He used this
medicine
copiously, as ifit were nourishment.
Hadot - The Inner Citadel The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
Is this not how pleasure leads us astray?
6 Look and see, however, if there is anything more attractive than greatness of soul, eedom, simplicity, benevolence, and piety; r what is more at tractive than wisdom itself?
(V, 9, 3-5) .
You must consider the activity which it is possible r you to carry out in con rmity with your own nature as a delight-and that is always possible r you (X, 3 3 , 2) .
For the person who strives at every moment to live, act, will, and desire in con rmity with his rational nature and with universal Nature, life is constantly renewed happiness. In the words ofSeneca:7 "The e ect ofwisdom is a continuous joy . . . and only the strong, the just, and the temperate can possess this joy. " Marcus Aurelius often returns to this theme:
To do what is just with all one's soul, and to tell the truth. What remains r you to do but enjoy li , linking each good thing to the next, without leaving the slightest interval between them? (XII, 29, 3).
Enjoy and take your rest in one thing only: to pass om one action carried out in the service of the human community to another action accomplished in the service of the human community, to gether with the remembrance ofGod (VI, 7).
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For man, joy consists in doing what is proper to man. What is proper to man is benevolence toward other human beings, who are his relatives; disdain r movements based on sense-perception; criticism of deceptive representations; and the contemplation of universal Nature, and of that which happens in con rmity with its will (VIII, 26).
Joy, then, is the sign ofan action's perfection. It is only when we love human beings om the bottom ofour hearts, and not merely out ofduty, that we el pleasure in bene ting them (VII, 13, 3),just because we then have the feeling of belonging to the same living organism, and of being the limbs ofthe body ofrational beings.
Unlike Epicurean pleasure, Stoic joy is not the motive and the end of moral action: rather, virtue is its own reward. Virtue seeks nothing above and beyond itsel instead, r the Stoics, joy, like Aristotelian pleasure, comes along as an extra surplus in addition to action in con rmity with nature, "like beauty r those in the ower ofyouth. "8 In the words of Seneca:9
Pleasure is not a reward r virtue, nor its cause, but is something added on to it. Virtue is not chosen because it causes pleasure; but if it is chosen, it does cause pleasure.
The j oy which arises om virtue . . . like happiness and tranquillity . . . are consequences of the greatest good, but they do not consti tute it. 10
Suchjoy is not, moreover, an irrational passion, because it is in con rm ity with reason. According to the Stoics, it is rather a "good emotion" or a " g o o d a e c t i o n . " 1 1
The j oy produced by action accomplished in accordance with Nature is a participation in Nature's love r the that she has produced, and in the mutual love of the parts of the Whole.
For mankind, to be happy means eling the sentiment ofparticipating in an ineluctable movement, issuing om the impulse given to the by original Reason, in order to realize the good of the All. In the word physis, which we translate as "nature," the Greeks perceived the idea ofa movement of growth, of un lding, and, as the Stoics used to say, of "swelling"12 (emphysesis). To be happy meant to embrace this expansive
Virtue and Joy
movement, and thus to go in the same direction as Nature, and to feel, as it were, thejoy which she herself els in her creative movement.
This is why Marcus, when he describes joy, uses images which evoke progress on the right path and in the right direction, and the accord of our desires, wills, and thoughts with the path of Nature. It is then that "rational nature llows the path that is proper to it" (VIII, 7, r). The Stoics13 de ned happiness as euroia biou, "the good owing oflife. " Mar cus likes to link this image (II, 5, 3; V, 9, 5; X, 6, 6) to that of"progress in the right direction"-that is, in the direction ofNature (V, 34, 1). While the material elements move up, move down, or tum in a circle,
the movement of virtue does not resemble any of these physical motions, but is something divine, and it proceeds along the right path, which it is hard r us to imagine (VI, 17).
This right path is the "straight line" or "right road"-that ofNature hersel whose way is always straight ahead (X, I 1 , 4) . Her way is short and direct (IV, 51):
Get to the end ofyour race in a straight line, llowing your own nature and universal Nature, r both of these llow the same way (V, 3, 2).
Here, Marcus is reviving an ancient image which had been used by Plato:14
The God who, as ancient tradition will have it, holds the beginning, end, and middle ofall things, gets to the end efhis race in a st ight line, in accordance with the order ofnature.
Already in Plato, then, the order of nature appears as a triumphant movement which reaches its end without ever allowing itself to be distracted om the rectitude of its decision and its intention. According to Marcus, the movement of the governing part of the soul-the move ment ofthe intellect-also proceeds in a straight line, like the sun, which illuminates that which is in its way, and in a sense assimilates it to itself (VIII, 57). For the Stoics, moral action reaches its goal straightaway, inso r as it is its own end, and inso r as it nds its perfection in its very activity. A propos of this topic, Marcus recalls the technical expression
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katorthosis, which the Stoics used to designate such actions: it means that they llow a straight way (V, 1 4) .
Joy has its roots in that pro und tendency of living beings which impels them to love that which makes them exist, and this means not only their own structure and unity, but the All, without which they would be nothing, and of which they are integral parts. It also means Nature and her irresistible movement, of which they are but a tiny moment, but with which they identi themselves wholly, by means of their moral will.
Finally, and most important, joy is based on the recognition of the unique value of the one necessary thing that can exist in this human wo d: the purity ofmoral intention. We cannot nd
in human life, a good superior to justice, truth, temperance, and strength (III, 6, 1),
and this, there re, is the good which we must enjoy (VI, 47, 6):
Only one thing has value down here: to spend one's li in truth and justice, all the while remaining benevolent to liars and to the unjust.
MARCUS AURELIUS IN HIS MEDITATIONS
The author and his work
In interpreting the writings of antiquity, and particularly those of Marcus Aurelius, we must be on our guard against two errors which are diamet rically opposed, but equally anachronistic. One ofthese, inherited om Romanticism but still very much alive, consists in believing that an author expresses himself totally and adequately in the work which he produces, and that the work is there re completely in the image and resemblance of its creator. The other, which is very shionable today, holds that the idea ofan "author" is passe; the work has its own auton omy and its own li , and it can be explained without our having to nd out what the author wanted to do or say.
In ct, ancient authors were subject to strict rules, which were not of their choice. Some ofthese rules regulated the way in which one should write; these include the rules of literary genres as de ned by rhetoric, which prescribed in advance the plan ofexposition, style, and the various gures ofthought and elocution which must be used. Other rules regu lated the subject matter itsel what was written, the themes with which the author must deal (which, in the case ofthe theater, were supplied to him by mythical or historical tradition). Philosophers were also situated within a school-tradition, which imposed upon them a list of questions and problems to be discussed in a speci c order, a method ofargumenta tion which had to be llowed scrupulously, and principles which had to be adopted.
In the case of Marcus Aurelius, we have seen that the spiritual exer cises which he wrote down were prescribed by the Stoic tradition, and in particular by the rm of Stoicism de ned by Epictetus. Canvas, themes, arguments, and images were provided r him in advance. For Marcus, the essential thing was not to invent or to compose, but to in uence
10
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himself and produce an e ect upon himself Even if this e ect was e cacious at one moment, however, it would soon lose its strength, and the exercise would have to be begun again in order constantly to revive the certitude derived om the striking rmulations ofthe principles and rules oflife.
This state ofa airs will thus lead us to question the attempts ofpsy chological history, on the basis of the text of the Meditations, to arrive at conclusions about "the Marcus Aurelius case"- r instance, about his stomach ailments or his opium addiction.
This does not mean, however, that Marcus is totally absent om the Meditations, or that any Stoic who happened to be in Marcus' situation could have written approximately the same work. It is true that the Meditations attempt, as it were, to eliminate the point of view of indi viduality, in order to rise up to the level of universal and impersonal Reason; yet Marcus the individual still shines through, in this ever-re newed and never nished ef rt to assimilate the principles ofReason, in order to apply them to his particular circumstances. In the last analysis, this apparently impersonal work is highly personalized. Marcus has a vorite style and themes; he sometimes has obsessions and lacerating preoccupations, which arise om his carrying out the business of an emperor. We know very we what Marcus wanted to accomplish by writing this work: to act upon himsel place himselfin a certain state of mind, and respond to the concrete problems which the various situations ofdaily life posed r him.
The limits ofpsychological histo The Marcus Aurelius case
What I have said about the "impersonal" nature of ancient works in general and of Marcus Aurelius' spiritual exercises in particular must incite us to the greatest prudence in any e ort we might be tempted to make to reconstruct the psychology of the philosopher-emperor. As r as I know, it was Ernest Renan who was the rst to attempt to sketch a portrait ofMarcus. He ended up, moreover, with a portrait that is rather incoherent. Sometimes, he insists on the emperor's disillusioned seren ity:1
The most solid goodness is that which is based on perfect boredom, and the clear view of the ct that this whole world is frivolous and
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 245
lacking any true substance . . . The goodness of the Skeptic is the most certain, and the pious emperor was more than skeptical. The movement ofli in this soul was almost as quiet as the tiny noises in the intimate atmosphere of a co n. He had attained Buddhist nir vana, or the peace of Christ. Like Jesus, Shakya-Muni, Socrates, St. Francis of Assisi, and three or ur other sages, he had utterly con quered death. He could smile at it, because it truly had no more meaning r him.
Elsewhere, by contrast, Renan discovers in Marcus a tormented soul:2
The desperate e ort which was the essence ofhis philosophy, this enzied renunciation, sometimes pushed as r as sophism, nally conceals an immense wound. One must have said rewell to happi ness to arrive at such excesses! We shall never understand all that this poor withered heart had su ered, and how much bitterness lay hidden by his pale visage, always calm and almost smiling.
Here, r om having attained Buddhist nirvana or the peace of Christ, Renan's Marcus seems "consumed" by an inner sickness:
This strange sickness, this worried study of himsel this demonic scrupulousness, this verish per ctionism, are the signs ofa nature less strong than it is distinguished. 3
What he lacked was the kiss of a iry at his birth, which is, in its way, a very philosophical thing. What I mean is the art ofyielding to nature: that gaiety which learns that abstine et sustine is not every thing, and that life must also be able to be summed up by the rmula "smile and enjoy. "4
This portrait ofMarcus by Renan gave rise to what must be called the obstinate and tenacious myth which turns Marcus into a disillusioned pessimist. In the twentieth century-the century ofpsychology, psycho analysis, and suspicion-the Renanian representation ofthe philosopher emperor has had a tremendous in uence. P. Wendland5 speaks ofMar cus' "mourn l resignation. " More recently, ]. M. Rist6 has spoken ofthe philosopher-emperor's "extreme Skepticism," and ofhis "penchant r doubt. " Paul Petit7 speaks ofa "rather negative despair. " What I have said
about the alleged pess1m1sm of the Mediations ought, I think, to be su cient to re te such a rmations.
