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Meditations of Marcus Aurelius / translated by George Long ; with an introduction by W. L. Courtney. PDF

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Preview Meditations of Marcus Aurelius / translated by George Long ; with an introduction by W. L. Courtney.

L B R.AR.Y IOF THE U N VERSITY Of IILL NOIS I FROMTHLBEQUEST IN MEMORY OF CHARLEASNA.DDEN1SON CHARLESN.DLNISON e>8i f.t975.E; .LINOiS LIBRARY Red Letter Library THE MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS FirstprintedforRedLetterLibrary, October, igro LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS I Introduction i The perennial charm which surrounds the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is explicable on several grounds. Perhaps in the first place I we should put the fact that the author was an Emperor; that is to say, a man who was every 7 dayface toface withall the problems ofgovern- ment, who had to lead his soldiers against out- • — landish tribes the Quadi, the Marcomanni, and others. In his busy career of practical industry one would hardly expect him to find opportunity or leisure for the kind of diary, _ in twelve books, which he has bequeathed to *J us. Another point of interest is that, though hehad the inestimable advantage of a father by ; adoption, Antoninus Pius, to whom he gives a remarkable tribute in his opening chapter, he ,3 was himself surrounded with figures of the ordinary imperial depravity. His wife, Faus- tina, had no particularly good character, al- though probably some of the stories narrated c^of her by Dion Cassius and others represent nothing more nor less than the scandal of the iii 05044 S INTRODUCTION time. At all events, it is certain that his son, Commodus, was a brutal ruffian, and it is diffi- cult for usto understand how sogentle, so cul- tured, so philosophic a father should have left such few traces of his personality on the up- bringing of Commodus. But a third and still more important element in our interest in the writings of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius An- toninus is that he was so near to, and yet so untouched by, Christianity. If we take the series of his thoughts, which he put down, ap- parently, day by day, as a kind of private com- mentary to guide his own career, we are struck over and over again at once by their likeness to and their difference from Christian tenets. The thoughts remind us of the Imitation, especially in their constant enunciation of the necessity for a definite purpose for human beings, some specific goal or object, which is to save men from stupid and idle vacillation. YetMarcusAurelius's reflectionsarenotChris- tian in spirit; they are Stoic. Together with the writings of the enfranchised slave, Epic- tetus, they give us the best possible picture of what Stoicism had become in the second cen- tury A.D. Stoicism was a creed which especially recom- mended itself to the Romans from the vermy earliest time of its introduction, because iv

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