The title in the original is closer to "To Himself."
The entries return again and again to a small set of Stoic principles. The universe is governed by a rational order (logos), and human beings participate in that order through reason. What happens to you is material for virtue, not an obstacle to it. Fame is meaningless: Alexander the Great and his muleteer were resolved into the same elements. Death is not to be feared; it is the natural dissolution of a temporary arrangement. The body decays, impressions fade, and even the memory of the greatest persons is swallowed by time.
What gives the their distinctive force is not the philosophy, which Marcus inherited from Epictetus and the earlier Stoics, but the voice. This is a man with absolute power over an empire who writes as though his only real task is to govern himself. He is not preaching; he is struggling. The same reminders appear repeatedly because they have not yet fully taken hold. The endure as a record of sustained moral effort by someone with every reason to stop trying.