Meditations

Meditations is the private notebook of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD, in which he wrote down reminders to himself about how to live well. Composed in Greek between about 170 and 180 AD, much of it while he was on military campaign, it is one of the best-known works of Stoic philosophy. This Atlas Media edition uses George Long’s English translation, published under the title Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

Marcus probably never meant the book to be read by anyone else. It has no official title; Meditations is one of several names later given to it, and the oldest manuscripts call it, in Greek, “to himself”. It is made up of twelve books of short entries, some a single sentence, others a page or more, in no strict order.

The first book is different from the rest. In it Marcus lists what he learned from the people who shaped him: his grandfather, his mother, his tutors and his adoptive father, the emperor Antoninus Pius. From one he learned patience, from another to read carefully, from another to take criticism without anger. It is a portrait of gratitude.

The other books return again and again to a few great themes. Life is short, and everything passes quickly; emperors and slaves alike are soon forgotten. Death is natural and nothing to fear. What disturbs us is not events themselves but our judgements about them, and those judgements are within our power.

Marcus reminds himself to do his duty each day, even when he would rather stay in bed. He tells himself to expect to meet people who are meddling, ungrateful or unkind, and to remember that they act from ignorance and that he is bound to them as a fellow human being. Anger, he writes, does more harm than the things that cause it.

He also asks himself to see things from a cosmic perspective: to consider how small one life is within the whole of time and the universe, and to accept his place in the order of nature with calm.

The writing is plain and direct. Marcus is not lecturing others but arguing with himself, correcting his own faults, and encouraging himself to stay steady. That honesty gives the book much of its power.

Long’s Victorian translation is careful and slightly formal. He kept close to the Greek and added notes for readers unfamiliar with Stoic ideas.