Marcus Aurelius: Meditations-- "I Came, I Saw, I Ruminated"

"The emperor Marcus Aelius Aurelius Antoninus who reigned from 161-181 was the only Roman emperor besides Julius Caesar whose writings were to become part of the canon of Western classics. His Meditations are a loosely-organized set of thoughts relating to the stoic philosophy which had been popular among the better-educated citizens of Rome for some centuries. It stressed self-discipline, virtue, and inner tranquillity. Aurelius was also a social reformer who worked for the improvement of the lot of the poor, slaves, and convicted criminals. Non-Christians in the Western World have often looked to him as a role model. He was also a fierce persecutor of Christianity, doubtless because he felt that the religion threatened the values that had made Rome great. Aurelius was not an original or brilliant thinker, but his Meditations reflect well the stoic strain in Greco-Roman civilization. The emphasis on morality combined with emotional detachment is strongly reminiscent of Buddhist thought, with which Stoicism has often been compared."

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University 

"Loss is change, and change is nothing but nature's delight."--Marcus Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius was the last of the "Five Good Emperors" of Rome who ruled from 98AD--180AD, a period that Edward Gibbon of "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" fame thought "was the most civilized  portion of mankind".  The good emperors included Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and the two Antonines--Antonius Pius and his adopted son, Marcus.  

It was at this point--the Second Century of the Common Era-- that the Empire reached its height  of control over a vast part of the Western world--from Armenia, which was under a king bound to Rome, all the way across Europe below the Rhine, down through Palestine, Egypt, all of north Africa,  Spain, Gaul and through Britain to the fringes of what would later be called Scotland.  At some point in the wars against the Parthian Empire, Roman soldiers even reached the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers near the Persian Gulf.  

    

Re-reading "Meditations" recently, it struck me that the old Marcus would not have been a blogger.  He doesn't talk much about himself, doesn't seem interested in news or popular culture or any kind of gossip. Whether he intended these works to be read by anyone else, it's certain  he loved writing and expressing the Stoic philosophy of self-control and maintaining personal integrity no matter what disasters befall an individual or his circumstances.  

His education came from several tutors: (from Wikipedia) He had three tutors in Greek, Aninus Macer, Caninius Celer, and Herodes Atticus, and one in Latin, Cornelius Fronto. (Fronto and Atticus, however, probably did not become his tutors until his adoption by Antoninus in 138.) The preponderance of Greek tutors indicates the importance of the language to the aristocracy of Rome.^[80] This was the age of the Second Sophistic, a renaissance in Greek letters. Although educated in Rome, in his Meditations, Marcus would write his inmost thoughts in Greek.^[81]

Aurelius believed in doing whatever work your particular station called you to do.  He was big on getting up out of bed each day and do it and don't complain or express frustration. Secondly, that you can only expect to see a positive way ahead if you can except change.  Change has  still been a scary process in my life and I don't know if a good Stoic would have always found me an apt pupil.  But still some of it rubbed off on me I suppose because I go about in hard times at work or in family situations with the attitude that the only thing I can count on consistently is change. 

This to me sums up a lot of what old M.A. was getting at about life and gaining a perspective on this world.  It's from Book Four of this work:

"Think continually how many physicians are dead after often fretting over the sick; and how many astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead, so to speak, Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and innumerable others. Add to the total all whom you have known, one after another.

 "One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him: and all this in a short time. To conclude, always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time in the way of nature, and end your journey in contentment, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. "

Cheerful stuff, huh?  The only thing close to this "vanity of vanities, all is vanity"approach to life comes from The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible.  

  

In the first part of "The Meditations" he lists all of his relatives and friends and teachers who helped him to maturity.    But beyond that we get little autobiographical detail about his life and extraordinary position.  In some ways this is refreshing because he doesn't go on about his military achievements the way Julius Caesar did when he was slaughtering Gauls and building "civilization" by sword and fire back in his day.   

It was during the last of these times that Marcus Aurelius wrote his meditations, between 160-168 AD, mostly with the Roman legions on the northern fringes of the empire, facing the Germanic tribes who weren't interested in being part of the Pax Romana. 

 They were trouble enough, but Aurelius also had to also at various times face attacks from the powerful Parthian Empire in the East, a terrible plague that killed as many as two thousand Romans a day at its height and may have wiped out five million people, and the trouble with naming a decent successor.  (If he hadn't been a Stoic by instruction, he probably would have had to form  a similar philosophy to maintain his bearings.) 

It's hard to believe that he was really happy with his loathsome and cruel son, Commodus, but he ascended to the throne after Aurelius' death anyway after the father died from--what else--plague--in what is now Vienna.  But he had little choice as the fifteen children he had with his wife Faustina  had dwindled to four by that time he died. 

Somehow, from reading his meditations, I think Aurelius would have been happier as a teacher and not a great leader with crushing responsibilities.  But that was not his fate, and I think he did his best with what nature, fate  or God put to him to do.