User:InformationvsInjustice/sandbox Meditations

This page is about the writings by Marcus Aurelius. For other uses, see Meditation (disambiguation).

Meditations

First page of the 1792 English translation by Robert Graves
Author	Marcus Aurelius
Original title	Unknown, probably untitled
Language	Koine Greek
Published	170 to 180 AD
Publication place	Roman Empire

Meditations, sometimes To Himself is a collection of writings by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius from the second century AD and an important source for the modern study of ancient Stoic philosophy. It contains the intimate details of his life as well as his philosophical ideas and practices.

Overview

The book begins with a series of "thank you's" expressed toward family, friends, tutors, and the gods. The remainder of the works' passages most commonly take the form of reflections on how to live a life with less suffering and more joy by following the principles of Stoicism. Some are expositions on questions of general philosophical inquiry, but most are of a more personal nature. Sometimes he discusses events from his personal life. He uses metaphors, often from nature, to help himself cope with his personal failings and day-to-day struggles.

It was written in Koine Greek, the language of philosophy and learning of the day. The work is divided into 12 "books", each containing between 20-50 passages. The original structure is one of the many aspects of the work that remain unknown. No ancient copies of the book have survived. Although Marcus Aurelius is referred to as a philosopher in ancient sources, there are no known contemporaneous mentions of his Meditations.

The original title, if any, is unknown. The modern text comes from medieval sources. The common titles: "Meditations", "To Himself" were a product of the first printed editions. It is widely accepted that the work was written for his eyes only. However, his true intentions for the book are uncertain.

It is an important source for our modern understanding of Stoicism, especial that of the Roman era.

History of the text

While there is much that is not known about the history of the writings, there is some modern consensus about their origins and Marcus Aurelius' intentions. The writings were never intended for publication. The writings were composed over time, like a journal. They were written in a refined style to help the emperor make better better use of the ideas they contain.

Composition

Meditations was written sometime in the decade before Marcus Aurelius died (in 180). There are no exact dates in the manuscript, the words "among the Quadi" appear. This could refer to the first book or the second book or the entire work the follows. That, along with one other reference to a place that appears at the beginning of the third book would suggest that at least some portion of the writing was composed before 176, when he returned to Rome from campaigning for the last time.

The first book differs dramatically from the style form of the remainder of the ratings. It is a type of acknowledgement or thank yous and is believed to have been written after the remainder although it appears at the beginning of the book.

It is not known who preserved the work after the death of Marcus Aurelius. Nor is it known who first made it public. It's unknown how widely popular the writing was. There is no mention of it in any contemporaneous surviving texts. Nor is the book mentioned in the sources that have survived about Marcus himself.

Title

The consensus is that the work had no formal title. In a comment on the satirist Lucian, the 10th-century Byzantine Archbishop, Arethas of Caesarea, refers to "τα εἰς ἑαυτόν ηθική" (ta eis heauton Ethika), "The ethical writings addressed to himself" or "writings on ethhics intended for himself". Elsewhere, he writes about the "the very profitable book of Emperor Marcus". These are the earliest undisputed mentions of Meditations.

A passage from the Souda describing a "blessed book", is claimed by some to be a reference, although it's authorship is disputed. The oldest known complete copy (from circa 1300) is untitled. and Another mention in the Souda merely to "twelve books". Other medieval sources use "ta kath’ heauton" ("‘writings concerning himself’ or ‘private writings'").

Before the 10th century

For 700 years after Marcus' death, the only 2 possible mentions of the book are controversial. The first is from Themistius, the Greek Rhetorician. In 364, he made reference to "the exhortations of Marcus", which some have interpreted as a reference to the book. In some passages, Marcus addresses his inconsistent adherence to his own principles, sometimes in clear and forceful language. The 12th-century Suda, a Byzantine compendium of ancient texts, contains a lyrical verse espousing the book's virtues. It has been suggested that it was written by the 7th-century scholar Theophylact Simocatta. The first incontrovertible mentions of the book do not appear until around 900 AD.

Arethas of Caesarea

This scholia (right) by Arethas is one of several attributed to him that are the earliest known direct mentions of Meditations (from Harley MS 5694, Lucian Pro Imaginibus from the British Library

The survival of the text and its first historical mention are credited to Arethas of Caesarea, who lived at the turn of the 10th century. He was the archbishop of Cappadocia and a prominent Byzantine theologian.

