The Verdict
So, is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius worth reading? My answer: yes, if you take it in small doses and you pick your translation carefully. The ideas are sharp, the voice is honest, and a lot of it is usable the same morning. But it repeats itself on purpose, parts of it are strange, and the old English I read is hard going. I give it four out of five, and I’ll show you how I got there.
This review has no spoilers, because there is no plot to spoil.
What Kind Of Book It Is
Meditations is not a book in the usual sense. It’s a set of private notes that Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself while he was running the Roman Empire. The introduction in my edition says he never expected anyone else to read them, and he dated the first book from a camp during the wars on the frontier.
There are twelve books. They’re cut into short numbered sections, more than four hundred altogether, and the twelve books run about fifty-seven thousand words. Some sections are one line. A few are a long page.
I read the Project Gutenberg ebook, number two thousand, six hundred and eighty. That’s Meric Casaubon’s translation from sixteen thirty-four, with an introduction, an appendix of letters, notes and a glossary. Keep that in mind, because it shapes everything I say about readability.
The Ideas In One Minute
The ideas are Stoic, and the introduction gives a good short tour of the school. Here is the version I took away.
One, most upset comes from the opinion you add to a fact. Two, your time is small and it is all you have. Three, people belong to one another, because they share reason. Four, whatever blocks you can become the material you work with. Five, you can always retreat inside yourself, and that is where the calm lives.
If you want those with the book and section for each, my full summary does exactly that.
What Works
First, the honesty. Book One is a list of thanks to the people who shaped him, and it feels warm, not stiff. Then there’s a morning script, written in the country of the Quadi, where he tells himself he’ll meet difficult people today and why that shouldn’t hurt him. Reading an emperor rehearse patience is strangely moving.
Second, the sections are short, and many stand alone. You can read one on a bus. That is the best way into this book, and it’s why I say take it in doses.
Third, the tools are practical. Strip a thing down to the bare fact before you react. Remember the people who were angry or famous once and are smoke now. Retreat into your own mind when the day is loud. Use the obstacle. None of these needs a belief in anything.
And fourth, the images. A bitter cucumber you simply put down. Ants and bees going about their work while you stay in bed. A hand cut off from the body. Fire that turns whatever falls on it into more fire. They stick.
What Doesn’t
Now the downsides. The biggest is repetition. The same five or six moves come back in nearly every book, in new clothes. For a reader that can feel like a loop. For the writer it was clearly the point, but you feel it.
Second, the universe talk. Marcus keeps framing things as either-or: either a divine order runs the world, or it’s all atoms and chaos, and in both cases he says his advice still holds. In Book Four and again in Book Six he makes the argument. I found it a bit evasive, and the book is happiest when it leaves the cosmic stuff alone and talks about getting through a day.
Third, the dense sections. Book Four, section three, the one about retreating into yourself, is a single page-long block with one idea tucked in the middle. Some of the longer ones need a slow second read.
Fourth, one content note. Book Eleven, in a passage about being ready to die, says that readiness should come from judgment, not from stubborn opposition, as he says Christians do. The introduction in my edition calls his treatment of Christians the great blot on his name. It’s a reminder that this calm voice belonged to a ruler with real power.
Three Passages That Stayed With Me
Let me give you a taste, in my own words.
In Book Three, section two, he looks at a loaf of bread that has cracked open in the oven. The cracks were not part of the baker’s plan, he says, yet they make it look good enough to eat. Ripe figs split. Olives near rotting look their best. His point is that things have a beauty of their own when they follow their nature, even the messy parts.
In Book Five, section six, he describes people who do a kindness and keep a tally. Others do a kindness and quietly think of you as owing them. The third kind are like a vine that bears grapes and then simply gets on with the next season. Be that one, he tells himself.
And Book Seven opens with a calming thought. Whatever is bothering you, you have seen it before. Old stories, recent stories, whole towns and houses are full of the same things. Nothing is new.
Is It Depressing?
It’s a fair worry. By my count the word death appears sixty-five times, and the writer is often telling himself that fame fades and everyone is forgotten.
But I didn’t find it bleak. The introduction describes his mood as strenuous weariness, a soldier doing his duty until the call to retreat, and that fits. The reminders about death are there to make today count, not to make it grim. If anything, the book is quietly kind to him, and to the people who annoy him.
The Translation Question
This is the question most people ask me, so let me be careful. I read one translation only, Casaubon’s, so I can’t compare it with others.
What I can tell you is what the ebook says. Its notes call Casaubon’s version often more a paraphrase than a close translation. Its introduction lists eight English translations, starting with Casaubon in sixteen thirty-four and ending with one from nineteen oh six.
My experience, and this is an opinion: the thou and thyself grammar slows you down in the first ten pages, then you adjust. But if it wears you out, try a newer translation. The ideas are the same. The sentences just won’t fight you.
Does It Still Hold Up
Here is the honest question. Does a set of notes from nearly two thousand years ago still work on a Tuesday morning?
I think it does, for one reason: he is training, not preaching. The introduction in my edition makes the same point. It says these pages are not profound philosophy, but the writer was too sincere to miss what mattered, and that he drilled his mind in right principles so they would be ready when trouble came. Waiting for the emergency, it says, is waiting too long.
That is the part I’d steal. Rehearse the hard conversation in the morning. Decide in advance what you will not add to the facts. Keep two or three short rules where you can find them. It’s a method more than a belief system, and it works whether or not you buy his gods.
How I’d Read It
Don’t start at the top and march through. Here is what I’d do.
Read the introduction first, since it’s short and gives you the man. Then read the morning script in Book One, the one set among the Quadi. Then Book Two, which is short and full of the time-is-short theme. Then jump to Book Four, section three, and Book Eight, sections thirty to forty-eight, where the obstacle and bare-fact ideas are at their best.
After that, read one or two sections a day, in any order. It’s built for that.
How It Compares
The ebook’s introduction sets Meditations next to another famous book, the Imitation of Christ. Both ask for self-control and for a calm mind. The big difference it points out is that the Imitation is written to others, and Meditations is written by the writer to himself.
That is also why I think this one feels fresher. There’s no sermon voice. Just a tired, decent person telling himself to do better today.
The Scorecard
Here are my scores, and they’re a draft for me to refine. Ideas get four and a half out of five. Intimacy, that sense of overhearing a real mind, also four and a half. Practical use gets four. Variety gets three, because of the repetition. And readability, in this translation, gets two and a half. That averages just under four, so I round it up to four.
Who It’s For
Read Meditations if you like short, quotable ideas you can try today, if you’ve been curious about Stoicism, or if you want to hear a powerful person doubt himself.
Skip it, or at least swap the translation, if old English will defeat you, if you want a story or a step-by-step system, or if repetition drives you up the wall.
If you’ve read it, leave a comment and tell me which section you keep coming back to. Subscribe for more honest reviews, and I’ll see you next time.
