Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

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I read this version on your recommendation after attempting another version a few years back (after seeing Gladiator, of course).

In short, I recommend any reader of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius to put forth a concerted, mindful effort.It should be audible in your voice, visible in your eyes, like a lover who looks into your face and takes in the whole story at a glance. Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire describes the reign of Antoninus as “furnishing very few materials for history, which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. Using Marcus as an example of greater Stoic philosophy, he found the Stoic ethical philosophy to contain an element of " sour grapes.

Marcus would have read Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and the tragedies of Euripides side by side with the Aeneid, and studied the speeches of the great Athenian orator Demosthenes as intensively as those of the Roman statesman Cicero. His instructor in Latin oratory was Marcus Cornelius Fronto, a prominent rhetorician from Cirta in North Africa. Not being a tyrant was something he had to work at one day at a time, and writing down these injunctions for himself was part of that effort.

By 1568, when Xylander completed his second edition, he no longer had access to the source and it has been lost ever since. Serious philosophical investigation required a familiarity with the language they wrote in and the terminology they developed. It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. In this book, we are taken on a journey through Marcus Aurelius’ mind, as we read his private thoughts and notes he wrote to himself.

We learn more about our bodies, souls, and minds and how to deal with emotions like anger, anxiety, grief, and so on.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJwaWN0dXJlcy5jLXNwYW52aWRlby5vcmciLCJrZXkiOiJGaWxlc1wvMzY5XC8yMDAyMTEwMjA4MzcxMzAwMl9oZC5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsiZml0IjoiY292ZXIiLCJoZWlnaHQiOjUwNn19fQ== Gregory Hays talked about his translation of Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, published by Modern Library. We give our best to give you the best book but in some cases we have to adjust few pages which are blur or missing or black spots. Marcus immediately acted to carry out what appears to have been Hadrian’s original intention (perhaps ignored by Antoninus) by pushing through the appointment of his adopted brother, Lucius Verus, as co-regent.

In an address to the emperor Valens, On Brotherly Love, he says: "You do not need the exhortations ( Greek: παραγγέλματα) of Marcus.At the same time, the work felt a little dimished by the fact it was written by an emperor, in the sense that it is easy for a person of the most privilege to talk about doing away with desires, or taking things as they come, seeing death as something to not fear, etc. He claims that the only way a man can be harmed by others is to allow his reaction to overpower him. In urging himself not to fear death, Marcus makes use of several arguments found in other ancient thinkers: that others have faced extinction with courage, that death is a natural process, that non-existence did not harm us before our birth and can't harm us after it, that death is unavoidable in any case. Even with Hays's background on the book being a disconnected personal journal, my brain still tried to read it as if the paragraphs were somehow connected.