Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~75,800 words · 360 passages
Cite this work
- APAMarcus Aurelius. (n.d.). Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/marcus-aurelius/thoughts-of-marcus-aurelius-antoninus
- MLAMarcus Aurelius. "Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/marcus-aurelius/thoughts-of-marcus-aurelius-antoninus.
- ChicagoMarcus Aurelius. Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/marcus-aurelius/thoughts-of-marcus-aurelius-antoninus.
What it is about
The private notebooks of a Roman emperor reminding himself how to live: what is in our power, how to bear pain and death, and why another's offence should not govern us.
Context and history
Written in Greek between AD 170 and 180, much of it during the military campaigns on the Danube, and never meant for publication: they are one man's notes to himself. They survived through chance copies and were not printed until 1559. That the most widely read Stoic book in the world was written by the most powerful man of his age — and that he writes in it about his own irritability — is much of what makes it last.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The youth was most carefully brought up. He thanks the gods (i. 17) that he had good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good. He had the happy fortune to witness the example of his uncle and adoptive father Antoninus Pius, and he has recorded in his word (i. 16; vi. 30) the virtues of the excellent man and prudent ruler. Like many young Romans he tried his hand at poetry and studied rhetoric. Herodes Atticus and M. Cornelius Fronto were his teachers in eloquence. There are extant letters between Fronto and Marcus,[A] which show the great affection of the pupil for the master, and the master's great hopes of his industrious pupil. M. Antoninus mentions Fronto (i. 11) among those to whom he was indebted for his education. [A] M. Cornelii Frontonis Reliquiae, Berlin, 1816. There are a few letters between Fronto and Antoninus Pius. When he was eleven years old, he assumed the dress of philosophers, something plain and coarse, became a hard student, and lived a most laborious, abstemious life, even so far as to injure his health. Finally, he abandoned poetry and rhetoric for philosophy, and he attached himself to the sect of the Stoics. But he did not neglect the study of law, which was a useful preparation for the high place which he was designed to fill. His teacher was L. Volusianus Maecianus, a modern writers, who select what they like from a story and reject the rest of the evidence; or if they do not reject it, they dishonestly suppress it. A man can only act consistently by accepting all this letter or rejecting it all, and we cannot blame him for either. But he who rejects it may still admit that such a letter may be founded on real facts; and he would make this admission as the most probable way of accounting for the existence of the letter; but if, as he would suppose, the writer
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