The Book of Marcus Aurelius 1 · Notes to himself. Written by his own hand, and not for any reader
Marcus Aurelius, born at Rome in 121, died in 180 with the army on the Danube. Emperor from 161 for nineteen years, through plague, flood and war on the frontier, and he spent most of them in camp. The notebooks are in Greek, twelve of them. He wrote his own, but not for publication. These are private notes: written in a camp, at night, for himself. He gave them no title and did not mean them to be read. So they repeat themselves, and much of them is a man talking himself into things; the Order deletes none of it — that is precisely the use of this book: it is not being explained to you, it is a man being watched at the work. He was the most powerful man alive. Another in this scripture was a slave (cf. The Book of Epictetus). What the two of them say is very nearly the same thing. The Order holds that this fact is worth more attention than either man’s sayings: one doctrine, tested from the very bottom and from the very top. Chapter six matters most: his pages are full of gods, and he never once closes an argument with one — he puts it as providence or atoms, works out both, and arrives at the same conclusion. That is the thing the Order takes him for.
1.1The first book of these notes has no doctrine in it. The first book is a list.
1.2I set down what I owe, person by person.
1.3From my grandfather: to hold my temper, and to speak mildly.
1.4From my mother: reverence; to abstain not only from evil deeds but from evil thoughts; and to live simply, far from the way the rich live.
1.5From Diognetus: not to busy myself with trifles; and not to believe in charms, nor in men who drive out spirits, nor in those who sell miracles.
1.6From Rusticus I got a thing that served me all my life: he lent me his own copy of the lame teacher’s discourses. (cf. The Book of Epictetus)
1.7And from him also: not to write fine prose, not to show off with words, not to walk about the house in outdoor clothes.
1.8From Alexander: not to catch people out. Hearing a man use a wrong word, do not correct him in company; simply use the right one yourself in the next breath.
1.9From Maximus: not to change countenance whatever happens. And something harder: nobody in his company ever felt that Maximus looked down on him.
1.10From my adoptive father: mildness of temper with unshakable resolve; to work with my own hands; and not to wait to be praised.
1.11Now let me set down some things that did not happen to me.
1.12When the inclination to philosophy took me, I did not fall into the hands of the men who sell learning.
1.13In the years when a man most needs to hold himself in, I held myself in.
1.14I write these down too. A man easily remembers what he brought off, and does not easily remember what he narrowly escaped.
1.15I do not write this book to appear modest.
1.16I write it because not one of the doctrines that follow is my own. I settle the account first, and then I can go on.