Marcus Aurelius, emperor and Stoic

Who he was

Marcus was born in Rome on April 26, 121, as Marcus Annius Verus, into a rich and well-connected family (Britannica (opens in a new tab)). His father died when he was small. Book 1 of the Meditations opens with what he took from his grandfather, from his father’s memory and from his mother, whom he credits with a simple way of living, unlike the rich (1.3).

He was not born to rule. In 138 the emperor Hadrian adopted Antoninus as his heir, and at Hadrian’s wish Antoninus in turn adopted two boys: Marcus, then sixteen, and Lucius, aged seven, the son of Hadrian’s earlier choice of successor. Antoninus became emperor later that year, and Marcus spent the next twenty-two years learning the job beside him. He married Antoninus’s daughter Faustina in 145, and in 147 he was granted the imperium and the tribunician power, two of the emperor’s own legal powers.

Antoninus died in March 161. Marcus insisted that his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, rule with him, and for the first time Rome had two emperors at once. The reign that followed was rarely quiet.

The Meditations belongs to that last decade: notes in Greek, many written on campaign, probably in the 170s (IEP (opens in a new tab)). How the notebook survived and how to read it are covered in our guide to the Meditations.

His teachers

Book 1 of the Meditations is a set of thank-you notes. In seventeen sections Marcus records what he learned from each person who formed him, from his grandfather to Antoninus, and ends by thanking the gods. Taken together, it is his own account of his education.

He was trained first in public speaking, the core of an upper-class Roman education, by Fronto in Latin and Herodes Atticus in Greek. Some of his letters with Fronto survive, and in 1.11 he credits Fronto with teaching him to recognize the envy, duplicity and hypocrisy of a tyrant. Philosophy came by another route. He credits Diognetus with bringing him close to it, and remembers that in his youth he wanted a plank bed and a skin to sleep on, like a Greek philosopher (1.6). In time he turned from rhetoric to philosophy for good.

The teacher Marcus seems to have valued most was Junius Rusticus, a Stoic who later served as prefect of Rome and stayed one of Marcus’s advisers after he became emperor.

What Rusticus gave him was a correction as much as a course of study. Marcus learned from him that “my character required improvement and discipline” (Meditations 1.7), and not to make a show of his own discipline or good works. In the part of 1.7 left out here, Rusticus also steers him away from rhetoric, poetry and fine writing, and teaches him to make peace quickly with people who have wronged him, once they show they want to. It was not always an easy relationship. In 1.17 Marcus admits he was often annoyed with Rusticus, and is glad he never did anything he would regret.

The last line of 1.7 is how Epictetus enters the story: through Rusticus’s own copy of the discourses. Marcus later quotes Epictetus by name (4.41 is one example). Whether the two men ever met is taken up on the Epictetus page.

He names other philosophers too. Apollonius, a Stoic brought to Rome to teach him, showed him that one person could be both firm and flexible (1.8). Claudius Maximus, another Stoic, stayed cheerful through illness and was never in a hurry (1.15). And Sextus of Chaeronea, Plutarch’s grandson or nephew (the sources differ), showed him what a philosopher’s temper looks like up close:

The end of that portrait is worth noticing if you think of a Stoic as someone without feelings. Sextus was “entirely free from passion, and also most affectionate” (Meditations 1.9). For Marcus the two went together. What the Stoics hoped to be rid of was anger and the other passions that cloud judgment, not warmth toward people. Stoicism and emotions takes this further.

Antoninus, the model

The longest section of Book 1 is not about a philosopher at all. It is a portrait of Antoninus, the adoptive father whose job Marcus inherited, and what Marcus admired in him was a way of working:

The full section goes on for several hundred words. Antoninus listened to anyone with a proposal for the common good, cut off flattery at once, kept a close watch on public spending and put up with the blame that earned him. In 1.17, where Marcus thanks the gods, he comes back to what Antoninus showed him about the palace:

The emperor’s warning to himself

In Book 6, Marcus wrote himself a warning about what power does to the people who hold it.

“Caesar” here is more than a name. It was the title of the emperor and his heirs, and Marcus uses it for a type: the ruler the job tends to produce. The dye is probably the imperial purple. In 6.13 he describes a purple robe as sheep’s wool colored with shellfish blood, and in 5.16 he warns that the soul takes its color from the thoughts it keeps having. Power works on a person the same way, slowly and from the inside, and “such things happen” (Meditations 6.30).

