The Lifestyle of Marcus Aurelius

Stoic thought has exerted an important influence on the record of tips, together with on the considered of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Adam Smith, and J.S. Mill, who, in On Liberty (1859), hailed the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as “the highest moral merchandise of the ancient thoughts.”

In the area of mental health, Stoicism impressed what has turn into the most frequent kind of talking treatment method, cognitive behavioural treatment (CBT). Aaron Beck (d. 2021), the father of CBT, wrote that “the philosophical origins of cognitive remedy can be traced back again to the Stoic philosophers.” Albert Ellis (d. 2007), the founder of rational emotive behaviour therapy, a precursor to CBT, often cited the Stoics.

Marcus Aurelius was the previous of the 5 Superior Emperors, and a uncommon instance of Plato’s thinker-king. In the latter decades of his daily life, he stored a personal journal which has miraculously occur down to us. This journal, now termed The Meditations, is maybe the oldest extant case in point of reflective journaling, and is just one of our most essential sources on Roman Stoicism.

But who was the male at the rear of the journal, and did he live up to his beliefs?

How Marcus Turned Emperor

Marcus was born in 121 CE as Marcus Annius Verus, into a distinguished senatorial relatives with personal imperial ties. He began from an early age to evince signals of virtue, so that the emperor Hadrian found him and even punned on his identify, Verus [‘True’], contacting him ‘Verissimus’ [‘The Truest’].

In 136, Hadrian, getting no male heir, adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who now grew to become Lucius Aelius Caesar. But Lucius died in 138, and Hadrian experienced to select all over again.

This time, Hadrian adopted Titus Aurelius Antoninus, the spouse of Marcus’ aunt Faustina the Elder, on condition that Antoninus in change adopt Marcus and the son of the late Lucius, also Lucius.

The intricacy of these machinations implies that Hadrian intended Antoninus as a very simple placeholder for Marcus, and the a lot more youthful Lucius as a spare.

Regardless of what the case, by the age of 17, Marcus experienced already been marked out as a upcoming emperor.

Childhood and Training

Whilst most would have been overjoyed, Marcus was not.

In 132, under the impact of Diognetus, the eleven-year-aged Marcus had taken up the dress and behaviors of a philosopher, and his mom had had to chat him out of sleeping on the floor. In the Meditations, the grown-up Marcus thanks Diognetus, a Stoic and painter, for introducing him to “the Greek lifestyle—the camp-bed and the cloak.”

His other tutors came to consist of the lawyer and orator Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the rhetorician Herodes Atticus, and Plutarch’s grandson, Sextus of Charonea.

As an orator, Fronto was second only to Cicero, and had some thing of the Cicero about him when he acquired the fabled Gardens of Maecenas. A lot of the comprehensive and many years-extensive correspondence amongst Marcus and Fronto is however with us.

Herodes Atticus, one particular of the richest guys in the empire, funded quite a few community is effective which include, in Athens, the Panathenaic Stadium and the odeon identified as the Herodeon, the two of which, remarkably, are still in use.

But while Marcus experienced for tutors the best guys of his age, it is the doggy-eared copy of Epictetus that he obtained from the Stoic Junius Rusticus that created the biggest impact upon him.

Marriage and Youngsters

In 136, Marcus had been betrothed to the daughter of Lucius Aelius Caesar.

But soon after the loss of life of Hadrian, the engagement was annulled, and Antoninus, the new emperor, bethrothed him to his daughter Faustina (even even though Marcus and Faustina have been legally brother and sister).

Marcus married Faustina 7 many years later on, in 145, even though serving out his 2nd term as consul.

After the birth of their 1st boy or girl, a daughter, in 147, Antoninus gave Marcus the imperium and the tribunicia potestas [tribunician power], therefore elevating him, in effect, to the rank of junior emperor.

Faustina the More youthful would bear Marcus at the very least 13 more youngsters, such as two sets of twins, over the future 23 several years.

Connection With His Co-Emperor

As Antoninus started to age and ail, Marcus took more than a lot more of his obligations, so that he was presently perfectly worn in upon his accession to the imperial throne in 161.

He could effortlessly have dominated by yourself, but as a substitute insisted upon generating his adoptive brother Lucius co-emperor.

