Meditations

the tenth century it reappears in a letter from the scholar and
churchman Arethas, who writes to a friend, “I have had for a
while now a copy of the Emperor Marcus’s invaluable book.
It was not only old but practically coming apart.... I have
had it copied and can now pass it on to posterity in better
shape.” Whether Arethas’s copy was indeed responsible for
the work’s survival we do not know. At any rate, its
readership seems to have increased in the centuries that
followed. It is quoted a generation or two later by the vast
Byzantine encyclopedia known as the Suda, and it was
perhaps around this period also that an unknown Byzantine
poet composed a brief appreciation that came to be copied
along with the text:

ON THE BOOK OF MARCUS

If you desire to master pain

Unroll this book and read with care,

And in it find abundantly

A knowledge of the things that are,

Those that have been, and those to come.

And know as well that joy and grief

Are nothing more than empty smoke.