Meditations

What this book is, and who it's for

The personal journal of a Roman emperor, written ~170 AD on military campaign and not intended for publication, has survived nineteen centuries because it is the most-honest sustained Stoic practice ever put to paper. Marcus Aurelius did not write to teach; he wrote to remind himself of what he already knew but kept forgetting. The twelve books move through the foundational Stoic disciplines — accept change, control your judgments, do your duty, hold your composure under provocation, remember you will die — in the voice of someone testing each principle against the genuine hardship of governing an empire at war. Read this as the source text for every modern Stoic revival; you will find that everything written since is footnotes on Marcus's morning notes to himself.