Known as the last of the Roman emperors called the “Five Good Emperors,” Marcus Aurelius was emperor of the Roman Empire from 161 to 180 AD, and is also known as one of the great Stoic philosophers in history. He is renowned for his strong moral character and although he prosecuted several large military campaigns, his was a reign of relative calm and stability in the empire – the last years of the so called “Pax Romana.”
The writings from his personal journal survive to this day and are compiled in the book known as “Meditations,” where he provides advice and insight into Stoic principles, virtue, reason, self-control, discipline, ethics, and dealing with adversity. Marcus Aurelius’s teachings continue to significantly influence generations 2000 years after his death.
Much of his reign was spent away from Rome. A plague carried home by soldiers returning from the east swept the empire in the 160s, and for most of his final decade he campaigned along the Danube frontier against the Germanic tribes pressing the border. It was there, in camp between campaigns, that he filled the notebooks we now read as Meditations, written in Greek and meant for no eyes but his own. He died on the frontier in 180 AD, and with him ended the line of emperors chosen by adoption and merit. The throne passed to his son Commodus.
Core Ideas
- Rule your own mind. Your judgments, choices, and actions are under your control. Outside events are not, and they cannot harm you unless your estimate of them does.
- Remember death. “You could leave life right now,” he wrote to himself. “Let that determine what you do and say and think.” Held close, the thought sorts what matters from what does not.
- Take the view from above. Picture the world from a great height, your city and your troubles one small part of a vast whole. Seen from there, most worries settle to their proper size.
- Expect change. Fortunes turn, reputations fade, and everyone who remembers them passes in turn. Work with the world as it is, and hold what you have loosely.
- Keep a daily practice. Meditations was a working journal, written in camp to correct its author. The philosophy lived in the repetition, one entry at a time.
Marcus Aurelius Quotes
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
Meditations, Book 4
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Meditations, Book 8
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
Meditations, Book 10
“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”
Meditations, Book 6
“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
Meditations, Book 4
Marcus Aurelius Books
“Meditations: A New Translation” – by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory Hays. The modern standard: plain, current English that keeps the directness of a man writing to himself.
“Marcus Aurelius – Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader” – by Marcus Aurelius and James Harris. A contemporary adaptation that rewrites the ideas in modern, everyday language.
“Meditations: The Annotated Edition” – by Marcus Aurelius with Robin Waterfield (translator). The scholarly route, with detailed notes on the people, places, and ideas behind the entries.
“Stoic Classics Collection: Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, Epictetus’s Enchiridion, Seneca’s On a Happy Life, On the Shortness of Life, On Peace of Mind & On Providence” – by Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca (with George Long and Aubrey Stewart, translators). Three Stoics in one volume, in the classic older translations.
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