According to E. R. Dodds,8 the emperor considered human activity to be not only unimportant, but in a way almost unreal. It seems very di cult to reconcile such an interpretation with what Marcus says about the discipline of action. Dodds insists on the perpetual self-criticism to which Marcus subjects himsel and on the need which the emperor feels to be "another. " Dodds relates this tendency to a dream which, accord ing to Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta, Marcus had at the age of seventeen, on the night of his adoption by the emperor Antoninus. Marcus dreamed that he had ivory shoulders, and this suggests to Dodds that Marcus su ered om an acute rm ofwhat modern psychologists would call an identity crisis.
Here we have a typical example of the dangers of historical psychol ogy. Dodds gives a poor de nition ofwhat it means to "desire to be something other than one is. " It is true that Marcus aspired to be another man and to begin another li (X, 8, 3). But as the context shows, what he means by this is that he wants to acquire truth, prudence, and nobility of soul (X, 8, r). I think that every normal person also desires to be someone else in that sense, and if that is an identity crisis, then every person has an identity crisis. I cannot, moreover, see how "so much self-reproach" presents a "morbid" aspect, as Dodds maintains. 9 On this theme, Dodds attributes to Marcus the rmula "It is di cult r a man to put up with himself, " which, we are to believe, lets us infer either that Marcus w s unbearable to himsel or that, more generally, human nature taken in itselfis unbearable to itsel In ct, however, Dodds completely de rms the meaning ofMarcus' text 0/, IO, 4; not V, IO, I as is incor rectly indicated in Dodds's note). Marcus' actual tone is the llowing:
Also consider the ways of li of the men who live with you; the most pleasant of them is di cult to put up with, not to say that he can scarcely put up with himsel
Thus, the issue is not at all Marcus' relationship with his own self, but a wholly other problem, to which I shall return. Neither is this Marcus' personal experience; rather, it is a description, traditional within Stoicism and even within the other schools, of the misery of a person who does not live as a philosopher, does not devote himselfto the unique value of the moral good, and who is there re in contradiction and at war with himsel To live philosophically-that is to say, to live "according to
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Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 247
nature"-is to be coherent with oneself In all this, no "identity crisis" on the part ofMarcus can be discerned.
Moreover, when discussing Marcus' dream, Dodds does not give a complete report of what the ancient historians had to say. The Historia Augusta,10 r example, tells us that not only did the young man dream that he had ivory shoulders, but that he wondered ifthey would be able to support a burden, whereupon he discovered that they were extraordi narily stronger. Cassius Dio,11 writing shortly after Marcus' death, spe ci es that in his dream, Marcus could use these shoulders just as easily as the other parts of his body. In ct, however, the question is not what such a dream might represent to a person of modem times, but what it may have meant to a person of antiquity. The mistake made by some kinds ofpsychological history is to project back onto the past our mod em-day representations, according to which shoulders which are "other" must correspond to "another" man. What we must try to understand is what the images which appeared to the people of antiquity in their dreams could represent within their collective mentality. As Pierre Gri mal12 has shown, r them ivory shoulders immediately brought to mind the story of Pelops. Pelops' body, tom to pieces by his ther Tantalus, had been served to the gods r dinner. Demeter, still grieving over the death ofher daughter Persephone, was the only one not to recognize the dish, and she ate Pelops' shoulder. Clotho, goddess of Fate, replaced it with an ivory shoulder and revived the young Pelops. According to the Images by Philostratus, who wrote a few decades after the death ofMar cus, Poseidon was dazzled by the sight of this ivory shoulder, and he ll in love with Pelops. "When the night covered the earth, the young man was illuminated by his shoulder, which shone like the evening star in the midst ofthe darkness. "13
To have ivory shoulders was thus to be the object ofdivine solicitude and grace; it was to be protected by Fate, as personi ed by Clotho. In the situation ofincreased responsibility announced by his adoption, the ivory shoulders announce the help om the gods and om Fate which will make Marcus strong enough to assume his task. This, r a man of antiquity, is the true meaning ofMarcus' dream.
The psychosomaticist R. Dailly and H. van E enterre have under taken collaborative research in order to diagnose what they call "the Marcus Aurelius Case. "14 In particular, they sought to know the reason why, in a kind of contradiction with his principles, this emperor sur rounded himselfwith highly dubious characters. He chose as co-ruler his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus; he entrusted the position ofCommander
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in Chief over the entire East to Avidius Cassius, the general who later took up arms against him; and nally, he chose as his successor in the imperial dignity his son Commodus, who was to become a tyrant com parable to Nero. "These were three ne male specimens," write the authors ofthis article, "who had a de nite ability to enchant the crowds; and we are entitled to wonder whether they did not also exert a kind of unconscious scination upon Marcus Aurelius. " Thus, right at the be ginning of the article, we encounter the thesis which the two authors mean to defend: the philosopher-emperor was a weak man, lacking in virility, who lt the need to compensate r his doubts and hesitations by surrounding himself with strong, self-con dent men. Here we can glimpse the inner workings of this kind of psychological explanation: people believe they have uncovered a highly characteristic symptom, which is not in ct the symptom of anything, since it is not even a symptom. Nothing proves that Marcus chose these individuals out of attraction toward their virile rce. The elections of Lucius Verus, Avidius Cassius, and Commodus were dictated by complex political reasons, which historians have analyzed thoroughly. Nor is there any thing to prove that these " ne male specimens" (were they indeed so ne? ) were really so sure of themselves. Since, however, the subject of this book is the Meditations, I do not wish to allow myselfto be dragged into the domain of history. I wish simply to a rm, most rmly, that the Meditations do not, either in their goal or in their content, permit us either to a rm or to deny that Marcus was a weak man, that he lacked virility, or, as our two authors would have it, that he had a stomach ulcer. They arrive at this last diagnosis on the basis of the llowing passage om the historian Cassius Dio:15
[During the Danubian campaign] , he became physically very weak, to the point that, at the beginning, he could not stand the cold, and a er the soldiers had been assembled on his order, he had to retire be re having spoken to them. . . . For it was not his custom to eat anything during the day, with the exception of the medicine called theriac. He took this not because he was a aid of anything, but because his stomach and his chest were in poor shape. And it is said that it was because of this medicine that he was able to resist this i ness, and others as well.
This text makes no mention ofany chronic illness, but rather re rs to Marcus' state during the Danubian campaign. Elsewhere, Cassius Dio
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 249
bears witness to the ct that the Emperor was vigorous in his youth, and that he took part in violent sports like hunting. 16 According to Dio, it was the worries ofhis of ce and his ascetic ways that weakened his body. Be that as it may, our two authors, after having diagnosed a gastric ulcer, move on to the psychological correlates ofthis illness:
The ulcerous man . . . is he who is essentially withdrawn into him sel worried and preoccupied . . . His neighbors are masked om him by a kind of hypertrophy of the sel it is himsel in the last analysis, that he seeks in others . . . Conscientious to the point of minutiae, he is more interested in the technical perfection of ad ministration than in those human relations ofwhich administration should be only the sum total. Ifhe is a thinking man, he will incline to seek r justi cations, to compose superior personalities, and to adopt Stoic or Pharisaic attitudes. In the area of ethics, he will be virtuous by e rt, good by application, and a believer by rce of will. 17
I am not quali ed to debate the scienti c value of the psychological portrait which these two authors trace ofthese "gastropaths," although it would be interesting to ask them if they recognized themselves in this dark portrait. What I question is the possibility of deriving om the Meditations even the slightest hint which might con rm or invalidate this description ofMarcus Aurelius' psychology. The authors are completely mistaken as to the nature of this work when, to justi their diagnosis, they claim that the Meditations respond to a need r "justi cation in his own eyes," and constitute "a long series ofexhortations to persist in the path chosen be rehand. " As we have seen, the Meditations do not repre sent an exceptional phenomenon, proper to Marcus. Such written medi tation was highly recommended by Stoic masters, and is, moreover, still practiced today by people who do not have a stomach ulcer, but who are simply trying to live in a somewhat human way. And this is not a case of self-justi cation, but rather of an attempt at self-criticism and self-trans rmation. These variations on themes supplied by Epictetus cannot in rm us about the Emperor's gastric ulcer, and can tell us nothing decisive about the Marcus Aurelius "case. " Here we have a good exam ple ofthe dangers ofpsychological history when applied to ancient texts. Be re we present the interpretation of a text, we should rst begin to distinguish between, on the one hand, the traditional-one might almost say "pre bricated"-elements used by the author, and, on the other,
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what he or she wishes to do with them. Ifwe do not make this distinc tion, we will consider as symptomatic rmulas or attitudes which are not at such, because they do not emanate om the author's personality but are imposed upon him by tradition. We must try to nd out what the author wants to say, but also what he can or cannot say, and what he must or must not say, as a nction of the traditions and the circumstances imposed upon him.
Was Marcus an opium addict?
This is what T. W. Africa should have investigated, be re he claimed to discover the symptoms ofMarcus' alleged opium addiction in the Medi tations .
A ica bases his claim on three pieces of evidence. He takes up the passage om Cassius Dio discussed above, which, while describing the Emperor's state of health during the winter campaigns on the Danube, told us that he did not consume anything during the day except an antidote called theriac. He did this not because he was a aid of being poisoned, as we saw, but in order to calm his chest and stomach. Else where, A ica mentions a work by Galen entitled On Antidotes, which describes the di erent ways of preparing theriac, the use lness of this medicine, and the way in which Marcus used it. Finally, A ica thinks he can discover visions and psychic states produced by opium abuse within the Meditations.
Here is how A ica summarizes the evidence of Galen18 on Marcus' theriac consumption:
When he und himself getting drowsy at his duties, he had the poppy juice removed [ om the mixture] . . . But, then, he was unable to sleep at night. . . . So he was obliged once again to have recourse to the compound which contained poppyjuice, since this was now habitual with him.
