Roman emperor are the authors of the two most substantial surviving works of Stoic philosophy.
Epictetus, a contemporary of Plutarch, was a Greek slave in Rome whose Stoic teaching and writings
greatly influenced several prominent Greeks and Romans of the second century after Christ, including
Marcus Aurelius. In his youth, Marcus enthusiastically pursued the study of Stoic philosophy, which
provided him throughout his life with spiritual and intellectual guidance. It was apparently toward the end
of his life that he began writing the work that is today known as the Meditations. This work seems not to
have been intended for publication, and in fact the Greek title of the work means something like “Memos
to himself.” It is, accordingly, a very personal, introspective, ruminative series of reflections intended to
inspire and console its author and keep his mind focused on his duty as emperor, as Roman citizen, as
family man, as philosopher, and as human being. Although the Meditations were written, literally, “to
himself,” they were not written in Marcus' native language, but in Greek. The same is true of the books of
the New Testament, but they were written in Greek in order to communicate as widely as possible with
the multi-ethnic population of the eastern Roman Empire. Marcus wrote in Greek because that was the
language of the philosophical tradition of which he felt himself to be a part (Figure 85).
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is nothing
terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death,
that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never impute it to
others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own views. It is the action of an uninstructed person to
reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and of
one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself.” (Epictetus, The Manual 5,
translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson)