beside the greater bulk of Epictetus’s Discourses. Yet it has
always exerted a fascination on those outside the narrow
orbit of classical study, perhaps especially on those who can
best appreciate the pressures that Marcus himself faced. The
Meditations was among the favorite reading of Frederick the
Great; a recent American president has claimed to reread it
every few years. But it has attracted others too, from poets
like Pope, Goethe, and Arnold to the southern planter
William Alexander Percy, who observed in his
autobiography that “there is left to each of us, no matter how
far defeat pierces, the unassailable wintry kingdom of
Marcus Aurelius.... It is not outside, but within, and when
all is lost, it stands fast.”^12
If Marcus has been studied less than many ancient authors,
he has been translated more than most. But it has been a
generation since his last English incarnation, and the time
seems ripe for another attempt. My intention in what follows
has been to represent in readable English both the content
and the texture of the Meditations. I have been especially
concerned to convey the patchwork character of the original,
both the epigrammatic concision that characterizes some
entries and the straggling discursiveness of others. I hope the
results will bear out my conviction that what a Roman
emperor wrote long ago for his own use can still be
meaningful to those far removed from him in time and space.
We do not live in Marcus’s world, but it is not as remote
from us as we sometimes imagine. There could be no better