Meditations

NOTES

Marcus Aurelius opens the work with an extended catalogue of formative influences, listing the lessons drawn from relatives, tutors, and philosophical mentors. From his grandfather Verus he absorbed gentleness and the absence of passion; from the memory of his father, shamefastness and masculine conduct; from his mother, religious devotion, liberality, and restraint from excess. His great-grandfather provided access to public schools and capable teachers. A household tutor taught him to avoid factional attachments in the circus and amphitheatre, to endure labour, to require few things, and to handle matters himself rather than delegating.

From Diognetus he learned to disregard charlatans and sorcery, to tolerate free speech, and to embrace philosophy, along with early exposure to Bacchius, Tandasis, and Marcianus. Rusticus redirected him toward self-correction, prevented him from imitating ordinary sophists, persuaded him to abandon rhetoric and poetry, taught him to write plainly, and gave him Epictetus’s Hypomnemata. Apollonius modeled true liberty, unwavering adherence to reason, and equanimity through pain, bereavement, and illness, while showing how to receive favours without becoming indebted. Sextus demonstrated paternal household governance, naturalness, the Stoic ideal of apatheia combined with tenderness, and the skill of ordering life’s determinations methodically.

Alexander the Grammarian showed how to correct errors of speech without reproach. Fronto illustrated the envy and fraud inherent in tyrannical rule. Alexander the Platonic warned against the habitual excuse “I am not at leisure.” Catulus taught reconciliation and the love of children. His brother Severus modelled kindness to his household, introduced him to the examples of Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dio, and Brutus, and inspired his conception of an equal commonwealth governed for the welfare of subjects. Claudius Maximus embodied self-mastery, cheerfulness in sudden misfortune, moderation, gravity, and the capacity to be “straight and right” by nature rather than correction.

His adoptive father Antoninus displayed constancy after deliberation, freedom from vanity, laboriousness, impartiality, moderate conduct toward friends, accurate consultation, suppression of flattery, and the ability to want and to enjoy things without dependence on them. Marcus credits the gods for good kinsmen, preservation of his youth, the example of a father who governed without ostentation, ingenuous children, a loving wife, capable teachers, healing dreams, and protection from the corrupting influence of certain sophists.

Among the Quadi at Granua he composes a morning meditation: one must expect to meet the idle, ungrateful, railing, envious, and uncharitable, all of whom are harmed only by ignorance of true good and evil. Because the offender shares in reason and the divine particle, opposition is unnatural. He then distinguishes flesh, life, and reason, urging the old man not to enslave his ruling part to passion or fear.

The second book intensifies ethical exhortation. Marcus recalls how long self-improvement has been postponed, urging awareness of his place within the world and its divine governor. Every action should be performed as though it were the last, with gravity, justice, and freedom from hypocrisy. He rebukes his soul for wasting its remaining time by seeking happiness in others’ opinions. External events should not distract him from learning; the only true unhappiness lies in failing to guide one’s soul by reason.

He applies Theophrastus’s comparison of sins: those committed through lust are worse than those through anger, because the lustful sin voluntarily while the angry are first wronged. He reflects on death: if gods exist they will not harm one who leaves human society; if they do not exist, life without providence is worthless; and the only true evils—vice—are within human power to avoid. All external things, good and bad, fall equally upon the good and the bad and are themselves indifferent.

Time, whether three thousand or ten thousand years, amounts to the same moment of present life, which is all anyone ever loses. Monimus the Cynic taught that all is opinion. The soul wrongs itself when it complains against the universe, harms another, yields to pleasure or pain, dissembles, or acts without reference to the rational end. Philosophy consists in preserving the inner spirit from injury, acting without hypocrisy, accepting whatever comes, and meeting death calmly as the resolution of elements—a process of nature that cannot therefore be evil.