A new Translation, with an Introduction, by Gregory Hays the modern library

Meditations 11.6. The significance of some entries remains
completely obscure. Few critics have known what to make of
notes like “Character: dark, womanish, obstinate” (4.28) or
“They don’t realize how much is included in stealing,
sowing, buying . . .” (3.15).
The entries also differ considerably in the degree of
artistry they display. Some entries are little more than
Marcus’s notes or reminders to himself—the philosophical
equivalent of “Phone Dr. re appt. Tues.?” But others are
highly literary. Marcus wrote as a man trained in the
rhetorical techniques of the second century. His thoughts
naturally took on the impress of his training and intellectual
milieu even when he was writing for himself alone.
The shorter entries often display an interest in wordplay
and a striving for epigrammatic brevity that recalls both the
ingenuity of the rhetorical schools and the paradoxical
compression of Heraclitus:
Does the sun try to do the rain’s work? Or Asclepius Demeter’s? (6.43)
Evil: the same old thing. (7.1)

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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

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noticeable features of Marcus’s prose—namely, his tendency
to string together pairs of near-synonymous words and
phrases, as if uncertain whether he has hit the target the first
time. When combined with the very abstract vocabulary
natural in philosophical prose, this can make for difficult
reading, especially in English, which privileges concision
and concrete vocabulary to a greater degree than Greek. At
its best, however, Marcus’s writing can be extraordinarily
effective, most of all when it strikes a balance between
image and idea, as in the opening of 5.23:
Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and
those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the “what” is in constant
flux, the “why” has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s
right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose
depths we cannot see.
This particular topic—the transience of human life, the
constant change that shapes and informs the world—is a
recurrent theme in the Meditations, and as we shall see, it is
one whose treatment owes as much to literary as to
philosophical models, and as much to Marcus’s own
character as to Stoic doctrine.
Recurring Themes

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To try to extract a sustained and coherent argument from the
Meditations as a whole would be an unprofitable exercise. It
is simply not that kind of work. It would be equally fruitless
to try to read autobiographical elements into individual
entries (to take 9.42 as referring to the revolt of Avidius
Cassius, for example, or 10.4 as a reflection on Commodus)
—all the more so since so few of the entries can be dated
with any security. This is not to say that the Meditations has
no unity or no relationship to Marcus’s own life, for it has
both. What unifies it is the recurrence of a small number of
themes that surely reflect Marcus’s own preoccupations. It is
the points to which Marcus returns most often that offer the
best insight into his character and concerns.
One example that will strike almost any reader is the sense
of mortality that pervades the work. Death is not to be feared,
Marcus continually reminds himself. It is a natural process,