(12.34). But other entries suggest a less dismissive attitude.
Marcus quotes with apparent approval Epicurus’s account of
his own exemplary conduct during an illness (9.41) and
twice seeks comfort in the philosopher’s remarks on the
endurance of pain (7.33, 7.64). Like other late Stoics
(Seneca is a notable example), he was willing to accept truth
wherever he found it.
Thus far we have been concerned with the content of the
Meditations: the ethical doctrine of late Stoicism,
incorporating a certain amount of Platonic and Heraclitean
material, and overlaid with occasional reference to other
schools and thinkers. But what of the Meditations itself?
How and why was it written? Who is its audience? What
kind of book is it? For the answers to these questions we
must turn from the book’s content to its form and origins.
The MEDITATIONS: Genre, Structure, and StyleI suspect that Marcus would have been surprised (and
perhaps rather dismayed) to find himself enshrined in the
Modern Library of the World’s Best Books. He would have
been surprised, to begin with, by the title of the work
ascribed to him. The long-established English title
Meditations is not only not original, but positively
misleading, lending a spurious air of resonance and authority
quite alien to the haphazard set of notes that constitute the