Meditations Marcus Aurelius (read with me TXT) 📖

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Gataker translates this “because we strive to get these things,” comparing the use of διαϕὲρεσθαι in Book V ¶1, and Book X ¶29, and Book IX ¶39, where it appears that his reference should be Book XI ¶15. He may be right in his interpretation, but I doubt. ↩

Cicero, De Natura Deorum, III, 32. ↩

Plutarch, Adversus Stoicos, C, 14. ↩

I have used Gataker’s conjecture καταληκτικῶς instead of the common reading καταληπτικῶς: compare Book IV, ¶21; Book IX, ¶43. ↩

This is corrupt. ↩

The end of this section is unintelligible. ↩

Plato, Politeia, VI, 486. ↩

From the Bellerophon of Euripides. ↩

From the Hypsipyle of Euripides. Cicero (Tusculan Disputations III, 25), has translated six lines from Euripides, and among them are these two lines:

“Reddenda terrae eset terra: tum vita omnibus
Metenda ut fruges: Sic jubet necessitas.”

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See Aristophanes, Acharnenses, V, 661. ↩

From the Apologia, C, 16. ↩

Plato, Gorgias, C, 68 (512). In this passage the text of Antoninus has ὲατέον, which is perhaps right; but there is a difficulty in the words μὴ ϓὰρ τοῦτο μέν, τὸ ζῆν ὸποσονδὴ χρόνον τόνϓε ώς άληθῶς ᾶνὸρα ὲατέον ὲστί, καὶ ού, etc. The conjecture εύκτέον for ὲατέον does not mend the matter. ↩

It is said that this is not in the extant writings of Plato. ↩

From the Chrysippus of Euripides. ↩

The first two lines are from the Supplices of Euripides, V, 1110. ↩

This section is obscure, and the conclusion is so corrupt that it is impossible to give any probable meaning to it. It is better to have it as it is than to patch it up, as some critics and translations have done. ↩

The text has ύλική, which it has been proposed to alter to λοϒική, and this change is necessary. We shall then have in this section λοϒική and κοινωνική associated, as we have in ¶64 λοϒική and πολιτική, and in ¶68. ↩

I have followed Gataker’s conjecture οί άπάνθρωποι instead of the manuscript reading οί ᾶνθρωποι. ↩

Leon of Salamis. See Plato, Epistles 7; Apologia C, 20; Epictetus, IV, 1, 160; IV, 7, 30. ↩

Aristophan, Nubes 362. ὅτι βρεθύει τ ὲν ταῖσιν ὸδοῖς καὶ τώ ὸϕθαλμώ παραβάλλει. ↩

It is not easy to understand this section. It has been suggested that there are some errors in ηάλόγιδτα, etc. some of the translators have made nothing of the passage, and they have somewhat perverted the words. The first proposition is, that the universe was made by some sufficient power. A beginning of the universe is assumed, and a power which framed an order. The next question is, How are things produced now; or, in other words, by what power do forms appear in continuous succession? The answer, according to Antoninus, may be this: It is by virtue of the original constitution of things that all change and succession have been effected and are effected. And this is intelligible in a sense, if we admit that the universe is always one and the same, a continuity of identity; as much one and the same as man is one and the same, which he believes himself to be, though he also believes, and cannot help believing, that both in his body and in his thoughts there is a change and succession. There is no real discontinuity then in the universe; and if we say that there was an order framed in the beginning and that the things which are now produced are a consequence of a previous arrangement, we speak of things as we are compelled to view them, as forming a series or succession; just as we speak of the changes in our own bodies and the sequence of our own thoughts. But as there are no intervals, not even intervals infinitely small, between any two supposed states of any one thing, so there are no intervals, not even infinitely small, between what we call one thing and any other thing which we speak of as immediately preceding or following it. What we call time is an idea derived from our notion of a succession of things or events, an idea which is a part of our constitution, but not an idea which we can suppose to belong to an infinite intelligence and power. The conclusion then is certain that the present and the past, the production of present things and the supposed original order, out of which we say that present things now come, are one; and the preset productive power and the so-called past arrangement are only different names for one thing. I suppose then that Antoninus wrote here as people sometimes talk now, and that his real meaning is not exactly expressed by his words. There are certainly other passages from which, I think, that we may collect that he had notions of production something like what I have expressed.

We now have come to the alternative: “or even the chief things⁠ ⁠… principle.” I do not exactly know what he means by τά κυρώτατα, “the chief,” or “the most excellent,” or whatever it is. But as he speaks elsewhere of inferior and superior things, and of the inferior