Ifwe read Galen's text19 through to the end, however, we nd that it says precisely the opposite of what A ica wants to make it say. In the continuation of his text, Galen speci es two things. In the rst place, when Marcus took up the mixture containing poppy juice again, his personal physician, Demetrius, made sure that it contained aged poppy
juice, which did not have the same sopori c e ect. Second, a er the death of Demetrius, Galen himself was responsible r preparing the
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 251
Emperor's theriac, and he is quite proud to be able to say that Marcus was completely satis ed with the way he composed the antidote in accordance with the recipe that was traditional among the physicians to the emperors. Thus, according to Galen, the Emperor's sleepiness was only a temporary accident which happened during the Danubian cam paigns, and which did not happen again after aged poppyjuice was used, and especially after Galen intervened. That is what the latter's text actu a y says.
In ct, the question is exceedingly complex, and we have no way of determining the exact quantity and quality of the opium juice that went into the theriac which the Emperor consumed. On the one hand, his doctors took care to see that the opium juice was aged and weakened. On the other hand, Galen, in the course of his treatise, speaks of three kinds ofantidotes which he had prepared r Marcus Aurelius: galene (the antidote ofAndromachus), which contained sixty- ur ingredients, one of which was poppy juice; theriac of Hera, which contained no poppy
juice, but had equal parts of bituminous clover, Aristolochia rotunda, mountain rue (Ruta halepensis), and ground vetch ( cia E ilia). Finally, there was an antidote consisting of one hundred ingredients, which con tained very little poppy juice. Thus, the quantity of poppy juice was highly variable. 20
For his part, Galen saw a proof of Marcus' wisdom in this custom of his :
Some people use this medicine every day, r the good of their body, as we know personally om the case of the divine Marcus who once ruled in respect of the laws, and who, thanks to the consciousness he had of himsel observed the mixture of his body with very precise attention.
He used this medicine copiously, as ifit were nourishment. It was om him that theriac began to be mous, and that its powerful e ectiveness appeared among men. Indeed, thanks to the ct that the Emperor's health improved be cause of it, people's con dence in the use lness of this medicine increased considerably. 21
Thus, we can see om this body of evidence, taken om Cassius Dio and om Galen, that nothing in any way allows us to infer that Marcus was an opium addict.
This, moreover, is the conclusion which T. W. A ica himself reaches,22 in a otnote to his article: "Admittedly the amounts of opium
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could vary, and, on the basis of the antidote of the younger Antimachus (Galen XIV 42), a kyamos (Marcus' daily dose) would contain about 0. 03 3 gram of opium, hardly su cient r addiction. "
In that case, however, can we still speak ofan opium addiction? Yes, says A ica, because Marcus displays two symptoms: his "odd detachment om domestic realities," and the "bizarre visions" which we nd in the Meditations. The strange detachment mentioned by A ica is probably r he never clari es the point-what historians have always censured Marcus r: his apparent indi erence to the in delities of his wife Faustina and to the extravagances ofhis colleague Lucius Verus, as well as the un rtunate choice he made of Commodus as his successor. As we have already seen, however, the question with regard to Lucius Verus and Commodus is very complex, and political motives must have played a large role in determining Marcus' attitude. As r Faustina: she bore Marcus thirteen children, and he mentions her brie y but very emotion ally in the rst book ofthe Meditations. Everything leads us to believe that she was the victim of court gossip. Be that as it may, it is di cult to see why Marcus' attitude was any more a symptom of opium addiction, as A ica maintains, than it was of a stomach ulcer, as Dailly and van E en terre had thought.
There remain the "bizarre visions. " Here, bad historical psychology reaches one ofits summits; this is a piece worthy ofan anthology. I quote T. W. A ica:23
Marcus' vision oftime as a raging river carrying all be re it into the abyss of the ture was no school doctrine of li viewed om the Porch, but an attempt to express the extended perspectives oftime and space which opium had opened up to him. Temporal and spatial dimensions were accelerated until Europe was but a speck and the present a point and men insects crawling on a clod. History was no longer a reference but an actual pageant of the past. Marcus shared the exacerbated sensations of his fellow opium-addict De Quincey:24 "The sense of space, and, in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully a ected. Buildings, landscapes, etc. , were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not tted to receive them. Space swelled and was ampli ed, to an extent of unutterable in nity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived r 70 or I oo years in one night; nay, sometimes had elings representative
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 253 o f a millennium passed i n that time, or, however, o f a duration r
beyond the limits ofany human experience. "
Let us now examine the passages om Marcus Aurelius to which Africa refers in a otnote:
A river of events, a violent current: that is what eternity is. No sooner has one thing been seen than it has already passed; another one passes, and will, in its turn, be swept away (IV, 43).
Think often about the rapidity with which beings and events pass and disappear: r substance is like a river in perpetual ux; activities are in constant trans rmation; and causes are in a myriad ofmodes. Almost nothing is stable, even that which is close to you. Think also ofthe in nite abyss ofthe past and ofthe ture, into which every thing is swallowed up (V, 23).
Pace Mr. A ica, this theme is well attested in Stoicism, r instance in Seneca:25
Represent to yourself ropane) the vastness of time and embrace the universe, and then compare what we call human li to this immen sity.
Time passes with in nite speed. . . . Everything lls into the same abyss. . . . Our existence is a point, or less; but nature, by dividing this minimal thing, has given it the appearance ofa longer duration.
We nd this ancient image in the llowing ne verses by Leonidas of Tarentum:26
In nite, 0 man, is the time be re you came to the dawn; in nite is that which awaits you in Hades. What portion ofexistence remains to you, ifit is not barely the value ofa point, or still less?
Marcus' river is no doubt the Stoic river of substance, "which ows ceaselessly, "27 but in the last analysis it is the river of Heraclitus-that Heraclitus who Plato said compared beings to the ow of a river. 28 It is also the river of the Platonists, mentioned by Plutarch: "Everything appears and disappears in one unique moment; be it actions, words, or
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feelings; like a river, time sweeps everything away. "29 Finally, we also encounter this river in Ovid: "Time ows in perpetual movement; like a river, wave is pressed by wave. "30
When Seneca uses the expression propane, which means "represent to yourself" or "place be re your eyes the bottomless chasm of time, " he emphasizes that he is speaking of an exercise of the imagination, which the Stoic must practice. We nd an exercise of the same kind in those Meditations in which Marcus seeks to embrace the dimensions of the universe by his imagination, or to see things om on high, in order to reduce them to their true value:
Remember the totality of substance, of which you participate in only the smallest portion; remember also the whole of eternity, of which you have been assigned but a brie tiny interval. Finally, remember destiny, ofwhich you are a part: but how tiny! (V, 24)
If you suddenly und yourself transported into the air, and con templated human a airs and their variety om above, you would have contempt r them, as you saw, in the same glance, how vast is the domain ofthe inhabitants ofthe air and ofthe ether (XII, 24, 3).
You can cut o many of the super uous things which present obstacles to you, and which rest entirely on your value-judgment. Thus you will clear r yourself a vast open eld, by embracing the entire universe in your mind; you will comprehend perpetual eter nity, as you consider the rapid trans rmation of each individual thing. How short is the time om birth to dissolution; how gaping is the in nity be re birth, and similarly the in nity a er dissolution (IX, 32).
The soul traverses the entire world and the void which surrounds it; it examines the rm ofthe world; extends itselfinto the in nity of eternity, and embraces and conceives the periodic rebirth of the universe (XI, I, 3).
Asia and Europe are corners ofthe world; the entire sea is a drop of the world; Athas is a lump of earth in the world; all of present time is a point in eternity; everything is tiny, agile, and evanescent (VI, 36, 1).
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 255
We can immediately see the di erence between these passages and those by De Quincey. For the latter, the distention ofduration and space is an impression imposed upon the addict om outside, and he is in a sense its passive victim. For Marcus, by contrast, the consideration ofthe in nity of time and space is an active maneuver, as we can see om his equent admonitions to "represent to himself" or to "think" the totality. Here again, we are in the presence of a traditional spiritual exercise, which utilizes the culties ofthe imagination. Moreover, De Quincey speaks of a distention of the instant, which takes on outlandish propor tions; whereas Marcus speaks of an e ort to imagine the In nite in its totality, in order subsequently to see the instant, or the place, reduced to in nitesimal proportions. This voluntary exercise ofthe imagination pre supposes that Marcus adhered to the classical representation of the Stoic universe: the universe is situated within an in nite void, and its duration within an in nite time, within which the periodic rebirths of the uni verse repeat themselves eternally. This exercise is intended to obtain a vision of human a airs which resituates them within the perspective of universal Nature.
A procedure such as this is the very essence of philosophy. Thus we nd it, always identical beneath the diversity of vocabularies, in all the philosophical schools ofantiquity. Plato de ned the philosophical nature by its ability to contemplate the totality oftime and ofbeing, and there re to hold human a airs in contempt. 31 We nd this theme again among such Platonists as Philo32 or Maximus of Tyre,33 in Neopythagoreanism,34 among the Stoics,35 and even among the Epicure ans. Representative of the last-named is the llowing saying by Metro dorus:
Remember that, although you were born mortal and with a limited life, you have nevertheless, by means of discussions about nature, risen up to the eternity and in nity ofthings. You have also seen the ture and the past. 36
In Cicero's mous Dream ofScipio,37 the grandson ofScipio A icanus contemplates the world om the heights of the Milky Way. He sees the earth so small that the Roman Empire seems imperceptible to him; the inhabited portion of the world seems like a tiny island in the middle of Ocean; and life seems to be less than a point. This theme was to remain very much alive throughout the Western tradition. We have an echo of it in Pascal's "two in nites":38 "Let the earth appear to him as a point,
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compared to the vast circle described by this star . . . " Was Pascal, then, also an opium addict?
Marcus also transports this view om above onto the past (X, 27):
Think constantly about this: how all events which are similar to those which are happening now, have also happened in the past; and think that they will happen again. Place entire dramas, and homogeneous scenes, which you know through your personal ex perience or through ancient history, be re your eyes: r instance, all of Hadrian's court; or that of Antoninus; the whole courts of Philip, Alexander, or Croesus. For all of that was similar; only the actors were di erent.
T. W. Africa has read De Quincey, and has noticed the ne page in which the latter evokes the reveries in which there appeared to him the luminous spectacle of the ladies of the court of King Charles I, or Paulus Aemilius, surrounded by centurions, striding in ont of the Roman legions. A ica believes he nds an analogous phenomenon in Marcus Aurelius. Once again, however, it is enough to read Marcus attentively to recognize the di erence. De Quincey's description is purely oneiric: the dream is told r its own sake, as a strange and marvelous spectacle. For Marcus, however, it is not a dream: the Emperor demands an imagi native e ort om himsel in order to try to represent to himself the courts of the past. As Paul Rabbow has shown,39 this practice is carried out in accordance with the rules which rhetoric prescribed when one had to depict a scene or a circumstance in an expressive way. Moreover, the picture was not there r its own sake, but o y in order to provide a highly austere conviction in the soul of the person practicing the exer cise; namely, that human a airs are banal and ephemeral (VII, 49):
Behold the past. So many changes ofregime; and the ture can be predicted equally well. Things will be entirely homogeneous, and we cannot escape the rhythm of what is happening now. That is why there is no di erence between studying human life r rty years, or ten thousand years, or more: what more could one possi bly see?
I believe I have su ciently demonstrated the workings of a certain type of historical psychology. Generally speaking, it is based upon igno-
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 257
ranee ofthe modes ofthought and composition ofancient authors, and it anachronistically projects modern representations back upon ancient texts. It would, moreover, be interesting to psychologize some historical psychologists; I believe we could discover in them two tendencies. One is iconoclastic: it takes pleasure in attacking such gures as Plotinus or Marcus Aurelius, r example, who are naively respected by right-think ing people. The other is reductionist: it considers that elevation ofthe soul or of thought, all moral heroism, and all grandiose views of the universe can only be morbid and abnormal. Everything has to be ex plained by sex or drugs.
Stylistic elegance
From everything that has just been said, we must not conclude that Marcus is absent om his Meditations. Rather, he is present in them in many ways, and the work has an autobiographical value which is limited, but very real.
First and remost, Marcus is present by virtue ofhis stylistic elegance. We have already seen that the Emperor, who was writing r himsel usually makes an e rt to write with the greatest care, certainly because he is aware of the psychological power of a well-turned phrase. The procedures Marcus uses have been well analyzed by]. Dal n,40 Monique Alexandre,41 and R. B. Ruther rd,42 who have also pointed out the felicitous expressions in which they result. As Monique exandre has shown, Marcus here reveals himself to be a true student of Fronto. It appears that Fronto required his student to compose a saying nome) every day, and above all to rmulate it in di erent ways. As Fronto writes,43 "Each time you conceive ofa paradoxical thought, turn it over within yoursel vary it with diverse gures and nuances, make trial ofit, and dress it in splendid words. " Throughout this book, we have been able to admire Marcus' skill at developing multiple variations on the same theme. Fronto also advised his student to make collections ofsay ings r himself44
It is dif cult to add anything new to the remarkable studies that have been carried out on Marcus' style. I think, however, that it may be use l to cite some examples ofthe quest r stylistic elegance which appears in some passages om his work.
The quest r conciseness o en gives such passages a remarkable vigor, and an almost enigmatic character:
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Correct, not corrected! (VII, 12).
Grow on the same trunk, but don't pro ss the same doctrines! (XI,
8, 6: the opposition is between homothamnein and homodogmatein). Neither an actor nor a whore! (V, 28, 4).
For the stone thrown up in the air, it is neither bad to ll back down, nor good to rise up (IX, 1 7) .
Receive without pride, let go without attachment (VIII, 3 3) .
Men have come into being r one another; so either teach them or put up with them (VIII, 59).
Leave the ult of another right where it is (IX, 20) .
A bitter cucumber? Throw it away! Brambles on the road? Avoid
them! (VIII, 50).
We have already equently encountered the brutal, explosive rmu las which Marcus uses to describe the ugliness oflife when it is bereft of moral value:
A mime (mimos) and a war olemos); excitement toia) and numb ness (narka); the slavery (douleia) of every day! (X, 9) .
Note the assonances in this last passage, which are indicative ofMarcus' search r literary e ect.
In how short a time, ashes or a skeleton! A mere name, or no longer even a name. But a name is nothing but meaningless noise, or an echo .
And everything to which people attach so much importance in this life is empty, rotten, and petty: little dogs that nip at one an other; kids who ght, laugh, and then suddenly burst into tears. Faith, however, and Modesty, Justice, and Truth "have taken ight toward Olympus, eeing the road- rrowed earth" (V, 33). 45
The most striking mmlas deal with the brevity oflife, death, and the vanity of me:
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 259 Soon, you will have rgotten everything! Soon, everyone will have
rgotten you! (VII, 21).
Everything is ephemeral; both that which remembers, and that which is remembered (IV, 35).
Soon you too will close your eyes, and someone else will have wept r the person who laid you to rest (X, 34, 6).
Yesterday, a bit of phlegm; tomorrow, ashes or a mummy (IV, 48, 3).
Marcus not only had a knack r turning concise phrases, but he also knew how to tell of the beauty of things in few words, as in a passage om the Meditations (III, 2) cited earlier. There, Marcus evoked crusty bread and ripe gs which split, and maturity, which is already almost rottenness, which gives its beauty to the color of olives, and which also gives a kind of ourishing to elderly men and women, and makes heavy laden ears of com lean toward the earth. The "lion's wrinkled brow, " the " am dripping om the boar's muzzle," and the "gapingjaws ofwild beasts" also have their own savage beauty.
Fronto had taught his imperial student to introduce images and com parisons into his sayings and discourses, and Marcus learned his lesson well :
On the same altar, there are many grains ofincense. One falls be re the others, another later. What di erence does it make? (IV, 1 5) .
Dig within. That's where you'll nd the source ofthe good, and it can always burst rth anew, ifyou keep digging (VII, 59).
A spider hunts down a fly, and thinks he is pretty hot stu One man hunts down a little hare; another catches a sardine in his net; another hunts boars, another bears, another Sarmatians. Aren't they all thieves, ifyou examine the motives oftheir actions? (X, 10).
Have you ever seen a hand which has been cut o or a ot, or a severed head lying somewhere apart om the rest ofthe body? That is what a person does to himself . . . who does not wish r what happens, and who separates himself om the . . . (VIII, 34).
260 THE INNER CITADEL
In certain Meditations, we also notice a striving after rhythm and the harmonious balance of phrases, as r instance in the llowing prayer to the World:
Everything which is in accord with you is in accord with me, 0 World! Nothing ofwhat comes in an opportune way r you comes either too soon or too late r me! that your seasons produce, 0 Nature, is fruit r me (IV, 23).
Elsewhere, a thought is developed in parallel and ascending rmulas, as in the llowing passage, ofwhich I will cite only the beginning:
One is the light of the sun, even if it is divided by walls, moun tains, or a thousand other things.
One is the common substance, even ifit is divided into thousands ofbodies, each with its own individual qualities.
One is the soul, even ifit be divided into thousands of culties of growth and individual di erences.
One is the thinking soul, even ifit seems divided . . . (XII, 30).
I n these stylistic exercises, to which Marcus accorded all his attention, one may, I believe, glimpse two characteristic atures ofhis personality: a great aesthetic sensitivity and an intense search r perfection.
It may be ofinterest to point out that W. Williams46 has carried out a study of the style of Marcus' constitutions, and there re of the juridical texts which he wrote. According to this author, we can note in these writings a meticulousness highly concentrated upon details, and an al most exaggerated insistence on explaining points that are self-evident. This seems to indicate a certain lack of con dence in the moral and intellectual qualities of his subordinates, and a quest r purity in the use of Greek and of Latin. Finally, it shows the scrupulous attention that Marcus devoted to nding the most equitable, humane, and just solu tions possible.
Chronological signposts
The reader of a literary work always likes to know at what moment of the author's li it was written, and in what atmosphere. To be sure, there is something atemporal about the Meditations, and it must be admit ted that the attempts made by various historians to attach certain passages
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations
to speci c moments of the Emperor's li have been disappointing. As we have seen, the Meditations are spiritual exercises, carried out upon a canvas pre bricated by the Stoic tradition, which did not leave any room r personal anecdotes. In order to suggest a date r their composition, we possess o y two pieces ofobjective evidence. Between what is now Book I and what is now Book II of the Meditations, the editio princ s contains a sentence which can be translated as llows: "Written in the land of the Quadi, on the banks of the Gran, I . " Between what is now Book II and what is now Book III, it contains the indication "Written in Camutum. " It may have been the Emperor himself who added these two speci cations, as he made r himself a classi cation of the notes he had written.
Camutum was a military base which the Romans had established starting at the beginning of the rst century B. c. on the Danube, not r om Vienna, and it was home r several thousand legionnaires. A small town had sprung up near the camp, with an amphitheater which was built in the second century. It was there that Marcus established his headquarters during his wars against the Quadi and the Marcomanni, om 170 to 173.
The river Gran is still called either by this name or by that ofthe Hron; it ows om north to south through Slovakia, andjoins the Danube in Hungary. Marcus' allusion to this river is invaluable: it reveals to us that the Emperor was not content to direct operations om the rti ed camp at Camutum, but that he had crossed the Danube and had pene trated the territory of the Quadi-a Germanic people who, together with the Marcomanni, had invaded the Empire in 169-tO a distance of more than 60 miles.
To what books of the Meditations do these two notations refer? The allusion to the Quadi is placed between Books I and II, whereas the mention of Camutum comes between Books II and III. In antiquity, indications ofthis kind could appear either at the beginning or at the end of a book. If these two notes were placed at the end, then the rst one refers to Book I, and the second to Book II. If they were placed at the beginning, then the rst one refers to Book II, and the second to Book III. Historians have adopted both views, without ever ishing decisive proo£ I am inclined to llow G. Breithaupt47 and W. Theiler48 in thinking that these indications were placed at the beginnings ofBooks II and III respectively.
It is most interesting, and even moving, to note that at least a part of the Meditations was written during the Roman operations carried out on
the Danube in 170-173-not only in the relative calm of a military headquarters, but amidst the discom rt ofan expedition into the land of the Quadi. This situation may explain the distinctive tone ofBooks II and III: the haunting presence ofthe theme ofdeath.
You must consider the activity which it is possible r you to carry out in con rmity with your own nature as a delight-and that is always possible r you (X, 3 3 , 2) .
For the person who strives at every moment to live, act, will, and desire in con rmity with his rational nature and with universal Nature, life is constantly renewed happiness. In the words ofSeneca:7 "The e ect ofwisdom is a continuous joy . . . and only the strong, the just, and the temperate can possess this joy. " Marcus Aurelius often returns to this theme:
To do what is just with all one's soul, and to tell the truth. What remains r you to do but enjoy li , linking each good thing to the next, without leaving the slightest interval between them? (XII, 29, 3).
Enjoy and take your rest in one thing only: to pass om one action carried out in the service of the human community to another action accomplished in the service of the human community, to gether with the remembrance ofGod (VI, 7).
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For man, joy consists in doing what is proper to man. What is proper to man is benevolence toward other human beings, who are his relatives; disdain r movements based on sense-perception; criticism of deceptive representations; and the contemplation of universal Nature, and of that which happens in con rmity with its will (VIII, 26).
Joy, then, is the sign ofan action's perfection. It is only when we love human beings om the bottom ofour hearts, and not merely out ofduty, that we el pleasure in bene ting them (VII, 13, 3),just because we then have the feeling of belonging to the same living organism, and of being the limbs ofthe body ofrational beings.
Unlike Epicurean pleasure, Stoic joy is not the motive and the end of moral action: rather, virtue is its own reward. Virtue seeks nothing above and beyond itsel instead, r the Stoics, joy, like Aristotelian pleasure, comes along as an extra surplus in addition to action in con rmity with nature, "like beauty r those in the ower ofyouth. "8 In the words of Seneca:9
Pleasure is not a reward r virtue, nor its cause, but is something added on to it. Virtue is not chosen because it causes pleasure; but if it is chosen, it does cause pleasure.
The j oy which arises om virtue . . . like happiness and tranquillity . . . are consequences of the greatest good, but they do not consti tute it. 10
Suchjoy is not, moreover, an irrational passion, because it is in con rm ity with reason. According to the Stoics, it is rather a "good emotion" or a " g o o d a e c t i o n . " 1 1
The j oy produced by action accomplished in accordance with Nature is a participation in Nature's love r the that she has produced, and in the mutual love of the parts of the Whole.
For mankind, to be happy means eling the sentiment ofparticipating in an ineluctable movement, issuing om the impulse given to the by original Reason, in order to realize the good of the All. In the word physis, which we translate as "nature," the Greeks perceived the idea ofa movement of growth, of un lding, and, as the Stoics used to say, of "swelling"12 (emphysesis). To be happy meant to embrace this expansive
Virtue and Joy
movement, and thus to go in the same direction as Nature, and to feel, as it were, thejoy which she herself els in her creative movement.
This is why Marcus, when he describes joy, uses images which evoke progress on the right path and in the right direction, and the accord of our desires, wills, and thoughts with the path of Nature. It is then that "rational nature llows the path that is proper to it" (VIII, 7, r). The Stoics13 de ned happiness as euroia biou, "the good owing oflife. " Mar cus likes to link this image (II, 5, 3; V, 9, 5; X, 6, 6) to that of"progress in the right direction"-that is, in the direction ofNature (V, 34, 1). While the material elements move up, move down, or tum in a circle,
the movement of virtue does not resemble any of these physical motions, but is something divine, and it proceeds along the right path, which it is hard r us to imagine (VI, 17).
This right path is the "straight line" or "right road"-that ofNature hersel whose way is always straight ahead (X, I 1 , 4) . Her way is short and direct (IV, 51):
Get to the end ofyour race in a straight line, llowing your own nature and universal Nature, r both of these llow the same way (V, 3, 2).
Here, Marcus is reviving an ancient image which had been used by Plato:14
The God who, as ancient tradition will have it, holds the beginning, end, and middle ofall things, gets to the end efhis race in a st ight line, in accordance with the order ofnature.
Already in Plato, then, the order of nature appears as a triumphant movement which reaches its end without ever allowing itself to be distracted om the rectitude of its decision and its intention. According to Marcus, the movement of the governing part of the soul-the move ment ofthe intellect-also proceeds in a straight line, like the sun, which illuminates that which is in its way, and in a sense assimilates it to itself (VIII, 57). For the Stoics, moral action reaches its goal straightaway, inso r as it is its own end, and inso r as it nds its perfection in its very activity. A propos of this topic, Marcus recalls the technical expression
242 THE INNER CITADEL
katorthosis, which the Stoics used to designate such actions: it means that they llow a straight way (V, 1 4) .
Joy has its roots in that pro und tendency of living beings which impels them to love that which makes them exist, and this means not only their own structure and unity, but the All, without which they would be nothing, and of which they are integral parts. It also means Nature and her irresistible movement, of which they are but a tiny moment, but with which they identi themselves wholly, by means of their moral will.
Finally, and most important, joy is based on the recognition of the unique value of the one necessary thing that can exist in this human wo d: the purity ofmoral intention. We cannot nd
in human life, a good superior to justice, truth, temperance, and strength (III, 6, 1),
and this, there re, is the good which we must enjoy (VI, 47, 6):
Only one thing has value down here: to spend one's li in truth and justice, all the while remaining benevolent to liars and to the unjust.
MARCUS AURELIUS IN HIS MEDITATIONS
The author and his work
In interpreting the writings of antiquity, and particularly those of Marcus Aurelius, we must be on our guard against two errors which are diamet rically opposed, but equally anachronistic. One ofthese, inherited om Romanticism but still very much alive, consists in believing that an author expresses himself totally and adequately in the work which he produces, and that the work is there re completely in the image and resemblance of its creator. The other, which is very shionable today, holds that the idea ofan "author" is passe; the work has its own auton omy and its own li , and it can be explained without our having to nd out what the author wanted to do or say.
In ct, ancient authors were subject to strict rules, which were not of their choice. Some ofthese rules regulated the way in which one should write; these include the rules of literary genres as de ned by rhetoric, which prescribed in advance the plan ofexposition, style, and the various gures ofthought and elocution which must be used. Other rules regu lated the subject matter itsel what was written, the themes with which the author must deal (which, in the case ofthe theater, were supplied to him by mythical or historical tradition). Philosophers were also situated within a school-tradition, which imposed upon them a list of questions and problems to be discussed in a speci c order, a method ofargumenta tion which had to be llowed scrupulously, and principles which had to be adopted.
In the case of Marcus Aurelius, we have seen that the spiritual exer cises which he wrote down were prescribed by the Stoic tradition, and in particular by the rm of Stoicism de ned by Epictetus. Canvas, themes, arguments, and images were provided r him in advance. For Marcus, the essential thing was not to invent or to compose, but to in uence
10
244 THE INNER CITADEL
himself and produce an e ect upon himself Even if this e ect was e cacious at one moment, however, it would soon lose its strength, and the exercise would have to be begun again in order constantly to revive the certitude derived om the striking rmulations ofthe principles and rules oflife.
This state ofa airs will thus lead us to question the attempts ofpsy chological history, on the basis of the text of the Meditations, to arrive at conclusions about "the Marcus Aurelius case"- r instance, about his stomach ailments or his opium addiction.
This does not mean, however, that Marcus is totally absent om the Meditations, or that any Stoic who happened to be in Marcus' situation could have written approximately the same work. It is true that the Meditations attempt, as it were, to eliminate the point of view of indi viduality, in order to rise up to the level of universal and impersonal Reason; yet Marcus the individual still shines through, in this ever-re newed and never nished ef rt to assimilate the principles ofReason, in order to apply them to his particular circumstances. In the last analysis, this apparently impersonal work is highly personalized. Marcus has a vorite style and themes; he sometimes has obsessions and lacerating preoccupations, which arise om his carrying out the business of an emperor. We know very we what Marcus wanted to accomplish by writing this work: to act upon himsel place himselfin a certain state of mind, and respond to the concrete problems which the various situations ofdaily life posed r him.
The limits ofpsychological histo The Marcus Aurelius case
What I have said about the "impersonal" nature of ancient works in general and of Marcus Aurelius' spiritual exercises in particular must incite us to the greatest prudence in any e ort we might be tempted to make to reconstruct the psychology of the philosopher-emperor. As r as I know, it was Ernest Renan who was the rst to attempt to sketch a portrait ofMarcus. He ended up, moreover, with a portrait that is rather incoherent. Sometimes, he insists on the emperor's disillusioned seren ity:1
The most solid goodness is that which is based on perfect boredom, and the clear view of the ct that this whole world is frivolous and
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 245
lacking any true substance . . . The goodness of the Skeptic is the most certain, and the pious emperor was more than skeptical. The movement ofli in this soul was almost as quiet as the tiny noises in the intimate atmosphere of a co n. He had attained Buddhist nir vana, or the peace of Christ. Like Jesus, Shakya-Muni, Socrates, St. Francis of Assisi, and three or ur other sages, he had utterly con quered death. He could smile at it, because it truly had no more meaning r him.
Elsewhere, by contrast, Renan discovers in Marcus a tormented soul:2
The desperate e ort which was the essence ofhis philosophy, this enzied renunciation, sometimes pushed as r as sophism, nally conceals an immense wound. One must have said rewell to happi ness to arrive at such excesses! We shall never understand all that this poor withered heart had su ered, and how much bitterness lay hidden by his pale visage, always calm and almost smiling.
Here, r om having attained Buddhist nirvana or the peace of Christ, Renan's Marcus seems "consumed" by an inner sickness:
This strange sickness, this worried study of himsel this demonic scrupulousness, this verish per ctionism, are the signs ofa nature less strong than it is distinguished. 3
What he lacked was the kiss of a iry at his birth, which is, in its way, a very philosophical thing. What I mean is the art ofyielding to nature: that gaiety which learns that abstine et sustine is not every thing, and that life must also be able to be summed up by the rmula "smile and enjoy. "4
This portrait ofMarcus by Renan gave rise to what must be called the obstinate and tenacious myth which turns Marcus into a disillusioned pessimist. In the twentieth century-the century ofpsychology, psycho analysis, and suspicion-the Renanian representation ofthe philosopher emperor has had a tremendous in uence. P. Wendland5 speaks ofMar cus' "mourn l resignation. " More recently, ]. M. Rist6 has spoken ofthe philosopher-emperor's "extreme Skepticism," and ofhis "penchant r doubt. " Paul Petit7 speaks ofa "rather negative despair. " What I have said
about the alleged pess1m1sm of the Mediations ought, I think, to be su cient to re te such a rmations.
According to E. R. Dodds,8 the emperor considered human activity to be not only unimportant, but in a way almost unreal. It seems very di cult to reconcile such an interpretation with what Marcus says about the discipline of action. Dodds insists on the perpetual self-criticism to which Marcus subjects himsel and on the need which the emperor feels to be "another. " Dodds relates this tendency to a dream which, accord ing to Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta, Marcus had at the age of seventeen, on the night of his adoption by the emperor Antoninus. Marcus dreamed that he had ivory shoulders, and this suggests to Dodds that Marcus su ered om an acute rm ofwhat modern psychologists would call an identity crisis.
Here we have a typical example of the dangers of historical psychol ogy. Dodds gives a poor de nition ofwhat it means to "desire to be something other than one is. " It is true that Marcus aspired to be another man and to begin another li (X, 8, 3). But as the context shows, what he means by this is that he wants to acquire truth, prudence, and nobility of soul (X, 8, r). I think that every normal person also desires to be someone else in that sense, and if that is an identity crisis, then every person has an identity crisis. I cannot, moreover, see how "so much self-reproach" presents a "morbid" aspect, as Dodds maintains. 9 On this theme, Dodds attributes to Marcus the rmula "It is di cult r a man to put up with himself, " which, we are to believe, lets us infer either that Marcus w s unbearable to himsel or that, more generally, human nature taken in itselfis unbearable to itsel In ct, however, Dodds completely de rms the meaning ofMarcus' text 0/, IO, 4; not V, IO, I as is incor rectly indicated in Dodds's note). Marcus' actual tone is the llowing:
Also consider the ways of li of the men who live with you; the most pleasant of them is di cult to put up with, not to say that he can scarcely put up with himsel
Thus, the issue is not at all Marcus' relationship with his own self, but a wholly other problem, to which I shall return. Neither is this Marcus' personal experience; rather, it is a description, traditional within Stoicism and even within the other schools, of the misery of a person who does not live as a philosopher, does not devote himselfto the unique value of the moral good, and who is there re in contradiction and at war with himsel To live philosophically-that is to say, to live "according to
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Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 247
nature"-is to be coherent with oneself In all this, no "identity crisis" on the part ofMarcus can be discerned.
Moreover, when discussing Marcus' dream, Dodds does not give a complete report of what the ancient historians had to say. The Historia Augusta,10 r example, tells us that not only did the young man dream that he had ivory shoulders, but that he wondered ifthey would be able to support a burden, whereupon he discovered that they were extraordi narily stronger. Cassius Dio,11 writing shortly after Marcus' death, spe ci es that in his dream, Marcus could use these shoulders just as easily as the other parts of his body. In ct, however, the question is not what such a dream might represent to a person of modem times, but what it may have meant to a person of antiquity. The mistake made by some kinds ofpsychological history is to project back onto the past our mod em-day representations, according to which shoulders which are "other" must correspond to "another" man. What we must try to understand is what the images which appeared to the people of antiquity in their dreams could represent within their collective mentality. As Pierre Gri mal12 has shown, r them ivory shoulders immediately brought to mind the story of Pelops. Pelops' body, tom to pieces by his ther Tantalus, had been served to the gods r dinner. Demeter, still grieving over the death ofher daughter Persephone, was the only one not to recognize the dish, and she ate Pelops' shoulder. Clotho, goddess of Fate, replaced it with an ivory shoulder and revived the young Pelops. According to the Images by Philostratus, who wrote a few decades after the death ofMar cus, Poseidon was dazzled by the sight of this ivory shoulder, and he ll in love with Pelops. "When the night covered the earth, the young man was illuminated by his shoulder, which shone like the evening star in the midst ofthe darkness. "13
To have ivory shoulders was thus to be the object ofdivine solicitude and grace; it was to be protected by Fate, as personi ed by Clotho. In the situation ofincreased responsibility announced by his adoption, the ivory shoulders announce the help om the gods and om Fate which will make Marcus strong enough to assume his task. This, r a man of antiquity, is the true meaning ofMarcus' dream.
The psychosomaticist R. Dailly and H. van E enterre have under taken collaborative research in order to diagnose what they call "the Marcus Aurelius Case. "14 In particular, they sought to know the reason why, in a kind of contradiction with his principles, this emperor sur rounded himselfwith highly dubious characters. He chose as co-ruler his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus; he entrusted the position ofCommander
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in Chief over the entire East to Avidius Cassius, the general who later took up arms against him; and nally, he chose as his successor in the imperial dignity his son Commodus, who was to become a tyrant com parable to Nero. "These were three ne male specimens," write the authors ofthis article, "who had a de nite ability to enchant the crowds; and we are entitled to wonder whether they did not also exert a kind of unconscious scination upon Marcus Aurelius. " Thus, right at the be ginning of the article, we encounter the thesis which the two authors mean to defend: the philosopher-emperor was a weak man, lacking in virility, who lt the need to compensate r his doubts and hesitations by surrounding himself with strong, self-con dent men. Here we can glimpse the inner workings of this kind of psychological explanation: people believe they have uncovered a highly characteristic symptom, which is not in ct the symptom of anything, since it is not even a symptom. Nothing proves that Marcus chose these individuals out of attraction toward their virile rce. The elections of Lucius Verus, Avidius Cassius, and Commodus were dictated by complex political reasons, which historians have analyzed thoroughly. Nor is there any thing to prove that these " ne male specimens" (were they indeed so ne? ) were really so sure of themselves. Since, however, the subject of this book is the Meditations, I do not wish to allow myselfto be dragged into the domain of history. I wish simply to a rm, most rmly, that the Meditations do not, either in their goal or in their content, permit us either to a rm or to deny that Marcus was a weak man, that he lacked virility, or, as our two authors would have it, that he had a stomach ulcer. They arrive at this last diagnosis on the basis of the llowing passage om the historian Cassius Dio:15
[During the Danubian campaign] , he became physically very weak, to the point that, at the beginning, he could not stand the cold, and a er the soldiers had been assembled on his order, he had to retire be re having spoken to them. . . . For it was not his custom to eat anything during the day, with the exception of the medicine called theriac. He took this not because he was a aid of anything, but because his stomach and his chest were in poor shape. And it is said that it was because of this medicine that he was able to resist this i ness, and others as well.
This text makes no mention ofany chronic illness, but rather re rs to Marcus' state during the Danubian campaign. Elsewhere, Cassius Dio
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 249
bears witness to the ct that the Emperor was vigorous in his youth, and that he took part in violent sports like hunting. 16 According to Dio, it was the worries ofhis of ce and his ascetic ways that weakened his body. Be that as it may, our two authors, after having diagnosed a gastric ulcer, move on to the psychological correlates ofthis illness:
The ulcerous man . . . is he who is essentially withdrawn into him sel worried and preoccupied . . . His neighbors are masked om him by a kind of hypertrophy of the sel it is himsel in the last analysis, that he seeks in others . . . Conscientious to the point of minutiae, he is more interested in the technical perfection of ad ministration than in those human relations ofwhich administration should be only the sum total. Ifhe is a thinking man, he will incline to seek r justi cations, to compose superior personalities, and to adopt Stoic or Pharisaic attitudes. In the area of ethics, he will be virtuous by e rt, good by application, and a believer by rce of will. 17
I am not quali ed to debate the scienti c value of the psychological portrait which these two authors trace ofthese "gastropaths," although it would be interesting to ask them if they recognized themselves in this dark portrait. What I question is the possibility of deriving om the Meditations even the slightest hint which might con rm or invalidate this description ofMarcus Aurelius' psychology. The authors are completely mistaken as to the nature of this work when, to justi their diagnosis, they claim that the Meditations respond to a need r "justi cation in his own eyes," and constitute "a long series ofexhortations to persist in the path chosen be rehand. " As we have seen, the Meditations do not repre sent an exceptional phenomenon, proper to Marcus. Such written medi tation was highly recommended by Stoic masters, and is, moreover, still practiced today by people who do not have a stomach ulcer, but who are simply trying to live in a somewhat human way. And this is not a case of self-justi cation, but rather of an attempt at self-criticism and self-trans rmation. These variations on themes supplied by Epictetus cannot in rm us about the Emperor's gastric ulcer, and can tell us nothing decisive about the Marcus Aurelius "case. " Here we have a good exam ple ofthe dangers ofpsychological history when applied to ancient texts. Be re we present the interpretation of a text, we should rst begin to distinguish between, on the one hand, the traditional-one might almost say "pre bricated"-elements used by the author, and, on the other,
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what he or she wishes to do with them. Ifwe do not make this distinc tion, we will consider as symptomatic rmulas or attitudes which are not at such, because they do not emanate om the author's personality but are imposed upon him by tradition. We must try to nd out what the author wants to say, but also what he can or cannot say, and what he must or must not say, as a nction of the traditions and the circumstances imposed upon him.
Was Marcus an opium addict?
This is what T. W. Africa should have investigated, be re he claimed to discover the symptoms ofMarcus' alleged opium addiction in the Medi tations .
A ica bases his claim on three pieces of evidence. He takes up the passage om Cassius Dio discussed above, which, while describing the Emperor's state of health during the winter campaigns on the Danube, told us that he did not consume anything during the day except an antidote called theriac. He did this not because he was a aid of being poisoned, as we saw, but in order to calm his chest and stomach. Else where, A ica mentions a work by Galen entitled On Antidotes, which describes the di erent ways of preparing theriac, the use lness of this medicine, and the way in which Marcus used it. Finally, A ica thinks he can discover visions and psychic states produced by opium abuse within the Meditations.
Here is how A ica summarizes the evidence of Galen18 on Marcus' theriac consumption:
When he und himself getting drowsy at his duties, he had the poppy juice removed [ om the mixture] . . . But, then, he was unable to sleep at night. . . . So he was obliged once again to have recourse to the compound which contained poppyjuice, since this was now habitual with him.
Ifwe read Galen's text19 through to the end, however, we nd that it says precisely the opposite of what A ica wants to make it say. In the continuation of his text, Galen speci es two things. In the rst place, when Marcus took up the mixture containing poppy juice again, his personal physician, Demetrius, made sure that it contained aged poppy
juice, which did not have the same sopori c e ect. Second, a er the death of Demetrius, Galen himself was responsible r preparing the
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 251
Emperor's theriac, and he is quite proud to be able to say that Marcus was completely satis ed with the way he composed the antidote in accordance with the recipe that was traditional among the physicians to the emperors. Thus, according to Galen, the Emperor's sleepiness was only a temporary accident which happened during the Danubian cam paigns, and which did not happen again after aged poppyjuice was used, and especially after Galen intervened. That is what the latter's text actu a y says.
In ct, the question is exceedingly complex, and we have no way of determining the exact quantity and quality of the opium juice that went into the theriac which the Emperor consumed. On the one hand, his doctors took care to see that the opium juice was aged and weakened. On the other hand, Galen, in the course of his treatise, speaks of three kinds ofantidotes which he had prepared r Marcus Aurelius: galene (the antidote ofAndromachus), which contained sixty- ur ingredients, one of which was poppy juice; theriac of Hera, which contained no poppy
juice, but had equal parts of bituminous clover, Aristolochia rotunda, mountain rue (Ruta halepensis), and ground vetch ( cia E ilia). Finally, there was an antidote consisting of one hundred ingredients, which con tained very little poppy juice. Thus, the quantity of poppy juice was highly variable. 20
For his part, Galen saw a proof of Marcus' wisdom in this custom of his :
Some people use this medicine every day, r the good of their body, as we know personally om the case of the divine Marcus who once ruled in respect of the laws, and who, thanks to the consciousness he had of himsel observed the mixture of his body with very precise attention.
He used this medicine copiously, as ifit were nourishment. It was om him that theriac began to be mous, and that its powerful e ectiveness appeared among men. Indeed, thanks to the ct that the Emperor's health improved be cause of it, people's con dence in the use lness of this medicine increased considerably. 21
Thus, we can see om this body of evidence, taken om Cassius Dio and om Galen, that nothing in any way allows us to infer that Marcus was an opium addict.
This, moreover, is the conclusion which T. W. A ica himself reaches,22 in a otnote to his article: "Admittedly the amounts of opium
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could vary, and, on the basis of the antidote of the younger Antimachus (Galen XIV 42), a kyamos (Marcus' daily dose) would contain about 0. 03 3 gram of opium, hardly su cient r addiction. "
In that case, however, can we still speak ofan opium addiction? Yes, says A ica, because Marcus displays two symptoms: his "odd detachment om domestic realities," and the "bizarre visions" which we nd in the Meditations. The strange detachment mentioned by A ica is probably r he never clari es the point-what historians have always censured Marcus r: his apparent indi erence to the in delities of his wife Faustina and to the extravagances ofhis colleague Lucius Verus, as well as the un rtunate choice he made of Commodus as his successor. As we have already seen, however, the question with regard to Lucius Verus and Commodus is very complex, and political motives must have played a large role in determining Marcus' attitude. As r Faustina: she bore Marcus thirteen children, and he mentions her brie y but very emotion ally in the rst book ofthe Meditations. Everything leads us to believe that she was the victim of court gossip. Be that as it may, it is di cult to see why Marcus' attitude was any more a symptom of opium addiction, as A ica maintains, than it was of a stomach ulcer, as Dailly and van E en terre had thought.
There remain the "bizarre visions. " Here, bad historical psychology reaches one ofits summits; this is a piece worthy ofan anthology. I quote T. W. A ica:23
Marcus' vision oftime as a raging river carrying all be re it into the abyss of the ture was no school doctrine of li viewed om the Porch, but an attempt to express the extended perspectives oftime and space which opium had opened up to him. Temporal and spatial dimensions were accelerated until Europe was but a speck and the present a point and men insects crawling on a clod. History was no longer a reference but an actual pageant of the past. Marcus shared the exacerbated sensations of his fellow opium-addict De Quincey:24 "The sense of space, and, in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully a ected. Buildings, landscapes, etc. , were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not tted to receive them. Space swelled and was ampli ed, to an extent of unutterable in nity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived r 70 or I oo years in one night; nay, sometimes had elings representative
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 253 o f a millennium passed i n that time, or, however, o f a duration r
beyond the limits ofany human experience. "
Let us now examine the passages om Marcus Aurelius to which Africa refers in a otnote:
A river of events, a violent current: that is what eternity is. No sooner has one thing been seen than it has already passed; another one passes, and will, in its turn, be swept away (IV, 43).
Think often about the rapidity with which beings and events pass and disappear: r substance is like a river in perpetual ux; activities are in constant trans rmation; and causes are in a myriad ofmodes. Almost nothing is stable, even that which is close to you. Think also ofthe in nite abyss ofthe past and ofthe ture, into which every thing is swallowed up (V, 23).
Pace Mr. A ica, this theme is well attested in Stoicism, r instance in Seneca:25
Represent to yourself ropane) the vastness of time and embrace the universe, and then compare what we call human li to this immen sity.
Time passes with in nite speed. . . . Everything lls into the same abyss. . . . Our existence is a point, or less; but nature, by dividing this minimal thing, has given it the appearance ofa longer duration.
We nd this ancient image in the llowing ne verses by Leonidas of Tarentum:26
In nite, 0 man, is the time be re you came to the dawn; in nite is that which awaits you in Hades. What portion ofexistence remains to you, ifit is not barely the value ofa point, or still less?
Marcus' river is no doubt the Stoic river of substance, "which ows ceaselessly, "27 but in the last analysis it is the river of Heraclitus-that Heraclitus who Plato said compared beings to the ow of a river. 28 It is also the river of the Platonists, mentioned by Plutarch: "Everything appears and disappears in one unique moment; be it actions, words, or
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feelings; like a river, time sweeps everything away. "29 Finally, we also encounter this river in Ovid: "Time ows in perpetual movement; like a river, wave is pressed by wave. "30
When Seneca uses the expression propane, which means "represent to yourself" or "place be re your eyes the bottomless chasm of time, " he emphasizes that he is speaking of an exercise of the imagination, which the Stoic must practice. We nd an exercise of the same kind in those Meditations in which Marcus seeks to embrace the dimensions of the universe by his imagination, or to see things om on high, in order to reduce them to their true value:
Remember the totality of substance, of which you participate in only the smallest portion; remember also the whole of eternity, of which you have been assigned but a brie tiny interval. Finally, remember destiny, ofwhich you are a part: but how tiny! (V, 24)
If you suddenly und yourself transported into the air, and con templated human a airs and their variety om above, you would have contempt r them, as you saw, in the same glance, how vast is the domain ofthe inhabitants ofthe air and ofthe ether (XII, 24, 3).
You can cut o many of the super uous things which present obstacles to you, and which rest entirely on your value-judgment. Thus you will clear r yourself a vast open eld, by embracing the entire universe in your mind; you will comprehend perpetual eter nity, as you consider the rapid trans rmation of each individual thing. How short is the time om birth to dissolution; how gaping is the in nity be re birth, and similarly the in nity a er dissolution (IX, 32).
The soul traverses the entire world and the void which surrounds it; it examines the rm ofthe world; extends itselfinto the in nity of eternity, and embraces and conceives the periodic rebirth of the universe (XI, I, 3).
Asia and Europe are corners ofthe world; the entire sea is a drop of the world; Athas is a lump of earth in the world; all of present time is a point in eternity; everything is tiny, agile, and evanescent (VI, 36, 1).
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 255
We can immediately see the di erence between these passages and those by De Quincey. For the latter, the distention ofduration and space is an impression imposed upon the addict om outside, and he is in a sense its passive victim. For Marcus, by contrast, the consideration ofthe in nity of time and space is an active maneuver, as we can see om his equent admonitions to "represent to himself" or to "think" the totality. Here again, we are in the presence of a traditional spiritual exercise, which utilizes the culties ofthe imagination. Moreover, De Quincey speaks of a distention of the instant, which takes on outlandish propor tions; whereas Marcus speaks of an e ort to imagine the In nite in its totality, in order subsequently to see the instant, or the place, reduced to in nitesimal proportions. This voluntary exercise ofthe imagination pre supposes that Marcus adhered to the classical representation of the Stoic universe: the universe is situated within an in nite void, and its duration within an in nite time, within which the periodic rebirths of the uni verse repeat themselves eternally. This exercise is intended to obtain a vision of human a airs which resituates them within the perspective of universal Nature.
A procedure such as this is the very essence of philosophy. Thus we nd it, always identical beneath the diversity of vocabularies, in all the philosophical schools ofantiquity. Plato de ned the philosophical nature by its ability to contemplate the totality oftime and ofbeing, and there re to hold human a airs in contempt. 31 We nd this theme again among such Platonists as Philo32 or Maximus of Tyre,33 in Neopythagoreanism,34 among the Stoics,35 and even among the Epicure ans. Representative of the last-named is the llowing saying by Metro dorus:
Remember that, although you were born mortal and with a limited life, you have nevertheless, by means of discussions about nature, risen up to the eternity and in nity ofthings. You have also seen the ture and the past. 36
In Cicero's mous Dream ofScipio,37 the grandson ofScipio A icanus contemplates the world om the heights of the Milky Way. He sees the earth so small that the Roman Empire seems imperceptible to him; the inhabited portion of the world seems like a tiny island in the middle of Ocean; and life seems to be less than a point. This theme was to remain very much alive throughout the Western tradition. We have an echo of it in Pascal's "two in nites":38 "Let the earth appear to him as a point,
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compared to the vast circle described by this star . . . " Was Pascal, then, also an opium addict?
Marcus also transports this view om above onto the past (X, 27):
Think constantly about this: how all events which are similar to those which are happening now, have also happened in the past; and think that they will happen again. Place entire dramas, and homogeneous scenes, which you know through your personal ex perience or through ancient history, be re your eyes: r instance, all of Hadrian's court; or that of Antoninus; the whole courts of Philip, Alexander, or Croesus. For all of that was similar; only the actors were di erent.
