Book One

1 From my grandfather Verus:¹ decency and an even temper.

2 From what was said and remembered of my father:² modesty and manliness.

3 From my mother:³ reverence for the gods and generosity; holding back not only from doing wrong but even from thinking of it; and a simple way of living, far from the habits of the rich.

4 From my great-grandfather:⁴ that I did not go to the public schools but had good teachers at home, and that I learned that on such things one should spend freely.

5 From my tutor: not to become a Green or a Blue at the races, or a partisan of the light shields or the heavy shields at the games;⁵ to put up with hardship and need little; to do my own work and keep out of other people’s business; and to be slow to listen to slander.

6 From Diognetus:⁶ not to get worked up over trifles; to disbelieve what wonder-workers and sorcerers say about spells and the driving out of spirits and the like; not to keep fighting quails or be carried away by that sort of thing; to put up with plain speaking; to become at home in philosophy, and to hear first Bacchius, then Tandasis and Marcianus; to write dialogues as a boy; and to want a camp bed and a hide to sleep on, and whatever else belongs to the Greek training.

7 From Rusticus:⁷ the impression that my character needed correcting and care; not to be sidetracked into a sophist’s ambitions, writing treatises on doctrine, giving little sermons to stir people up, or putting on a dazzling display of the man of discipline or the man of good works; to keep clear of rhetoric, poetry, and fine phrases; not to walk around the house in formal dress or do anything of the kind; to write letters simply, like the one he wrote to my mother from Sinuessa; to be ready to make peace and be reconciled with those who have lost their temper with me or done me wrong, as soon as they themselves are willing to come back; to read carefully, not settling for a rough grasp of the whole, and not to be quick to agree with people who talk too much; and to have come across the notes of the lectures of Epictetus,⁸ which he gave me from his own library.

8 From Apollonius:⁹ freedom, and a resolve that leaves nothing whatever to chance; to look to nothing else, not even for a moment, but reason; to be always the same, in sharp pain, at the loss of a child, in long illness; to have seen plainly, in a living example, that the same man can be most intense and yet relaxed; not to be irritable in explaining things; to have seen a man who clearly counted his experience and skill in teaching doctrines as the least of his gifts; and to have learned how to accept what pass for favors from friends without being lowered by them and without letting them pass unnoticed.

9 From Sextus:¹⁰ kindliness; the example of a household governed by a father; the idea of living according to nature; dignity without pretense; close attention to the needs of friends; patience with the uneducated and with those who hold opinions without thinking them through; an easy accord with everyone, so that his company was more pleasant than any flattery, while the very people he was with held him, at that moment, in the deepest respect; the ability to find, with understanding and method, the principles necessary for life, and to set them in order; never showing even a trace of anger or any other passion, but being at once wholly free of passion and full of affection; praise without noise; great learning without display.

10 From Alexander the grammarian:¹¹ not to find fault; not to pounce scornfully on people who let slip a foreign word or a solecism or an ugly sound, but to bring in, deftly, just the expression that ought to have been used, by way of an answer, or of agreeing, or of discussing the matter itself rather than the word, or by some other tactful reminder of that kind.

11 From Fronto:¹² to notice what envy and double-dealing and hypocrisy go with a tyrant; and that the people we call patricians are, on the whole, somehow short of natural affection.

12 From Alexander the Platonist:¹³ not to say to anyone often, or without need, or to write in a letter, “I have no time”; and not to keep excusing myself in this way, pleading the press of business, from the duties we owe to those we live with.

13 From Catulus:¹⁴ not to brush aside a friend’s complaint, even if it happens to be unreasonable, but to try to restore the old footing; to speak of my teachers with heartfelt praise, as is told of Domitius and Athenodotus; and a true love of children.

14 From my brother Severus:¹⁵ love of family, love of truth, love of justice; that through him I came to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, and Brutus,¹⁶ and formed the idea of a state with one law for all, governed on equal terms and with equal freedom of speech, and of a monarchy that respects above all the freedom of its subjects; from him also a steady and constant regard for ⟨philosophy⟩; doing good and giving generously; hopefulness, and confidence that my friends love me; openness toward those he happened to censure; and that his friends had no need to guess what he wanted or did not want: it was plain.

