Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~75,800 words · 360 passages
Cite this work
- APAMarcus Aurelius. (n.d.). Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/marcus-aurelius/thoughts-of-marcus-aurelius-antoninus
- MLAMarcus Aurelius. Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/marcus-aurelius/thoughts-of-marcus-aurelius-antoninus.
- ChicagoMarcus Aurelius. Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/marcus-aurelius/thoughts-of-marcus-aurelius-antoninus.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
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.
[A] Eusebius, iv. 26; and Routh's Reliquiae Sacrae, vol. I, and the notes. The interpretation of this Fragment is not easy. Mosheim misunderstood one passage so far as to affirm that Marcus promised rewards to those who denounced the Christians; an interpretation which is entirely false. Melito calls the Christian religion "our philosophy," which began among barbarians (the Jews), and flourished among the Roman subjects in the time of Augustus, to the great advantage of the empire, for from that time the power of the Romans grew great and glorious. He says that the emperor has and will have as the successor to Augustus' power the good wishes of men, if he will protect that philosophy which grew up with the empire and began with Augustus, which philosophy the predecessors of Antoninus honored in addition to the other religions. He further says that the Christian religion had suffered no harm since the time of Augustus, but on the contrary had enjoyed all honor and respect that any man could desire. Nero and Domitian, he says, were alone persuaded by some malicious men to calumniate the Christian religion, and this was the origin of the false charges against the Christians. But this was corrected by the emperors who immediately preceded Antoninus, who often by their rescripts reproved those who attempted to trouble the