# Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180 CE) was Roman emperor for nineteen years, most of
them spent on the Danube frontier fighting the Marcomanni and Quadi, and in the
intervals dealing with plague, a revolt by his most trusted general, and the
death of most of his children. In the evenings he wrote notes to himself in
Greek. They were not meant for anyone else. They survived, under the title
*To Himself*, and are read today as the *Meditations*.

## A private notebook

The book has no argument and no order. Its twelve sections repeat a small set
of reminders in many forms, because that is what the writer needed. He tells
himself, again and again, that:

1. everything that happens is part of nature, and nature is not to be blamed;
2. other people act badly out of ignorance, and are still his kin;
3. fame is a noise that stops, and the people who will remember him will die
   too;
4. the present moment is the only thing anyone has, and it is enough.

He begins with a chapter of thanks to the people who taught him, from his
grandfather to the gods. He learned from Epictetus, through the notes of
Arrian, the distinction between what is in our power and what is not, and he
learned from the Stoic Rusticus not to be taken in by display.

## The inner citadel

The centre of his Stoicism is the ruling part of the soul, which nothing
outside can touch unless it consents. Pain is in the body; the mind can decline
to call it an evil. Insult is in the mouth of another; the mind can decline to
be hurt. He calls this the inner citadel, and much of the book is the sound of
a man retreating into it at the end of a long day.

> Begin the morning by saying to yourself: I shall meet with the busybody, the
> ungrateful, the arrogant, the deceitful, the envious, the unsocial. All these
> things happen to them because of their ignorance of what is good and evil.

## Assessment

He was not an original thinker, and did not try to be. His value is as a
witness: a Stoic with every excuse to abandon the doctrine, who instead tested
it nightly against the worst that power and grief could bring, and left the
results for anyone to read. The book has been carried in the packs of soldiers
and the pockets of prime ministers, and it is still the most read work of
ancient philosophy.

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*Stoa Press · Philosophy Essays · Markdown edition*