Meditations By Marcus Aurelius

Meditations is one of Marcus Aurelius’ few pieces of work. The book preserves information pertaining to the author, genre, intended audience and provenance of the text. The author, Marcus Aurelius, was born in born 121 CE into distinguished Roman family. His father died when he was young; consequently, he was adopted by his grandfather who was a relative of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Hadrian adored Marcus, and when he chose his heir, Antoninus Pius, he requested that Antoninus adopt Marcus and Lucius Verus as sons. During his childhood Marcus was educated by famous teachers, and he showed skill in philosophy. He gained power as Antoninus' successor and became emperor in 161 CE. He ruled with his brother, Lucis Versus, until Lucis died in 169. At that time he became the sole ruler of Rome until 175 CE when Avidius Cassius took control, and Marcus died in the spring of 180 CE. Near the time of his death, Marcus wrote Meditations. The composition took place during a campaign in central Europe between 171 and 175 CE. Meditations was never intended for publication because it was a private notebook. Marcus Aurelius had no other intended audience other than himself; therefore, there is no clear structure and no recognized genre of ancient writing. The notebook was originally written in Greek, and the purpose of writing it was to advise himself how best to live, and
self-reflect.
Meditations is a collection of Marcus’ comments to himself, and these reflections preserved information related to the author and the origin of the text, and they also reflected events in the time
period.
During the time period where Meditations was written Marcus was sole emperor and on campaign in central Europe. Marcus’ role as emperor and his participation in military campaigns did not leave a lot of free time. He had a knack for philosophy, but he did not have the time to become an expert, or have time to write something for others. All he had time for was comments on self-scrutiny, and self-examination. His position as emperor made it necessary to be ready to deal with any kind of situation and his reflection on stoic ethics, and comparison to his own actions, mentally equipped himself to deal with what comes his way. He could not take the time to write something for others, so he did what he could, and wrote something for himself in order to help himself become a better emperor. In addition, he did not have the time to create a complete philosophical piece of work. Many philosophers had extra time to contemplate, and observe. This was a luxury Marcus did not have, and this is the reason he never completed a structured piece of work. Meditations is a collection of comments and reflections from when Marcus had spare time. He never got the opportunity to organize it, so the texts is a lot of scattered thoughts with no overall theme. During the time period when Meditations was composed, Marcus was sole emperor of Rome and was leading military campaigns, and his lack of free time influenced Marcus to write for himself in a scattered, unorganized way.