I asked a friend how he became so civic-minded. He answered that he supposed it came from reading the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. I read George William Chrystal's translation [1] on Project Gutenberg. The writing struck me as cool headed and serene, similar to what i might expect from a Buddhist writer [2]. It made a good impression on me.
Later, i saw the biographical ebook The Emperor Marcus Aurelius by John C. Joy in the Project Gutenberg new book feed, so i read that too. I appreciate its more personal description of the emperor's life.
One draw-back is that the author misses no chance to point out the inferiority of Marcus's Pagan philosophy compared to the superiority of the author's Christianity. He wrote an entire chapter on Roman treatment of Christian martyrs. However, he wrote nothing about the later conduct of the Christian church during the crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, and transatlantic slave trade.
Setting the judgments aside, i thought it was a worthwhile book.
In the frieze on the Antonine column [3] which represents him on horseback, surrounded by banners and triumphant soldiers, receiving the submission of the kneeling Germans, there is the same disenchantment in his eyes, the same firm lines of duty on the lips; there is no flash of enthusiasm, no gloating over the fallen. He seems absorbed in the thought that all is vanity, and the vanquished look at him with a puzzled, interested look which has something of affection in it.
This quote resonated with me. Marcus Aurelius was often successful in performing his duties, but he did not derive personal satisfaction his success. Though stodgy in Roman tradition, his high-minded values clashed with his own family and his society. In his personal life he was surrounded by good fortune and good people, yet he was resigned to being an outsider.
What follows are quotes from the book, with any of my own comments in square brackets.
Marcus took the ceremonies more seriously than did the usual Roman of high rank; but even his faith in the old myths wavered. He was content, however, not to pry into high matters, and adopted the Stoic attitude towards them. These philosophers interpreted the legends, often by Procrustean methods, to suit their own doctrine, but in reality thought their truth or falsehood of little practical importance. For them the chief thing was to live a life of virtue, relying on one's own strength.
Annius Verus, known to the world by his adopted name as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, was born at Rome in A.D. 121. His father, also Annius Verus, was descended from a Spanish family which a few generations before had settled in Rome.
When Marcus was born the reigning Emperor was Hadrian. Hadrian was himself a Spaniard and inclined to favour those of Spanish descent. Thus the family of Annius Verus came into prominence; and before Marcus was yet more than eight years of age the Emperor took a special interest in him.
The boy even at this early age was not quite as the other children who passed to and fro in the Imperial palace. All through life his health was imperfect; yet even as a child he had begun to practise the Stoic austerities. He slept on a plank bed and was abstemious at table...
Marcus was educated altogether by private teachers in his own home; he did not attend the public schools--a fact which he recalls with gratitude; and he had reason to be grateful. These schools had multiplied under the generous patronage of the Emperors; no expense was spared in securing for them the best possible teachers; but in them the theory of virtue was acquired, if acquired at all, at the cost of its practice.
Hadrian died in A.D. 138, when Marcus was seventeen years of age. Antoninus Verus, better known as Antoninus Pius, succeeded as Emperor, betrothed Marcus to his beautiful daughter Faustina, and had them both to live with him during the rest of his life in the Imperial household. Henceforth Marcus and Antoninus were bound by the closest ties of friendship.
In many respects the character of Antoninus was more admirable than that of his successor, whose glory has eclipsed his. He was an abler ruler because he was not so good a Stoic. He had more of human sympathy and a more varied interest in life because he was not so much engrossed in the study of his own soul. He was simple, kind, and genial, whereas Marcus was cold, reserved, self-conscious.
[Marcus Aurelius had a sense of humor. See following excerpt from one of his letters:]
I think I have caught a cold, whether from walking in slippers or from writing badly, I do not know.
And indeed Marcus himself had no such faith in the magical power of philosophy on the throne; he did not believe in the possibility of realising the Ideal State. "Do not," he says, "expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter. For who can change men's principles? and without a change of principles what else is there than the slavery of men who groan while they pretend to obey? Simple and modest is the work of philosophy. Draw me not aside to insolence and pride."
The Stoics preached the brotherhood of man, and sympathy with men, as men. Hence charity too became part of the Time-Spirit and showed itself in milder legislation and in beneficent institutions.
With the blessings of peace there came also its vices; the advances in prosperity and humanity, such as it was, was not accompanied by any improvement in morals, but perhaps the reverse. His reign left little outward impress on the Roman State; his greatest legacy to Rome and to the world was the development of humane legislation, the reverence for mind above matter, and the example of a disinterested and noble ruler.
All through life it was his lot to consort with persons having sadly different views from his own on the meaning of existence, the value of virtue; yet he was kind and sociable with all.
The severe light of Stoicism was softened and suffused in passing through the medium of his gentle nature; he trusted the reasons of the heart, more than those of the pure intellect.
A prince of peace, Marcus Aurelius was destined by the irony of fate to live most of his days as a leader of battles.
...and to replace a Scipio and a Marcellus, they had for leader not a Vespasian or a Trajan, but a sickly "Greekling," "a philosophical old woman," as Avidius Cassius used to call him.
War, the plague, and the Emperor's charities had exhausted the treasury; hence the difficulty in raising supplies and a force. It was then that he sold by auction the treasures of the palace and his villas and thus secured the required funds. To swell the numbers of his troops he compelled the gladiators to serve. This was the most unpopular act of his reign as it was one of the most creditable.
