THE Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is a work without parallel among writings surng from Classical antiquity—and an exceptional work in any age and culture. It is the philosophical diary of a Roman emperor, probably written while he was campaigning in Germany near the end of his life. In short, intense, and often powerful reflections, Marcus tries to articulate his core beliefs and values. Darwing mainly on Stoic philosophy, but formulated in his own way, Marcus finds the resources to help him meet challenges that he is acutely conscious of but which are also universal: facing one’s own approaching death, making sense of one’s so role and projects, looking for maral significance in the natural world.
Marcus’ Life and Career
Marcus (AD 121-80) was born in Rome as Marcus Annius Verus into a family of Spanish origin which had already achieved political distinction, His father died while Marcus was a child, and he was brought up by his grandfather, a relative of the emperor Hadrian, Hadrian admired the young Marcus, calling him Verissimus (‘most truthful’). When Hadrian chose Antoninus Pius as his heir and successor, he made Antoninus adopt as his sons Marcus and another young man, Lucius Verus. Marcus was educated by a number of famous teachers, including the orator Fronto; much of their correspondence survives, and a selection is included in his volume. From the age of 12, Marcus showed a strong interest in philosophy; after an early introduction to Stoicism, Junius Rusticus guided him to Epictetus’ Discourses which formed an important influence on the Meditations (1.7). Marcus married Antoninus’ daughter Faustina, his first cousin, in 145, and seemed to have had a largely happy marriage, with several children. In Book 1 of the Meditations (the only bok which has a single theme and overall structure), Marcus reviews the ethical and intellectual influence of his family and friends, giving spe attention to his adoptive father and predecessor as emperor, Antoninus Pius (1.16).
Marcus’ period as emperr(61-80) was marked by good relations between emperor and senate and was generally seen as a period of good administration. He ruled as co-emperor with Lucius Verus until Lucius’ death from illness in 169, and this collaboration seemed to have worked well. However, this was also a period when the stability of the roman empire was under threat from external enemies, and much of Marcus’ effort was devoted to organizing resistance to these threats. Between 162 and 165, the main focus was on responding to the Parthian invasion of the eastern part of the empire, with Lucius Verus as commander. In 166 and 168, plagues in Italy and the death of Lucius interrupted attempts to stabilize the Danube frontier of the empire. There was a series of campaigns in north Italy and Germany until his death in 180. These campaigns were largely successful and the borders of the empire were secured. A further threat was a failed revolt against Marcus by Avidius Cassius, governor of Egypt and Syria in 175. There were also persecutions of the Christians in Roman Gaul (France) and Asia Minor (Turkey), remembered bitterly in Christian sources but not treated as much of importance in Roman historical records. Despite all these disturbances, Marcus’ period as emperor was regarded as a good one at the time and afterwards, espely by contrast with his son, Commodus (emperor 180-92), who ruled badly and was finally assassinated as a tyrant.
Meditations: Form, Purpose, style
In a sense the Meditations have virtually no literary form and belong to no recognized genre of ancient writing. The title, Meditations was given to the work in the seventeenth century, is not thought to be Marcus’ own. Probably the work had no title and was not intended for publication but served as a purely private notebook for Marcus’ reflections. Ancient Greek and Roman texts are conventionally subdivided into ‘books’ and ‘chapters’; and this arrangement has been applied to this work. But only the first book (which records Marcus’ ethical debts to those who have influenced him) has any clear overall structure, and show little or no sign of deliberate organization. It seems likely that Marcus simply wrote down one or two comments at moments of leisure, for instance, at the beginning or end of the day, and the resulting work is the sum of those comments. The Meditations are written in Greek, which was the standard language for ancient philosophy and which Marcus would have known well (though, of course, his normal language was Latin). There are some indications that the work was written towards the end of his life; two books (2 and 3) have heading which refer to his German campaigns. Frequent and increasing references to his age, dissatisfaction with his associates, and his approaching death may indicate that the order of the books corresponds to the order in which they were written.
In spite of the non-standard character of Marcus’ book, it is not difficult to identify its overall aim. Marcus is writing to writing to examine his inmost thoughts and advise himself how best to live. More precisely, he tries to encapsulate, in short , string sentences, key ethical principles and insights to support the overall direction of his life. As he puts it himself: ‘So constantly grant yourself this retreat and so renew yourself ; but keep within you concise and basic precepts that will be enough, at first encounter, to cleanse you from all distress and to send you back without discontent to the life to which you will return’(4.3). The broader context for this aim is the spread of works of (what we might call) ‘practical ethics’ in the first and second centuries AD. These have their roots in the philosophical theories, particularly Stoicism and Epicureanism, that emerged in the Hellenistic era (third to first century BC); but this kind of writing is also influenced by the great fourth-century BC thinkers Plato and Aristotle, espely Plato. Espely important for Marcus were the Discourses of Epictetus (c.AD 55-135), recording his Stoic teachings on practical ethics. Seneca (c.4 BC-AD 65), another Roman politician strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy, wrote extensively on this topic throu&nsp;the medium of dialogues, essays, and literary letters. Two general types of such writing espely underlie the Meditations, both types widely used in Stoicism, which is the main theory relevant for Marcus. One type offers generalized guidance about how to direct your ethical life, referring espely to the good qualities or virtues you should aim to express, and stressing that these should inform the roles and projects you undertake in life. The treatise On Duties (or On Obligations), espely Book 1, by Cicero (106-43 BC), another Roman politician-philosopher, is a famous example of this kind of writing. The other type is philosophy used as a means of therapy, designed to identify psychological and ethical failings (or sicknesses) and to cure them. Cicero also wrote in his genre (Tusculan Disputations) as did Seneca (On Anger). Marcus’ Meditations reflect the aims and themes of both these two kinds of writing, and combine advice and therapy in a highly distinctive way.
By Marcus’ time, Stoic thinkers had also worked out specific schemes or methods of practical ethics, designed to enable people to conduct their own self-improvement in a relatively systematic way. Seneca for instance, advocates a threefold method: (1) assessing the ethical value of each object or activity, (2) adjusting your motivation to match the value of the object, and(3) working towards consistency between motivation and action. Epictetus offers a rather similar three-stage pattern. The first stage is matching our desires with the value of what we desire, and doing so in a way that shapes our emotional response. The second is forming motivation that is ethically appropriate, particularly in our dealings with other people. The third is aiming at comle&bsp;consistency between our various beliefs and between our beliefs and our actions. In the Meditations, we sometimes find versions of these methods, thou&nsp;the stages are not always given in the same order as in the other thinkers(8.7,9.6-7). One recurrent feature is what Marcus describes as a ‘stripping’ method, focused on giving things their proper ethical value and ensuring that this valuation is reflected in how we act and fell in each case.