Eugene Delacroix, Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, 1844. via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Modern Library
Meditations
The private notebook of the last good emperor.
$16.00
Available · worldwide delivery
The maison’s notePenguin Classics (Hammond) is the default; Hays is the best modern translation
- Author
- Marcus Aurelius; trans. Gregory Hays
- Publisher
- Modern Library
- Published
- January 2003
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Paperback
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
Written With No Reader in Mind
Marcus Aurelius ruled the Roman Empire for nineteen years, many of them at war on the Danube frontier, and in camp at night he wrote notes to himself in Greek. He called them simply To Himself; he never intended publication, which is the source of their strange intimacy. There is no performance in them, only a powerful man reminding himself, over and over, to work calmly, to expect ingratitude, to remember death, and to be good without an audience.
The notebook survived by luck and has been read for centuries by soldiers, statesmen and the generally overwhelmed. Gregory Hays's 2002 translation for the Modern Library renders it in plain modern English, closer to the jotted urgency of the original than the marble versions of the past.
In the Collections