The army reached Venice in A.D. 168. Such had been the energy of their preparations that a panic seized the barbarian invaders. They begged for peace; but Marcus had determined that there should be no peace or a lasting one; the barbarians must be taught a lesson; and he set about subjugating the tribes one by one. In this he was for a time successful, thanks mainly to his able generals Pompeianus and Pertinax. The Quadi were compelled to restore the 60,000 Roman prisoners they had taken; and in A.D. 169 the Emperors felt justified in returning to Rome, leaving the completion of the war to their generals.
These victories in the North stirred in him no pride. Here is his sadly disillusioned comment on the whole campaign: "A spider is proud when it has caught a fly, and a hunter when he has caught a poor hare, and another when he has taken a little fish in a net, and another when he has taken wild boars, and another when he has taken Sarmatians. Are not these robbers, if thou examinest their principles?"
In the frieze on the Antonine column which represents him on horseback, surrounded by banners and triumphant soldiers, receiving the submission of the kneeling Germans, there is the same disenchantment in his eyes, the same firm lines of duty on the lips; there is no flash of enthusiasm, no gloating over the fallen. He seems absorbed in the thought that all is vanity, and the vanquished look at him with a puzzled, interested look which has something of affection in it.
It was in the midst of this active strife that Marcus wrote one of the most introspective and peaceful of books--his Thoughts About Himself--the twelve books of his Meditations.
These jottings were the fruit of his frequent searchings of the heart, the outward expression of the inner life of one who seemed to live all within, with now and then some golden gleanings from his favourite moralists. They, with the Discourse of Epictetus, were to be his mainstay. This latter book--a noble book too--was his à Kempis, and to it he owed the suggestion of gathering together his own thoughts.
The mind can weave its own Universe; and with it it rests to weave it a fairyland of ordered goodness and beauty. All things without are fleeting and unstable, shadows that will pass, mists that disappear at dawn. "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." "The aids to nobler life are all within."
As Arnold felt many have felt: "It is impossible to rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear." But we must add with him: "Honour to the sages who have felt this, and yet have borne it."
Stoic optimism can scarcely be said to have solved the mysteries of evil and the unrest of the soul, or satisfied the craving for happiness, for guidance and support which is deep down in every heart. Yet the followers of that school were a good influence on a corrupt world.
The view of his fellow-men which Marcus expresses is a curious mixture of charity, pity, and contempt.
This note of world-weariness and disillusion as regards everything men prize recurs again and again in the course of the Meditations: it runs through his doctrines of resignation, of charity and forbearance, of self-restraint and peace.
There was no question of giving an exact account of the system expounded in the Meditations: for there is no such system; Marcus Aurelius was more interested in virtue than in learning; he would rather feel compunction [pause, repentance] than know its definition.
The hasty summons to the East which interrupted Marcus' northern campaign was due to the revolt of one of his best generals, Avidius Cassius.
It were well for Cassius had he confined his zeal for reform to the army; but he wished to reform the Emperor and the court also.
Avidius admits that Marcus is a worthy man, but he is letting the State go to ruin, while "hungry blood-suckers batten on her vitals."
"Marcus Antoninus is a scholar; he enacts the philosopher; and he tries conclusions concerning the four elements and upon the nature of the soul; and he discourses learnedly upon the Honestum; and concerning the Summum Bonum he is unanswerable. Meanwhile, is he learned in the interests of the State? Can he argue a point upon the public economy?"
When Marcus reached Antioch the revolt was already ended. One of the assassins, hoping for reward, brought the head of Cassius to the Emperor; but he put him from him with indignation and loathing. His one regret was that he had been deprived of the pleasure of pardoning his enemy.
Yet [forgiveness] was a virtue familiar to the wise ones of the Stoics, and perhaps not a difficult virtue to those who adopted their philosophy of life. If nothing matters and all is in very truth but vanity of vanities and the soul is steeped in this conviction, the disposition to look on life's worries, whatever their sources, as but petty and trifling, is natural and spontaneous.
It is to the credit of Marcus Aurelius that even in this he avoided to a great extent the faults of his virtues; it is the touch of emotion in his writings and in those of the other later Stoics of the Empire which gives them their charm beyond the earlier members of the school.
The Stoic must check [their] feelings but not suppress them. It suffices that the barrier of the will be raised and strengthened day by day and then the feelings may surge up behind it, ready for right use; but as servants not as masters. Thus the paradox is true that those have often the strongest emotions whose emotions are most in check.
While at Athens he was also initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. With Marcus Aurelius it was probably a sincere act of religion. There was much in the symbolism and ritual of the mysteries, its hymns and processions and dramatic representations resembling the mystery plays of the Middle Ages, in its fasting and nightly torchlight processions by the sea-shore and through the plain, which would appeal to his ritualistic nature.
Indeed, he was more deeply interested in the practical than in the pure reason; and conduct was more for him than dogma: hence it is that his thoughts are so intensely human and universal in their appeal.
It is useless to inquire further into the nature of his religious beliefs. He would have been at a loss to define them himself.
It was in the spring of A.D. 180 that the plague which had taken off half the population of the Empire came to claim the life of the Emperor. He fell ill, probably at Vienna, on the 10th of March. His constitution had never been robust and the hardships of the last years had still further weakened it.
It was a death free from pomp, lonely and detached as his life had been.
The reason is that between life and death there is nothing to choose; they are but successive stages of one and the same natural process.
author: Joy, John C.
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Marcus_Aurelius
title: The Emperor Marus Aurelius