In truth of the matter, Marcus would somewhat have remained a thinker, or private citizen, but deemed it his Stoic duty to take up the purple. In the Meditations, he compares philosophy and the courtroom to a mom and stepmother: “you would pay your respects to your stepmother, yes… but it’s your authentic mom you’d go residence to. The court… and philosophy. Hold returning to it, to rest in its embrance. It is all that tends to make the court—and you—endurable.”

In observe, Lucius—now Lucius Verus—deferred to Marcus, who was ten years older and, by working experience and temperament, greater suited to the function.

The Antonine Plague

But now Marcus’ luck would operate out.

In direction of the conclude of 161, the Tiber broke its banking institutions and flooded much of Rome, bringing about a famine.

At around the same time, the Parthians invaded the consumer condition of Armenia and started destabilizing the East.

Lucius nominally led the Roman reaction from Antioch, assisted by able generals these as the Assyrian Roman, Gaius Avidius Cassius.

As the war wore on, Lucius manufactured a vacation to Ephesus to wed Marcus’ daughter Lucilla.

The Romans prevailed, but the returning armies introduced back again a plague, quite possibly of smallpox. The so-termed Antonine plague raged for numerous decades throughout the empire and rather basically decimated [killed one in every ten] the population.

The Marcomannic Wars

In 167 or 168, Marcus and Lucius established out on a punitive expedition throughout the Rhine and Danube, though a horde of German tribes invaded Italy from at the rear of their backs.

In 169, Lucius suddenly died, maybe of a stroke, or from the plague.

Marcus battled on for 3 far more many years to safe the north-jap border, while other areas of the empire experienced lesser scale rebellions or invasions. It is at all-around this time that he retained the diary which we now know as The Meditations.

Menace to His Throne

By 175, Avidius Cassius had taken command of the East, like Egypt, the granary of Rome.

In that calendar year, he listened to rumours of Marcus’ loss of life and proclaimed himself emperor.

Marcus established off for the East, rejecting delivers of aid from some of the German tribes. But 3 months immediately after his proclamation, Cassius was murdered by just one of his have centurions.

His head was despatched to Marcus, but the thinker-king refused to see it, and pardoned Cassius’ co-conspirators in the Senate.

Jap Tour

Marcus then felt obliged to shore up the East, checking out Antioch, Alexandria, and Athens, wherever he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

In Athens, he endowed the 1st at any time college chairs, one for each individual of the four major universities of philosophy, the Platonic, Peripatetic (Aristotelian), Stoic, and Epicurean.

His beloved Faustina, who experienced occur with, died in Cappadocia, and he honored her service by having her deified.

Loss of life and Succession

In 177, Marcus proclaimed his 16-year-previous son Commodus co-emperor, breaking with the Nerva-Antonine dynasty’s remarkably productive practice of succession by the very best person available—a tradition which, in real truth, owed far more to requirement than to enlightened basic principle.

This, with the profit of hindsight, or even without having, was a grave mistake, but what else could Marcus have performed brief of planting the seed of a civil war, or purchasing the throttling of his personal son?

In 180, Marcus, who experienced been sickly all his lifestyle, maybe with a belly ulcer, passed away at his military headquarters in Sirmium, Pannonia, therefore bringing to an end the very long time period of relative peace and prosperity now acknowledged as the Pax Romana (27 BCE—180 CE).

In 192, Commodus was strangled in the bathtub by his wrestling husband or wife Narcissus, performing in live performance with other palace insiders, and with the retrospective approval of the Senate.

The demise of Commodus brought the Nerva-Antonine dynasty to a shut, to be adopted by the chaotic 12 months of the 5 Emperors.

Assessment

I’ll go away the past phrase on Marcus to the historian Cassius Dio, who lived by his total reign:

[Marcus Aurelius] did not satisfy with the excellent fortune that he deserved, for he was not potent in body and was concerned in a multitude of problems all through basically his entire reign. But for my element, I admire him all the additional for this very rationale, that amid unusual and extraordinary issues he each survived himself and preserved the empire. Just one particular matter prevented him from becoming completely happy, namely, that following rearing and educating his son in the finest achievable way he was vastly upset in him. This make a difference must be our up coming topic for our historical past now descends from a kingdom of gold to a person of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.