Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was emperor of Rome from 161AD
until his death 19 years later. By the time he came to power,
Rome was under threat: constant warring with "barbarians"
on the frontier, disease brought back by soldiers, pestilence, and even
earthquakes. Try to imagine the President of the United States being so
philosophical in the midst of such crises. Yet despite the circumstances,
after his death Marcus Aurelius would come to be idealized by the
Romans as the perfect emperor, a genuine philosopher-king who provided
the last real nobility of rule before the savagery of his son Commodus'
reign and the anarchy of the third century.
A student of Stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius refused to be made
miserable by the difficulties of life. Stoicism was a Greek school of
thought originating around 300BC. In simple terms, it taught that submission
to the law of the universe was how human beings should live,
and emphasized duty, avoidance of pleasure, reason, and fearlessness of
death. Stoics would also have full responsibility for their actions, independence
of mind, and pursue the greater good over their own. The
emperor would have been comfortable with today's United Nations and
other world bodies that stand for cooperative effort: Stoics had an
international outlook and believed in universal brotherhood.
As well as the world, the thoughts of the Stoics spanned time, as this
excerpt from the Meditations demonstrates:
"All things fade into the storied past, and in a little while are shrouded in
oblivion. Even to men whose lives were a blaze of glory this comes to
pass; as to the rest, the breath is hardly out of them before, in Homer's
words, they are 'lost to sight alike and hearsay'. What, after all, is immortal
fame? An empty, hollow thing. To what, then, must we aspire? This,
and this alone: the just thought, the unselfish act, the tongue that utters
no falsehood, the temper that greets each passing event as something predestined,
expected, and emanating from the One source and origin."
This was written over 19 centuries ago, yet it is somehow even more relevant
when we know how ancient it is. Marcus Aurelius' life itself bears
the statement out; not many now will have cause to remember his skill
or otherwise as a leader, but his Meditations, quiet thoughts written by
firelight in the midst of campaigns, live on in hearts and minds.
The Meditations are alive with perceptiveness about the basic unity
of all things in the universe, including its people. They tell us that the
effort to see through another's eyes is nothing less than an expansion of
one's world—and a unifying of it. To despise, avoid, or judge a person
is simply an obstruction of Nature's law. The realization that to move
human relations to a higher level we must do the opposite of these
things formed the basis of the emperor's thought.
On every page of the Meditations is this theme of accepting things and
people how they are, not how we would like them to be. There is sadness
in this view, as the following brief comment suggests: "You may break
your heart, but men still go on as before." One does get the impression
of reading the thoughts of a lonely man, but then Marcus Aurelius' ability
to see life objectively saved him from any real disillusionment:
"Be like the headland against which the waves break and break: it
stands firm, until presently the watery tumult around it subsides once
more to rest. 'How unlucky I am, that this should have happened to
me!' By no means; say, rather, 'How lucky I am that this has left me
with no bitterness; unshaken by the present, and undismayed by the
future.'"
The great worth of Stoic philosophy is its ability to help put things into
perspective so you can remember the things that matter; the Meditations
is, if you like, an ancient and noble Don't Sweat the Small Stuff.
The person who can see the world as it really is also carries the ability
to see beyond that world. We are here and we have a job to do, but
there is a feeling that we came from another place, and will eventually
go back to it. Life can be sad and lonely, seemingly one thing after
another, but this should never dull our basic wonder at our existence in
the universe:
"Survey the circling stars, as though you yourself were mid-course with
them. Often picture the changing and rechanging dance of the elements.
Visions of this kind purge away the dross of our earth-bound life."
Final comments
What can we make of the fact that Marcus Aurelius was the father of
Commodus, whose accession and brutal reign broke the tradition of
non-hereditary kingship? If the philosopher was such a great man, how
could he have fathered such a brute?
The Meditations is not just another self-help book with easy
answers—its very theme is imperfection. We can never know exactly
why things happen, why people act the way they do, but it is not up to
us to judge anyway; there is a larger meaning to events and lives that
escapes us. This knowledge itself is a comfort.
This is a short book that is a source of sanity in a mad world, and
today's reader will also love the beautiful prose that makes it stand out
against modern philosophical and self-help writings (Maxwell Staniforth's
translation is particularly good). Buy a copy and you will make
use of it for life.