Arethas mentioned and quoted the text in correspondence with the Byzantine emperor Leo the Philosopher. In another of his letter, he claimed to have produced his own copy from am older manuscript, but gives no details as to how he came across it. He extolled the book's value in dealing with others and coping with life's challenges. He was also the earliest to call the book by name. In a comment on Lucian, he referred to Marcus Aurelius' writings "to himself" (Εἰς ἑαυτὸν). When the first edition of the book was published later, this was the name that the translator chose.

Arethas' own work as a commentator on the ancient texts has been criticized, as has his character. However, the survival of several classical works have been traced to his library and scriptorium and his are the first clear references to the work. Some scholars credit him with the quotes from Marcus that are found in the Suda. Including the lyrical poem also claimed to be from Theophylact Simocatta. After him, there were numerous mentions of the book in east.

Suda

The Suda, or Souda was an encyclopedic collection of writings and preserved knowledge of the ancient world, written in Greek and compiled sometime before the 12th century. In it, the entry on Marcus Aurelius states that he "recorded the conduct of his own life in 12 books." It also contains 29 quotes from the book.

Other copies appear to have been in circulation during the following centuries. Quotes appeared in the writings of Johannes Reuchlin as well as those of the Byzantine scholar Joseph Bryennios.

Editio princeps

The 1559 first edition of a Latin version of was produced by classicist Wilhelm Xylander, who translated it, the surgeon and poet Michael Toxites, who provided the original manuscript, and the Andreas Gesner, cousin of the Naturalist Conrad Gessner. Modern scholars have focused on the the intrigue surrounding its genesis as much as they have the content, which, by Xylander's own words, was riddled with misprints. Its source was a codex from the massive collection of manuscripts in the Palatine Library in Heidelberg.

Between the publication of the editio princeps and Xylander's 1568 second edition, the source--the only then-known manuscript--was lost. Apart from some fragments, Xylander's was then the only source available to scholars and would remain so for several centuries.

Meric Casaubon and Thomas Gataker published the first English translations in 1643 and 1652. Both used Xylander as a source as well as fragments that were by then available.

Vaticanus Graecus Codex

Among the Vatican Library's collection of codices, there is a greek copy of the complete text that dates from sometime around 1300. Its origin is unknown. When Jean Pierre de Joly obtaineed it in 1770 and used it for his French translation, for the first time, a complete source other than Xylander's was used for publication.

Structure and themes

Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations in Greek at his base in Sirmium in modern-day Serbia and also while positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia in modern-day Hungary.

The work is divided into 12 books. That structure dates back at least to the 12th-century. Xylander's edition is subtitled "sua libri XII" (in Twelve Books). However, the Vatican manuscript only contains "line breaks" between some of the books and no numbered titles. Each individual book is divided into passages. These passages are as short as a single sentence, with some that are much longer. Apart from Book I, however, none has a "theme" of its own that can be discerned.

There are recurring topics. His death and health is one. Some passages take the form of dialogues. Some passages are admonitions to himself about his conduct. He stresses the need to examine both one's own conduct, as well as things one encounters in life. Sometimes he quotes others. He frequently uses metaphors to make his point. These metaphors can come from nature, life, history and other sources. Some of these passages are what would be considered philosophical expositions, in which he discusses the larger questions of physical truth and reality, as opposed to the his own behavior inner self and struggles.

Book I

The first book Is distinct from all the others. It contains a series of 16 expressions of gratitude to people and one to the gods. It is believed to have been written at a later date than Books II-XII. As he describes the specific way in which he benefited from each individual, the passages take the form of a character study of each person. His passage on Antoninus Pius is by far the longest, followed by that about the gods.

In some translations, he refers to being "among" the Quadi, along the Granua River at the end of the first book. In others, this passage is placed at the start of the second. Aside from Rome, it is one of the very rare mentions of a specific place in the entire work.

