Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome in 121 into a wealthy family of Spanish origin. At the direction of the emperor Hadrian he was adopted in 138 by Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius, and groomed for rule. His teachers included the orator Fronto and the Stoic Junius Rusticus, who lent him the notes of Epictetus’s lectures.

He became emperor in 161 and reigned until his death in 180, at first jointly with Lucius Verus. His reign was troubled by plague and by long wars against the peoples beyond the Danube, and he spent many of his last years on campaign. He died in 180 on the northern frontier, and was succeeded by his son Commodus.

His Meditations, written in Greek and addressed to himself, were not meant for publication. They are notes of spiritual exercise: reminders of the Stoic teaching, of the brevity of life and the vastness of time, of duty to others, and of the reason that orders all things. Some of the books are headed with the names of places on the frontier where they were written.

The notebook survived the end of antiquity in very few manuscripts, and was first printed in 1559. Since then it has been one of the most widely read works of ancient philosophy, valued less for originality of doctrine than for its record of a mind practising, day by day, what it believed.