Book 1) we find the same voice, the same themes; Marcus’s
thought does not change or develop noticeably from one book
to another. Nor can any structure or unity be discerned within
individual books. It seems most likely that the division
between books is a purely physical one. The transmitted
“books,” in other words, represent the individual papyrus
rolls of Marcus’s original, or perhaps of a later copy. When
one had been filled, another was begun.^10
If the books as a whole are homogenous, the individual
entries show considerable formal variety. Some are
developed short essays that make a single philosophical
point; many of the entries in Books 2 and 3 are of this type.
Others are straightforward imperatives (“Take the shortest
route.. .”) or aphorisms (“no one can keep you from living
in harmony with yourself”). Sometimes Marcus will list a
number of basic principles in catalogue format (“remember
that... and that... and that.. .”). Elsewhere he puts
forward an analogy, sometimes with the point of comparison
left to be inferred. Thus human lives are like “many lumps of
incense on the same altar” (4.15) or like “a rock thrown in
the air” (9.17). In other cases the analogy will be made
explicit: “Have you ever seen a severed hand or foot...?
That’s what we do to ourselves... when we rebel against
what happens to us” (8.34). Others present a kind of formal
meditative exercise, as when Marcus instructs himself to
imagine the age of Vespasian (4.32) or Augustus’s court
(8.31) and then to compare the imagined scene with that of