T. W. Africa has read De Quincey, and has noticed the ne page in which the latter evokes the reveries in which there appeared to him the luminous spectacle of the ladies of the court of King Charles I, or Paulus Aemilius, surrounded by centurions, striding in ont of the Roman legions. A ica believes he nds an analogous phenomenon in Marcus Aurelius. Once again, however, it is enough to read Marcus attentively to recognize the di erence. De Quincey's description is purely oneiric: the dream is told r its own sake, as a strange and marvelous spectacle. For Marcus, however, it is not a dream: the Emperor demands an imagi native e ort om himsel in order to try to represent to himself the courts of the past. As Paul Rabbow has shown,39 this practice is carried out in accordance with the rules which rhetoric prescribed when one had to depict a scene or a circumstance in an expressive way. Moreover, the picture was not there r its own sake, but o y in order to provide a highly austere conviction in the soul of the person practicing the exer cise; namely, that human a airs are banal and ephemeral (VII, 49):
Behold the past. So many changes ofregime; and the ture can be predicted equally well. Things will be entirely homogeneous, and we cannot escape the rhythm of what is happening now. That is why there is no di erence between studying human life r rty years, or ten thousand years, or more: what more could one possi bly see?
I believe I have su ciently demonstrated the workings of a certain type of historical psychology. Generally speaking, it is based upon igno-
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 257
ranee ofthe modes ofthought and composition ofancient authors, and it anachronistically projects modern representations back upon ancient texts. It would, moreover, be interesting to psychologize some historical psychologists; I believe we could discover in them two tendencies. One is iconoclastic: it takes pleasure in attacking such gures as Plotinus or Marcus Aurelius, r example, who are naively respected by right-think ing people. The other is reductionist: it considers that elevation ofthe soul or of thought, all moral heroism, and all grandiose views of the universe can only be morbid and abnormal. Everything has to be ex plained by sex or drugs.
Stylistic elegance
From everything that has just been said, we must not conclude that Marcus is absent om his Meditations. Rather, he is present in them in many ways, and the work has an autobiographical value which is limited, but very real.
First and remost, Marcus is present by virtue ofhis stylistic elegance. We have already seen that the Emperor, who was writing r himsel usually makes an e rt to write with the greatest care, certainly because he is aware of the psychological power of a well-turned phrase. The procedures Marcus uses have been well analyzed by]. Dal n,40 Monique Alexandre,41 and R. B. Ruther rd,42 who have also pointed out the felicitous expressions in which they result. As Monique exandre has shown, Marcus here reveals himself to be a true student of Fronto. It appears that Fronto required his student to compose a saying nome) every day, and above all to rmulate it in di erent ways. As Fronto writes,43 "Each time you conceive ofa paradoxical thought, turn it over within yoursel vary it with diverse gures and nuances, make trial ofit, and dress it in splendid words. " Throughout this book, we have been able to admire Marcus' skill at developing multiple variations on the same theme. Fronto also advised his student to make collections ofsay ings r himself44
It is dif cult to add anything new to the remarkable studies that have been carried out on Marcus' style. I think, however, that it may be use l to cite some examples ofthe quest r stylistic elegance which appears in some passages om his work.
The quest r conciseness o en gives such passages a remarkable vigor, and an almost enigmatic character:
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Correct, not corrected! (VII, 12).
Grow on the same trunk, but don't pro ss the same doctrines! (XI,
8, 6: the opposition is between homothamnein and homodogmatein). Neither an actor nor a whore! (V, 28, 4).
For the stone thrown up in the air, it is neither bad to ll back down, nor good to rise up (IX, 1 7) .
Receive without pride, let go without attachment (VIII, 3 3) .
Men have come into being r one another; so either teach them or put up with them (VIII, 59).
Leave the ult of another right where it is (IX, 20) .
A bitter cucumber? Throw it away! Brambles on the road? Avoid
them! (VIII, 50).
We have already equently encountered the brutal, explosive rmu las which Marcus uses to describe the ugliness oflife when it is bereft of moral value:
A mime (mimos) and a war olemos); excitement toia) and numb ness (narka); the slavery (douleia) of every day! (X, 9) .
Note the assonances in this last passage, which are indicative ofMarcus' search r literary e ect.
In how short a time, ashes or a skeleton! A mere name, or no longer even a name. But a name is nothing but meaningless noise, or an echo .
And everything to which people attach so much importance in this life is empty, rotten, and petty: little dogs that nip at one an other; kids who ght, laugh, and then suddenly burst into tears. Faith, however, and Modesty, Justice, and Truth "have taken ight toward Olympus, eeing the road- rrowed earth" (V, 33). 45
The most striking mmlas deal with the brevity oflife, death, and the vanity of me:
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 259 Soon, you will have rgotten everything! Soon, everyone will have
rgotten you! (VII, 21).
Everything is ephemeral; both that which remembers, and that which is remembered (IV, 35).
Soon you too will close your eyes, and someone else will have wept r the person who laid you to rest (X, 34, 6).
Yesterday, a bit of phlegm; tomorrow, ashes or a mummy (IV, 48, 3).
Marcus not only had a knack r turning concise phrases, but he also knew how to tell of the beauty of things in few words, as in a passage om the Meditations (III, 2) cited earlier. There, Marcus evoked crusty bread and ripe gs which split, and maturity, which is already almost rottenness, which gives its beauty to the color of olives, and which also gives a kind of ourishing to elderly men and women, and makes heavy laden ears of com lean toward the earth. The "lion's wrinkled brow, " the " am dripping om the boar's muzzle," and the "gapingjaws ofwild beasts" also have their own savage beauty.
Fronto had taught his imperial student to introduce images and com parisons into his sayings and discourses, and Marcus learned his lesson well :
On the same altar, there are many grains ofincense. One falls be re the others, another later. What di erence does it make? (IV, 1 5) .
Dig within. That's where you'll nd the source ofthe good, and it can always burst rth anew, ifyou keep digging (VII, 59).
A spider hunts down a fly, and thinks he is pretty hot stu One man hunts down a little hare; another catches a sardine in his net; another hunts boars, another bears, another Sarmatians. Aren't they all thieves, ifyou examine the motives oftheir actions? (X, 10).
Have you ever seen a hand which has been cut o or a ot, or a severed head lying somewhere apart om the rest ofthe body? That is what a person does to himself . . . who does not wish r what happens, and who separates himself om the . . . (VIII, 34).
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In certain Meditations, we also notice a striving after rhythm and the harmonious balance of phrases, as r instance in the llowing prayer to the World:
Everything which is in accord with you is in accord with me, 0 World! Nothing ofwhat comes in an opportune way r you comes either too soon or too late r me! that your seasons produce, 0 Nature, is fruit r me (IV, 23).
Elsewhere, a thought is developed in parallel and ascending rmulas, as in the llowing passage, ofwhich I will cite only the beginning:
One is the light of the sun, even if it is divided by walls, moun tains, or a thousand other things.
One is the common substance, even ifit is divided into thousands ofbodies, each with its own individual qualities.
One is the soul, even ifit be divided into thousands of culties of growth and individual di erences.
One is the thinking soul, even ifit seems divided . . . (XII, 30).
I n these stylistic exercises, to which Marcus accorded all his attention, one may, I believe, glimpse two characteristic atures ofhis personality: a great aesthetic sensitivity and an intense search r perfection.
It may be ofinterest to point out that W. Williams46 has carried out a study of the style of Marcus' constitutions, and there re of the juridical texts which he wrote. According to this author, we can note in these writings a meticulousness highly concentrated upon details, and an al most exaggerated insistence on explaining points that are self-evident. This seems to indicate a certain lack of con dence in the moral and intellectual qualities of his subordinates, and a quest r purity in the use of Greek and of Latin. Finally, it shows the scrupulous attention that Marcus devoted to nding the most equitable, humane, and just solu tions possible.
Chronological signposts
The reader of a literary work always likes to know at what moment of the author's li it was written, and in what atmosphere. To be sure, there is something atemporal about the Meditations, and it must be admit ted that the attempts made by various historians to attach certain passages
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations
to speci c moments of the Emperor's li have been disappointing. As we have seen, the Meditations are spiritual exercises, carried out upon a canvas pre bricated by the Stoic tradition, which did not leave any room r personal anecdotes. In order to suggest a date r their composition, we possess o y two pieces ofobjective evidence. Between what is now Book I and what is now Book II of the Meditations, the editio princ s contains a sentence which can be translated as llows: "Written in the land of the Quadi, on the banks of the Gran, I . " Between what is now Book II and what is now Book III, it contains the indication "Written in Camutum. " It may have been the Emperor himself who added these two speci cations, as he made r himself a classi cation of the notes he had written.
Camutum was a military base which the Romans had established starting at the beginning of the rst century B. c. on the Danube, not r om Vienna, and it was home r several thousand legionnaires. A small town had sprung up near the camp, with an amphitheater which was built in the second century. It was there that Marcus established his headquarters during his wars against the Quadi and the Marcomanni, om 170 to 173.
The river Gran is still called either by this name or by that ofthe Hron; it ows om north to south through Slovakia, andjoins the Danube in Hungary. Marcus' allusion to this river is invaluable: it reveals to us that the Emperor was not content to direct operations om the rti ed camp at Camutum, but that he had crossed the Danube and had pene trated the territory of the Quadi-a Germanic people who, together with the Marcomanni, had invaded the Empire in 169-tO a distance of more than 60 miles.
To what books of the Meditations do these two notations refer? The allusion to the Quadi is placed between Books I and II, whereas the mention of Camutum comes between Books II and III. In antiquity, indications ofthis kind could appear either at the beginning or at the end of a book. If these two notes were placed at the end, then the rst one refers to Book I, and the second to Book II. If they were placed at the beginning, then the rst one refers to Book II, and the second to Book III. Historians have adopted both views, without ever ishing decisive proo£ I am inclined to llow G. Breithaupt47 and W. Theiler48 in thinking that these indications were placed at the beginnings ofBooks II and III respectively.
It is most interesting, and even moving, to note that at least a part of the Meditations was written during the Roman operations carried out on
the Danube in 170-173-not only in the relative calm of a military headquarters, but amidst the discom rt ofan expedition into the land of the Quadi. This situation may explain the distinctive tone ofBooks II and III: the haunting presence ofthe theme ofdeath.
