Meditations
Marcus Aurelius · translated by Meric Casaubon
A Roman emperor's notes to himself on self-command, repetitive in places and most useful where it is most concrete.
Editorial review. Written from the complete text of Project Gutenberg eBook #2680.
suffer not that excellent part to be brought in subjection, and to become slavish
What it is
Meditations is twelve books of short numbered sections, written by the emperor Marcus Aurelius and addressed to himself. This text is Meric Casaubon's English translation of 1634, which the introduction lists first among the English versions. The introduction reports that Hadrian used to call Marcus Verissimus, more truthful, instead of Verus. Book I, I lists what he learned from his grandfather, his mother and his teachers. The appendix holds letters with Fronto, about thirty years older than Marcus. The editor's notes say the text is not a critical edition and that Casaubon's bracketed additions were removed for readability.
What holds up
Book I, XVI is the strongest passage. Marcus tells himself to think little of his flesh, to see his life as a breath of wind, and to keep his ruling part from being pulled about by lusts as if on wires.
Book I, XV is a working drill. Each morning he names the people he expects to meet, the idle, the ungrateful, the railer and the envious, and then gives the reason none of them can make him incur anything truly reproachful. He calls each of them a kinsman by shared reason, and compares people to hands, feet and eyelids.
Book XII, VI has the most practical image. A principle should be held the way a wrestler-fighter keeps both hands free, not the way a gladiator fights with one sword and is finished if it is taken. A commander can use that lesson directly: do not hang everything on one weapon.
Book VII, XVII holds up because it is concrete. The universe shapes one substance into a horse, then a tree, then a man, and each form lasts only a little while.
Book VIII, XXIV runs a chain of deaths in plain names, Lucilla burying Verus and then being buried herself, and ends with Antoninus himself. The plainness does the work.
What does not
The editor says Casaubon's version is often a paraphrase rather than a close translation. A reader after Marcus's exact wording will not always get it.
The English is archaic. Words such as shamefastness and divers would slow a modern reader.
Book III, III argues from examples. Hippocrates cured many and then died, and the forecasters who foretold others' deaths were surprised by fate themselves. That is anecdote standing in for proof, and a reader who expects evidence will find none.
Repetition is the book's weakest habit. Book XII, VI says all is but conceit and opinion, and Book XII, XVI says all is but opinion again, ten sections later.
The cosmos is asserted, not shown. The introduction states that the divine ruling principle makes all things work together for good, and the book takes that premise as given. A reader who does not share it has to supply it.
Who should read it
Read it if you run something, a unit, a company, a household or a campaign, and need drills for keeping judgment steady under pressure. Read it a few sections at a time rather than straight through, and watch for maxims that recur, as they do in Book XII. Skip it if you want narrative history, since it has little. The appendix gives the human side: one letter says Marcus studied from the ninth hour of the night to the second hour of day. Expect paraphrase in places, not Marcus's exact wording.
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