Marcus Aurelius

In brief

Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) was Roman emperor from 161 until his death and a Stoic reader who used philosophy to examine his own conduct.[4] His surviving Meditations offers an unusual view of an ancient person trying to practise a school of thought.[4] It is not a formal handbook written for beginners.[4] The modern title was supplied later, and the work’s arrangement does not provide a simple biography or a complete exposition of Stoic doctrine.[4]

Life

Marcus received extensive education in rhetoric and philosophy and was shaped by Stoic teachers, especially Rusticus, Apollonius and Sextus.[4] He inherited imperial power from Antoninus Pius and governed during military conflicts and plague.[4] Much about the circumstances in which particular passages were written remains uncertain; the text does not identify every event behind the reminders he wrote to himself.[4] The Stanford Encyclopedia cautions against treating the Meditations as transparent autobiography.[4]

What survives

The Meditations consists of twelve books of Greek notes, repetitions and short arguments.[4] Book I records people and teachers from whom Marcus believed he had learned.[4] Later books return to mortality, anger, the use of impressions, justice and the relation between an individual and the whole.[4] The fragments have a deliberately personal, sometimes aphoristic form.[4] Their repetition is part of the practice: Marcus returns to doctrines he finds difficult to hold in view.[4]

Our site presents George Long’s 1862 public-domain English translation alongside passage-level references. A useful place to begin is Meditations 5.16, but a single passage should not be taken as the whole of Marcus’ position.

In the tradition

Marcus’ thought stands in conversation with earlier Stoicism and especially with Epictetus, whose works he records reading.[1][4] He also quotes outside the Stoic school.[1][4] The result is not a perfectly uniform doctrinal system but a set of exercises directed at a person who held considerable political power.[1][4] Modern readers can learn from the attempt while keeping the difference between an emperor’s circumstances and their own in view.[1][4]

Further reading

Read the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Marcus Aurelius and the site’s Meditations library.

Sources

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism — Stoicism — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [4] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcus-aurelius — Marcus Aurelius — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy