Aerial View Of Carnuntum, where Marcus Aurelius wrote part of his Meditations. Occupying an important strategic position on the Danube frontier,
Carnuntum was permanently garrisoned from the time of Tiberius, and was Marcus' headquarters from AD 172 to 174 during the Marcomannic wars. In
the left foreground the excavation of part of the civil settlement near the modern town of Petronell; the site of the legionary fortress is in the distance
(under the light-coloured field next to the modern highway).
Despite the tendency to adopt certain Platonic ways of thinking on occasion, it remains true that in the basic drive of his system Marcus keeps to the
fundamental Stoic tenet that the way to well-being in this life is through obedience to nature and the suppression or mastery of passion. We ought to
follow the god or the gods and live in agreement with nature. He uses the classic Stoic formula of 'life in accord with nature' only once; but the idea is