He expresses gratitude to:

• Marcus Annius Verus, his grandfather (morals and self-restraint)
• Marcus Annius Verus, his father (modesty and manliness)
• Domitia Lucilla the younger, his mother (thrift and goodness)
• His great-grandfather, perhaps Lucius Catilius Severus (the value of home-schooling)
• His governor (the avoidance of gossip and partisanship in sports)
• Diognetus, believed to be his tutor (introducing him to practices and ideas of philosophy and patience and avoiding trivial pursuits an creature comforts)
• Junius Rusticus (introducing him to Epictetus, his own need for self-improvement, the importance of simplicity and attentiveness, to avoid putting on airs and holding grudges)
• Apollonius of Chalcedon, one of his tutors (steadfastness, coping with loss)
• Sextus of Chaeronea, one of his tutors (a positive disposition, being a good father, tolerance toward others)
• Alexander of Cotiaeum, one of his tutors (how to appropriately correct others)
• Fronto, his tutor and longtime friend (the negative qualities of tyrants and patricians)
• Alexander Peloplaton (avoid complaining and making excuses)
• Cinna Catulus (how to accept criticism)
• Gnaeus Claudius Severus Arabianus, one of his tutors (introducing him to various writers, government that respects the rule of law, freedom of speech, and other individual liberties, the need to be frank with those around you)
• Claudius Maximus, one of his tutors (self-control, to stay positive, speaking one's mind, acceptance, doing the right thing)
• Emperor Antoninus Pius, his adopted father whom he succeeded to the throne (temperateness, Modesty, a good work ethic, willingness to listen to others, refraining from sexual indulgence, resisting flattery, respecting true philosophers, moderation)
• The gods (good family, friends, and fortune, his own and his family's good health, his positive life choices concerning study and romance, living in harmony with nature, a good wife, being able to spend time with his mother before she died)

Reception and influence

Marcus Aurelius has been lauded for his capacity "to write down what was in his heart just as it was, not obscured by any consciousness of the presence of listeners or any striving after effect". Gilbert Murray compares the work to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions and St. Augustine's Confessions. Though Murray criticizes Marcus for the "harshness and plainness of his literary style", he finds in his Meditations "as much intensity of feeling...as in most of the nobler modern books of religion, only [with] a sterner power controlling it". "People fail to understand Marcus", he writes, "not because of his lack of self-expression, but because it is hard for most men to breathe at that intense height of spiritual life, or, at least, to breathe soberly".

D.A. Rees calls the Meditations "unendingly moving and inspiring", but does not offer them up as works of original philosophy. Bertrand Russell found them contradictory and inconsistent, evidence of a "tired age" where "even real goods lose their savour". Using Marcus as an example of greater Stoic philosophy, he found their ethical philosophy to contain an element of "sour grapes". "We can't be happy, but we can be good; let us therefore pretend that, so long as we are good, it doesn't matter being unhappy". Both Russell and Rees find an element of Marcus' Stoic philosophy in the philosophical system of Immanuel Kant.

German philosopher Georg Hegel offers a critique of Stoicism that follows similar lines, albeit covering different trajectories. In his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel attacks the preoccupation with the inner self as a severing, fatalistic barrier to consciousness. A philosophy that reduces all states of harm or injustice to emotional states "could only appear on the scene in a time of universal fear and bondage." The Stoic refusal to meet the world is anathema to Life, a central value in Hegel's philosophical work: "whether on the throne or in chains, in the utter dependence of its individual existence, its aim is to be free, and to maintain that lifeless indifference which steadfastly withdraws from the bustle of existence..." M.L. Clarke concurs in his historical work on philosophical ideas, The Roman Mind, where he states "[p]olitical liberty could hardly flourish after so many years of despotism and the indifference to public affairs which it bred. And philosophy fostered the same spirit."

Michael Grant called Marcus Aurelius "the noblest of all the men who, by sheer intelligence and force of character, have prized and achieved goodness for its own sake and not for any reward".

Gregory Hays' translation of Meditations for The Modern Library made the bestseller list for two weeks in 2002.

The book has been described as a prototype of reflective practice by Seamus Mac Suibhne.

Author John Steinbeck makes several direct allusions to Meditations in his magnum opus East of Eden.

United States President Bill Clinton said that Meditations is his favorite book. United States nominee for Secretary of Defense James Mattis carried his own personal copy of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius throughout his deployments.

"Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered"

.

