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

particular deserve mention. P. A. Brunt, “Marcus Aurelius in

---

His Meditations,” Journal of Roman Studies 64 (1974): 1–
20, analyzes the themes that especially exercise Marcus.
Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The “Meditations” of
Marcus Aurelius,  trans. M. Chase (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1998), is a thoughtful
reconstruction of Marcus’s philosophical system. R. B.
Rutherford, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study
(Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon, 1989), is an excellent analysis
from a more literary perspective, with good remarks also on
Marcus’s relationship with the gods. Among the many
appreciations by nonclassicists two deserve special mention:
Matthew Arnold’s “Marcus Aurelius” (originally a review
of Long’s translation) in his Lectures and Essays in
Criticism, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1962), and Joseph Brodsky’s “Homage to
Marcus Aurelius” in his collection On Grief and Reason
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995).
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Karen Schwabach read through an initial draft of the
translation and suggested numerous improvements, for which
I am deeply grateful. For help of various sorts I am also
indebted to Deborah DeMania, Gregory Gelburd, Krista
Kane, Charles Mathewes, Katherine Odell, Hayden
Pelliccia, Ellyn Schumacher, and Alphonse Vinh. My
colleagues in the Department of Classics at the University of

---

Virginia, and in particular my department chair, John Miller,
made it possible for me to take course relief during the fall
semester of 2001, when much of the work was completed.
Thanks are due finally to my editor, Will Murphy, for his
patience and enthusiasm for this project.
I
NTRODUCTION 
N
OTES
1. In this larger sense, rather than attempting to translate it, I
have generally left it simply as “(the) logos.” I hope that
readers who have assimilated such terms as “karma” and
“the Tao” will be prepared to welcome this one too.
2. So, too, some modern physicists have imagined a series of
universes produced by an alternation of expansions and
contractions—“big bangs” and “big crunches.”
3. Ramsay Macmullen, Enemies of the Roman Order
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), p.
48.
4. Earlier translators have been driven to clumsy equivalents
such as “Guiding Reason.” I have generally rendered it
“mind,” as being perhaps the least unsatisfactory English
equivalent.
5. Two examples are worth pointing to. Marcus finds the

---

gladiatorial combat and the brutal executions of the arena
a source of tedium (6.46); that they might be morally
wrong seems never to have occurred to him. He prides
himself on not having taken sexual advantage of his slaves,
not because it would have been harmful or unjust to them,
but because such self-indulgence would have been
damaging to his own character (1.17). There is no sign that
he ever questioned slavery as an institution. If asked, he
would no doubt have responded that “true” slavery is the
self-enslavement of the mind to emotion and desire (cf.
8.3, 9.40, 11.30); actual bodily slavery is merely a
condition to be accepted and endured, like nearsightedness
or a cold.
6. A still better title might be “Memoranda,” which suggests
both the miscellaneous character of the work and
something about its intended function. Scores of entries
begin with the injunctions to “remember . . .” or “keep in
mind . . . ,” while the syntax of others (e.g., 12.18)
presupposes such an admonition.
7. In order to stress the self-directed nature of the