MARCUS AURELIUS

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor (121–180) and the author of the Meditations, a work on Stoic philosophy. He has symbolized for many generations inthe West the Golden Age of the Roman Empire.

Marcus was born into a wealthy and politically powerful family. Although he was clearly destined for social distinction, how he came to the throne remains a mystery. In 136 the emperor Hadrian inexplicably announced as his eventual successor a certain Lucius Ceionius Commodus. Early in 138, however, Commodus died. Hadrian then adopted Titus Aurelius Antoninus (the husband of Marcus’ aunt) to succeed him as the emperor Antoninus Pius, arranging that Antoninus should adopt as his sons two young men, one the son of Commodus and the other Marcus, whose name was then changed to Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus.

Marcus was consul in 140, 145, and 161. In 145 he married his cousin, the emperor’s daughter Annia Galeria Faustina, and in 147 the imperium and tribunicia potestas, the main formal powers of emperorship, were conferred upon him; henceforth, he was a kind of junior co-emperor.

MARCUS AS ROMAN EMPEROR

On March 7, 161, at a time when the brothers were jointly consuls (for the third and the second time), their father died. The transition was smooth as far as Marcus was concerned. Already possessing the essential constitutional powers, he stepped automatically into the role of full emperor, and his name henceforth was Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus. At his own insistence, however, his adoptive brother was made co-emperor with him. For the first time in history the Roman Empire had two joint emperors of formally equal constitutional status and powers.In 167 or 168, Marcus and Verus together set out on a punitive expedition across the Danube. 

Behind their backs a horde of German tribes invaded Italy in massive strength and besieged Aquileia, on the crossroads at the head of the Adriatic. Marcus and Verus fought the Germans off with success, but in 169 Verus died suddenly, and doubt-less naturally, of a stroke. Three years of fighting were still needed, with Marcus in the thick of it, to restore the Danubian frontier.In 177 Marcus proclaimed his 16-year-old son, Commodus, joint emperor. Together they resumed the Danubian wars. Marcus was determined to pass from defense to offense and to an expansionist redrawing of Rome’s northern boundaries. His determination seemed to be winning success when, in 180, he died at his military headquarters, having just had time to commend Commodus to the chief advisers of the regime.

THE MEDITATIONS

To what extent Marcus intended the Meditations for eyes other than his own is uncertain. They consist of fragmentary notes, discursive and epigrammatic by turn, of his reflections in the midst of campaigning and administration. Strikingly, though they comprise the innermost thoughts of a Roman, the Meditations were written in Greek—to such an extent had the union of cultures become a reality. In many ages these thoughts have been admired. 

The modern age, however, is more likely to be struck by the pathology of them, their mixture of priggishness and hysteria. Marcus was forever proposing to himself unattainable goals of conduct, forever contemplating the triviality, brutishness, and transience of the physical world and of humanity in general, and himself in particular. Otherworldly, yet believing in no other world, he was therefore tied to duty and service with no hope, even of everlasting fame, to sustain him. More certain and more important is the point that Marcus’ anxieties reflect, in an exaggerated manner, the ethos of his age.

Though they were Marcus’ own thoughts, the Meditations were not original. They are basically the moral tenets of Stoicism, learned from Epictetus: the cosmos is a unity governed by an intelligence, and the human soul is a part of that divine intelligence and can therefore stand, if naked and alone, at least pure and undefiled, amidst chaos and futility. 

One or two of Marcus’ ideas, perhaps more through lack of rigorous understanding than anything else, diverged from Stoic philosophy and approached Platonism, which was itself then turning into the Neoplatonism—into which all pagan philosophies, except Epicureanism, were destined to merge. But Marcus did not deviate so far as to accept the comfort of any kind of survival after death.