Not a dancer but a wrestler... (7.61)
To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference. (8.33)The philosophical tradition may have been influential on
another element that we find occasionally: the intermittent
snatches of dialogue or quasi-dialogue. As a developed
form, the philosophical dialogue goes back to Plato, who
was imitated by later philosophers, notably Aristotle (in his
lost works) and Cicero. The Meditations certainly does not
contain the kind of elaborate scene setting that we expect in a
true dialogue, but we do find in a number of entries a kind of
internal debate in which the questions or objections of an
imaginary interlocutor are answered by a second, calmer
voice which corrects or rebukes its errors. The first voice
seems to represent Marcus’s weaker, human side; the second
is the voice of philosophy.
The longer entries (none, of course, are very long) are
marked by a coherent if sometimes slightly labored style. Not
all critics have had kind words for Marcus’s expository
prose, and some have been inclined to attribute perceived
shortcomings to deficiencies in his Greek. But in all
likelihood the occasional awkwardness is due less to an
imperfect grasp of the language than to roughness of
composition—Marcus thinking aloud or groping for an idea.
The same explanation may underlie one of the most