Quotations

• When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. (II. 1, trans. Gregory Hays)
• Of the life of man the duration is but a point. (II. 17, trans. C.R. Haines)
• [...] As for others whose lives are not so ordered, he reminds himself constantly of the characters they exhibit daily and nightly at home and abroad, and of the sort of society they frequent; and the approval of such men, who do not even stand well in their own eyes has no value for him. (III. 4, trans. Maxwell Staniforth)
• Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust or lose your sense of shame or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill-will or hypocrisy or a desire for things best done behind closed doors. (III. 7, trans. Gregory Hays)
• Let opinion be taken away, and no man will think himself wronged. If no man shall think himself wronged, then is there no more any such thing as wrong. (IV. 7, trans. Méric Casaubon)
• Take away your opinion, and there is taken away the complaint, [...] Take away the complaint, [...] and the hurt is gone (IV. 7, trans. George Long)
• Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good. (IV. 17, trans. George Long)
• Words that everyone once used are now obsolete, and so are the men whose names were once on everyone's lips: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and to a lesser degree Scipio and Cato, and yes, even Augustus, Hadrian, and Antoninus are less spoken of now than they were in their own days. For all things fade away, become the stuff of legend, and are soon buried in oblivion. Mind you, this is true only for those who blazed once like bright stars in the firmament, but for the rest, as soon as a few clods of earth cover their corpses, they are 'out of sight, out of mind.' In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself. (IV. 33, trans. Scot and David Hicks)
• Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, "How unlucky that this should happen to me!" Not at all! Say instead, "How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint." (IV. 49, trans. Hicks)
• Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look at the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations? (IV. 50, trans. George Long)
• Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you. (V. 8, trans. Gregory Hays)
• Not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human—however imperfectly—and fully embrace the pursuit you've embarked on. (V. 9, trans. Gregory Hays)
• Soon you'll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, trivial. (V. 33, trans. Gregory Hays)
• Shame on the soul, to falter on the road of life while the body still perseveres. (VI. 29, trans. Maxwell Staniforth)
• If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now. (VIII. 47, trans. George Long)
• A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are briars in the road. Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, "And why were such things made in the world?" (VIII. 50, trans. George Long)
• Put an end once for all to this discussion of what a good man should be, and be one. (X. 17,)
• You've lived as a citizen in a great city. Five years or a hundred--what's the difference? The laws make no distinction.
  And to be sent away from it, not by a tyrant or a dishonest judge, but by Nature, who first invited you in--why is that so terrible?
  Like the impresario bringing down the curtain on an actor:
  "But I've only gotten through three acts...!"
  Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine.
  So make your exit with grace--the same grace shown to you. (XII, 36, trans. Gregory Hayes, the book's closing passage)

Editions

The first ever printed version was published in 1558 by Wilhelm Xylander at Heidelberg University from a now lost manuscript.

Some popular English translations include:

• Francis Hutcheson and James Moore (1742). The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008.
• George Long (1862) The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; reprinted many times, including in Vol. 2 of the Harvard Classics.
• C. R. Haines (1916) Marcus Aurelius. Loeb Classical Library. ISBN 0-674-99064-1
• A. S. L. Farquharson (1944) Marcus Aurelius Meditations. Everyman's Library reprint edition (1992) ISBN 0-679-41271-9. Oxford World's Classics revised edition (1998) ISBN 0-19-954059-4
• Maxwell Staniforth (1969) Meditations. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-044140-9
• Gregory Hays (2002) Meditations. Random House. ISBN 0-679-64260-9
• C. Scot Hicks, David V. Hicks (2002) The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of the Meditations. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-3383-2.
• Martin Hammond (2006) Meditations. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044933-7
• Jacob Needleman, John P. Piazza (2008) The Essential Marcus Aurelius. J P Tarcher. ISBN 978-1-58542-617-1

See also

• Sirmium
• John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Berners

Bibliography

Secondary sources

• Marcel van Ackeren (Editor) (2 April 2012). Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World: A Companion to Marcus Aurelius. UK: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-21984-3. Retrieved 16 December 2016. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Anthony R Birley (6 December 2012). Marcus Aurelius: A Biography. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-69569-0. Retrieved 11 October 2017.

Translations

• Pierre Hadot (1998). The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-46171-0.
• Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome) (1889). "Book I". The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Translated by George Long. Boston: Little, Brown. Retrieved 19 October 2017.

External links

Studies

• Sellars, John. "Marcus Aurelius". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Translations

• The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. translated by George Long, at Wikisource
• Multiple editions of the Meditations at the Internet Archive
• The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius at Project Gutenberg, gutenberg.org
• The Meditations public domain audiobook at LibriVox

[[Category:2nd-century books]] [[Category:Ancient Greek works]] [[Category:Nerva–Antonine dynasty]] [[Category:Stoicism]] [[Category:Texts in Koine Greek]] [[Category:Marcus Aurelius]] [[Category:Ethics literature]]