Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) ruled the Roman Empire for nineteen years, through plague and near-constant war on the northern frontier, and wrote in Greek a private notebook he never intended anyone to read. That notebook, now called the Meditations, is the most unusual document to survive from antiquity: the most powerful man alive reminding himself, night after night, to be patient, to expect difficult people, to stop caring what posterity thinks, and to remember he will die. Our text is George Long’s public-domain translation of 1862, cited by book. Nothing in it was written to impress you, which is exactly why it still lands.