agricultural rhythms of the Mediterranean world, with its
flocks, herds, and vines, its seasons of sowing and
harvesting, its grapes drying slowly into raisins. Some of
these may be stock examples, but even a stock example can
be revealing. One can hardly read a page of Plato without
tripping over the helmsmen, doctors, shoemakers, and other
craftsmen who populated ancient Athens; such figures are
much rarer in Marcus. The image of society as a tree whose
branches are individual human beings expresses an important
Stoic principle, but the image is developed further than one
might expect and informed by what might be personal
observation: “You can see the difference between the branch
that’s been there since the beginning, remaining on the tree
and growing with it, and the one that’s been cut off and
grafted back.”
Affection for the natural world contrasts with a persistent
sense of disgust and contempt for human life and other human
beings—a sense that it is difficult to derive from (or even
reconcile with) Stoicism. As P. A. Brunt puts it, “Reason
told Marcus that the world was good beyond improvement,
and yet it constantly appeared to him evil beyond remedy.”
The courtiers who surround him are vain and obsequious,
while the people he deals with on a daily basis are
“meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and
surly” (2.1). One of the most frequently recurring points in
the Meditations is the reminder that human beings are social
animals, as if this was a point Marcus had a particularly hard