15 From Maximus:¹⁷ self-mastery, and not being swept about by anything; good cheer in all circumstances, illness among them; a character well tempered, gentle and dignified; doing the work at hand without complaint; that everyone believed that what he said he meant, and that whatever he did he did with no ill intent. Never surprised, never startled; never in a hurry or hanging back, never at a loss, never downcast or putting on a smile, nor again angry or suspicious; generous, forgiving, truthful; the look of a man who was straight rather than one who had been straightened; that no one ever thought himself looked down on by him, nor would anyone have dared to think himself his better; and a gracious wit.

16 From my father:¹⁸ mildness, and unshaken firmness in decisions reached after careful inquiry; no vanity about what pass for honors; love of work and perseverance; a ready ear for anyone with something to offer for the common good; giving each man his due, and not to be moved from it; knowing from experience when to tighten the reins and when to let them go.

Putting a stop to love affairs with boys; his sense of fellowship; letting his friends off from always dining with him or going with him on his journeys, and those who had been kept away by some business always found him the same; his careful and patient inquiry in council, never breaking off the search early because first impressions satisfied him; holding on to his friends, never tiring of them and never infatuated; self-sufficiency in everything, and cheerfulness.

Foresight far ahead, and arranging the smallest matters in advance without making a drama of it; acclamations and all flattery checked in his reign; constant watch over what the empire needed, careful keeping of its funds, and patience under the blame this brought him; no superstition about the gods, and with men no courting of the people, no trying to please, no playing to the crowd, but sober and steady in everything, never vulgar, never chasing novelty.

The things that make life comfortable, of which fortune gave him plenty, he used without vanity and also without apology, so that when they were there he took them as they came, and when they were not he did not miss them. No one could have called him a sophist, or a smart-mouthed house slave, or a pedant, but a mature man, complete, above flattery, able to look after his own affairs and those of others.

Besides this, he honored those who were true philosophers, without reproaching the others, but without being led astray by them either; he was easy to be with, and gracious, though never cloyingly so; he took reasonable care of his body, not as a man who clings to life, nor to look well, nor yet neglecting it, but so that through his own attention he seldom needed a doctor, or medicines, or salves.

Above all, he gave way without envy to people who had some special gift, for speaking, say, or knowledge of law or custom or anything else, and joined in their efforts, so that each might win the credit his own talents deserved; and though he did everything according to ancestral custom, he did not try to be seen doing even this, keeping to ancestral custom.

Then too, he was not easily moved or restless, but content to stay with the same places and the same things; after his attacks of headache he came back at once, fresh and vigorous, to his usual work; he had few secrets, very few and very rare, and those only on matters of state; he was sensible and measured in staging public shows, in building, in largesse, and the like, as befits a man who looks to what has to be done and not to the credit that comes of doing it.

He did not bathe at odd hours, had no passion for building, gave no thought to fancy food, or to the weave and color of his clothes, or to the good looks of his slaves. His clothes were brought up from his villa below at Lorium; at Lanuvium, mostly a plain tunic; the way he treated the tax collector at Tusculum who begged his pardon; and his whole manner was like that.¹⁹

Nothing harsh in him, nothing implacable, nothing violent, nothing of which anyone could ever say, “He’s working up a sweat”; but everything thought out piece by piece, as if at leisure, calmly, in order, with vigor, all of a piece. What is remembered of Socrates would fit him: that he could both abstain from and enjoy the things that most people are too weak to abstain from and too self-indulgent in enjoying.²⁰

To be strong enough to hold out in the one and keep sober in the other is the mark of a man whose soul is complete and unconquerable, as was seen in the illness of Maximus.

17 From the gods: that I had good grandparents, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good companions at home, kinsmen, friends, nearly all of them good; and that I never stumbled into wronging any of them, although I had the kind of disposition that, given the chance, might have led me to do something of the sort; it was the gods’ kindness that no train of circumstances came along to expose me.

That I was not brought up any longer with my grandfather’s concubine; that I kept the bloom of my youth, and did not become a man before my time, but even put it off for a while.

That I was placed under a ruler and father who was to take all my vanity out of me and bring me to see that it is possible to live at court without needing bodyguards or embroidered robes or torches and statues and the like, and all that pomp; that one can live very nearly like a private citizen without being any the meaner or any the slacker for it in doing what a ruler must do for the common good.

