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Ep. 24: This in Carnuntum · The Morning Stoic: The Untold Lives Behind Stoicism

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  Book Two of the Meditations ends with three words that are easy to skip.
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  "This in Carnuntum."
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  It reads like a label on a box.
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  A place, jotted at the bottom of a page.
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  But it tells us where a man was sitting when he wrote some of the calmest lines in
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  ancient philosophy.
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  Carnuntum was a Roman fortress town on the south bank of the Danube,
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  in the province of Pannonia.
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  Today the ruins lie in Austria, roughly thirty miles east of Vienna.
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  George Long, in his biographical sketch, puts it plainly: "During the German wars
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  Antoninus resided for three years on the Danube at Carnuntum."
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  Antoninus is Marcus Aurelius, the emperor.
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  So think about what that means.
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  The ruler of the Mediterranean world is not in Rome.
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  He is on the northern edge of the empire, in a camp, while tribes beyond the river
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  press against the frontier.
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  Long names the Marcomanni, and the Quadi, who Marcus beat in a great victory in A.D.
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  174.
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  Dates for his time there are approximate, so I'll say around the early one
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  seventies.
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  I imagine the scene, and it is only imagined.
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  A headquarters building or a tent.
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  Damp cold coming off the river.
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  A lamp, a tablet, and an emperor who has spent the day on supply,
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  discipline, and reports from officers.
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  Then the day quiets down, and he writes.
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  Not for readers.
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  Long notes that the books were, in his words, "for his own use."
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  And there's a second clue.
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  Book One closes with a similar note, which Long renders as written among the Quadi,
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  on the Granua.
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  Two books, two field addresses.
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  These were not drawing room essays.
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  They were a notebook kept on campaign, by a man reminding himself of things he was
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  afraid to forget.
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  Here is the passage, in Long's translation, Book Two, section seventeen.
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  "Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in
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  a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to
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  putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine,
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  and fame a thing devoid of judgment."
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  It keeps going.
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  "And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream,
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  and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a
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  stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion."
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  Listen to that list.
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  Time, a point.
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  Body, rot.
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  Soul, a whirl.
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  Fame, oblivion.
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  This is an emperor, and he is not flattering himself.
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  "A warfare and a stranger's sojourn."
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  Maybe it was only a phrase for him.
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  But he was, literally, at a war, and a long way from home.
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  Is the metaphor the weather, or is the weather the metaphor?
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  I can't say, and I won't pretend to.
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  Then the turn.
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  "What then is that which is able to conduct a man?
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  One thing, and only one, philosophy."
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  Notice it's a question about conduct, about steering.
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  He's just listed everything that dissolves, and he asks what can still guide a
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  person through it.
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  His answer is practical.
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  Long gives it this way: philosophy "consists in keeping the daemon within a man free
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  from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures,
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  doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy,
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  not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything."
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  That last clause is striking for a man whom thousands of people were waiting on.
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  An emperor who tells himself not to need anyone else's actions.
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  And then: "accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted,
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  as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and,
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  finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a
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  dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded."
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  He argues it through, too.
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  "But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing
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  into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and
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  dissolution of all the elements?
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  For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature."
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  And then, on its own line, "This in Carnuntum."
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  Last time, in Marcus's second section, he stripped himself down to a little flesh
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  and breath and the ruling part.
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  This passage does something similar, but wider.
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  It strips away what a man in his position might lean on.
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  Fame, fortune, even the body's comfort.
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  Now, a careful note, and this part is my own reading.
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  Some people hear all this and find it bleak.
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  The flux, the rot, the oblivion.
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  I hear something steadier.
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  He isn't saying nothing matters.
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  He's saying the things outside his control are unreliable, so the one thing worth
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  tending is the daemon within, kept free from violence, doing nothing without a
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  purpose.
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  That is a standard a commander can hold to even in a cold fort,
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  when everything else is uncertain.
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  And there is a quiet honesty in the date line.
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  He doesn't write this from a mountaintop.
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  He writes it at the frontier, tired, probably, though that part I imagine.
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  The thoughts about death are not abstract for a man who is at war and surrounded by
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  sickness and risk.
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  They are written where the stakes are real.
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  I find that admirable, and I'd add one honest caution.
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  A notebook is not a record of success.
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  A man who writes "keep the daemon unharmed" is probably a man who finds it hard.
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  We read the reminders, not the days he failed them.
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  So the next time you see "This in Carnuntum," don't skip it.
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  It's a small stake in the ground.
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  A river, a fortress, a lamp, and an emperor asking
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  what can conduct a man, and answering as best he could.
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  One thing, and only one.