His defense is a short list of plain qualities and a person to copy. “Do everything as a disciple of Antoninus,” he writes, and the long list that follows includes how Antoninus took unfair blame without blaming back, did nothing in a hurry, let opponents speak freely, and was pleased when someone showed him something better.

The same concern runs through Book 1. Marcus thanks Diognetus for teaching him to put up with frank speech (1.6), and a man named Severus for an idea of government:

It is a striking list of heroes for a future emperor. Thrasea and Helvidius were senators who stood up to Nero and Vespasian and died for it. Cato is probably Cato the Younger, the Stoic who opposed Julius Caesar, and Brutus helped kill Caesar. Who this Severus was is uncertain; George Long, whose translation this is, thought the word brother might not be genuine.

You don’t need an empire for 6.30 to apply. Any role with a little authority, such as running a team, chairing a board or being the parent who decides, comes with its own dye. People defer, agree too quickly and stop telling you things. The last two items on that list make an easy check to borrow: when did someone last disagree with me openly, and was I glad they did?

What kind of emperor he was

By most accounts he took the work seriously. Later historians counted him the last of the so-called Five Good Emperors, and for many generations in the West his name stood for the golden age of the Roman Empire (Britannica (opens in a new tab)). He also paid for philosophy to be taught: he endowed four chairs of philosophy at Athens, one for each of the main schools (IEP (opens in a new tab)).

The record is still mixed, and much of his reign was spent at war. He made his son Commodus co-emperor in 177 and left him the empire. Commodus’s twelve years as sole emperor are remembered for brutal misrule and ended with his murder in 192 (Britannica (opens in a new tab)). There was no empire-wide persecution of Christians under Marcus, but Christians were put to death in local persecutions during his reign, as at Lyon in 177. Britannica judges that he did not start the persecutions, though more Christians seem to have died under him than under earlier emperors. For what Marcus himself wrote about Christians, see Stoicism and Christianity.

The Meditations does not settle any of this. It records what he was trying to be, not a verdict on how well he managed it. That is a good reason to read it: these are the notes of a man with every excuse to stop examining himself, who kept doing it anyway.

His philosophy in brief

Marcus did not set out a system. He took the Stoic one for granted and kept reminding himself of it, and the same handful of ideas comes back throughout the Meditations:

• Judgment. Events don’t disturb us; our opinions about them do, and opinions can be changed. See Meditations 4.3.
• Character. Nothing in life is better than justice, truth, self-control and courage (3.6). Life and death, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure are neither good nor bad, because they make no one better or worse (2.11). See the four virtues.
• Other people. Human beings are made to work together, so even an irritating colleague is kin to be borne with, not an enemy (2.1). See difficult people.
• Work. He exists to act, and getting out of bed is part of the job (5.1). See Marcus on mornings.
• Death and the present. The present is the only life anyone can lose, so it is the one to live well (2.14). See memento mori.
• Change. Whatever you look at is already turning into something else, the bad week along with the good one (4.3). See Stoic quotes about time.
• Nature. The world is one living whole and each life a part of it (4.40), though he often checks that his conclusions would hold even if it were only atoms (4.3).

Most of these themes have a passage and a short commentary in our guide to the Meditations.

What he didn’t say

Marcus is among the most quoted of the Stoics, and a good share of what circulates under his name isn’t his. Some lines come from film: Gladiator (2000) put Marcus on screen, played by Richard Harris, and dialogue from it now travels with his name attached. Some are loose modern rewrites of real passages, and some are simply invented. We checked some of the most widely shared against the text:

A useful rule: if a Marcus quote comes without a book and section number, check it before you share it.

Read him

Start with the Meditations itself, a few sections at a time. Our guide suggests beginning with Book 2. Book 1, the thank-you notes quoted on this page, makes most sense once you know what Marcus cared about. For which English version to read, see the translations compared. George Long’s 1862 translation, quoted throughout this site, is free at Project Gutenberg (opens in a new tab).

For his best-known lines, each with its source, see Marcus Aurelius quotes. For the other Stoics, and who taught whom, see the Stoic philosophers.