Meditations

These are notes a Roman emperor wrote to himself, much of the time on campaign along the Danube, never meant for anyone else to read. Marcus Aurelius reminds himself to get up in the morning and do the work of a human being, to expect meddling and ungrateful people without letting them harm him, that pain and death are natural, that fame is brief and the universe vast, and that only our own judgments and actions are truly in our power. The twelve books return again and again to the same few Stoic ideas, and the repetition is part of their force.

Marcus Aurelius ruled from 161 to 180 and wrote in Greek. This recording uses George Long's Victorian translation, with his short life of the emperor and his essay on its philosophy, and eight LibriVox volunteers share the twelve books, about seven hours. It is easy to take in small daily doses, which is how the book was written.