That I had such a brother,²¹ whose character could rouse me to take care of myself, and who also gave me joy with his respect and affection; that my children were not born dull, or deformed in body. That I made no further progress in rhetoric and poetry and the other pursuits that might perhaps have held me fast, if I had seen myself getting on easily in them.

That I was quick to raise those who brought me up to the rank they seemed to want, and did not put it off in the hope that, since they were still young, I would do it later. That I came to know Apollonius, Rusticus, Maximus.

That I have had clear and frequent impressions of what life according to nature is like, so that, as far as it depends on the gods and on their gifts, their help, their inspiration, nothing now prevents me from living according to nature; and if I still fall short of it, the fault is mine, for not heeding the reminders of the gods, their all but spoken lessons.

That my body has held out so long in such a life; that I did not touch Benedicta or Theodotus,²² and that later, when I did fall into the passions of love, I was cured; that though I was often angry with Rusticus, I did nothing more that I would have regretted; that my mother, who was to die young, nevertheless spent her last years with me.

That whenever I wanted to help someone who was poor or in some other need, I was never told that I had no money to do it with; and that I never fell into a like need myself, so as to have to take from another; that my wife²³ is what she is, so obedient, so loving, so unaffected; that I had no shortage of good tutors for my children.

That remedies were given me in dreams, among others against spitting blood and dizziness, and this at Caieta, as if by an oracle;²⁴ that when I set my heart on philosophy I did not fall into the hands of some sophist, or sit down to write treatises, or analyze syllogisms, or busy myself with the phenomena of the sky. For all these things “need the help of the gods and of fortune.”

Among the Quadi, on the Granua.²⁵

Notes

1. Marcus Annius Verus, three times consul, who brought Marcus up in his house after his father’s early death.
2. Marcus Annius Verus the younger, praetor, who died when Marcus was a small child.
3. Domitia Lucilla, heiress of a wealthy family.
4. Probably his mother’s grandfather, Lucius Catilius Severus.
5. The Greens and the Blues were rival factions at the chariot races; the parmularii (light shields) and scutarii (heavy shields) were two classes of gladiators, and the crowd took sides over them too.
6. A teacher of Marcus’s boyhood, said to have taught him painting. Bacchius, Tandasis, and Marcianus are otherwise unknown philosophers.
7. Quintus Junius Rusticus, a Stoic philosopher, Marcus’s teacher and later his adviser.
8. Epictetus wrote nothing; his pupil Arrian took down his lectures, known as the Discourses.
9. Apollonius of Chalcedon, a strict Stoic, summoned to Rome by Antoninus Pius to teach Marcus.
10. Sextus of Chaeronea, a philosopher, grandson (or nephew) of Plutarch.
11. Alexander of Cotiaeum, a scholar of Homer.
12. Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the leading Latin orator of the day and Marcus’s teacher in rhetoric; their letters survive.
13. Alexander of Seleucia, a Platonist and orator, later Marcus’s secretary for Greek correspondence.
14. Cinna Catulus, a Stoic. Athenodotus is said to have been Fronto’s teacher; Domitius is unknown.
15. Probably the Peripatetic Claudius Severus, whose son married Marcus’s daughter. Marcus had no brother by birth, and the word is disputed.
16. Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus, Stoic senators put to death under Nero and Vespasian; Cato the Younger, who opposed Julius Caesar; Dion of Syracuse, who fought the tyrant Dionysius; Marcus Brutus, Caesar’s assassin.
17. Claudius Maximus, a Stoic, governor of Africa.
18. His adoptive father, the emperor Antoninus Pius (reigned 138–161).
19. The Greek of this passage is damaged and its sense uncertain; “tax collector” reads telōnēs for the transmitted phelōnēs. Lorium, west of Rome, was the imperial villa where Antoninus grew up and died; Lanuvium and Tusculum are towns in the Alban Hills.
20. Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.3.
21. His adoptive brother Lucius Verus, co-emperor with Marcus from 161 until his death in 169.
22. Unknown; probably members of the household.
23. Faustina the Younger, daughter of Antoninus Pius, married to Marcus in 145.
24. The text is corrupt; “as if by an oracle” reads chrēsmōi for the transmitted chrēsēi. Caieta is a coastal town in Latium.
25. The Quadi were a Germanic people north of the Danube, in what is now Moravia and Slovakia; the Granua is probably the river Hron. Marcus fought them in the early 170s.