From Book 2: How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them; what is the nature of all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the bait of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapoury fame; how worthless, and contemptible, and sordid, and perishable, and dead they are- all this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to observe. To observe too who these are whose opinions and voices give reputation; what death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at it in its ..read more

Further to the discussion below: Any naturalistic explanation — that is to say, any historical explanation — of Christianity’s wildfire spread across Late Antiquity has to account for the… Well, wait. Let’s back up. Since this post (like the blog in general) is aimed at the younger folks — circa college age — we need some definitions. Despite what you’ve seen in the classroom your entire lives, the discipline of History isn’t really about finding some micro-grievance somewhere in the past, in order to fanservice your teachers’ socio-sexual hangups. Though History is most definitely not a scien ..read more

From book 2: All that is from the gods is full of Providence. That which is from fortune is not separated from nature or without an interweaving and involution with the things which are ordered by Providence. From thence all things flow; and there is besides necessity, and that which is for the advantage of the whole universe, of which thou art a part. But that is good for every part of nature which the nature of the whole brings, and what serves to maintain this nature. Now the universe is preserved, as by the changes of the elements so by the changes of th ..read more

Book One, the “thank yous,” contains a valuable picture of the kind of man Marcus would like to be, and that we should aspire to. Like this: In my father I observed mildness of temper, and unchangeable resolution in the things which he had determined after due deliberation; and no vainglory in those things which men call honours; and a love of labour and perseverance; and a readiness to listen to those who had anything to propose for the common weal; and undeviating firmness in giving to every man according to his deserts; and a knowledge derived from experience of th ..read more

In the below, Pickle Rick writes: It’s really a measure of scale. These systems of government, whether the Greek polis or the Roman res publica were developed for the city-state, or maybe at largest a league or confederation like the Delian League. The systems broke down as Rome stretches its power beyond Latinium. Our own experience with a confederation, then a republic shows the same strains as a system developed for a country of 3.9 million and the East Coast now creaks along in a continent with 329 million “citizens”. The old Roman formulation of Senātus Populusque Rōmānus couldn’t have a ..read more

Continuing the discussion from below, there’s another possibility: Maybe Marcus really does mean “equal rights for all.” It’s a very modern-sounding notion; it would’ve been radical indeed in the ancient world. But then again, Stoicism was in many ways a radical creed. Ancient thinkers had a very HBD-ish view of life. When someone like Aristotle talks about “man” as “the rational animal,” he most definitely does NOT mean that all human beings are always rational. Even we Postmoderns, who have had critical thinking beaten out of us by 16+ years of “education,” can see that’s ludicrous. Even the ..read more

Returning to Book One, we find a striking passage: From my brother Severus, to love my kin, and to love truth, and to love justice… and from him I received the idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed; All this from a Roman Emperor? Here’s where context becomes crucial, if we’re to avoid concluding that Marcus was the grossest of hypocrites.1 We can’t let him off the hook by claiming that ..read more

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