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Ep. 23: A Little Flesh and Breath · The Morning Stoic: The Untold Lives Behind Stoicism

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  A man who could command legions sits down, and describes himself as flesh,
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  breath, and one other thing.
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  That's the whole inventory.
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  No titles, no provinces, no purple.
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  This is Marcus Aurelius, born in A.D.
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  121, emperor from 161 until 180, and the page in front of him
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  is not for anyone else.
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  Welcome to The Morning Stoic.
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  I'm Julian Vale.
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  Last time, we watched Marcus prepare his mind at dawn for the people he'd meet that
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  day, the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant, and remind himself that he was
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  made to cooperate with them.
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  Today he turns the lamp around.
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  Instead of the people outside him, he examines himself.
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  Think about what weighed on him.
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  Wars along the northern frontier of the empire, against Germanic peoples such as the
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  Quadi and the Marcomanni.
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  The administration of an enormous empire.
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  The plague that we call the Antonine Plague.
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  And a body that, by the accounts we have, was not strong.
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  The notebook we call the Meditations is not a speech.
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  It's a man talking to himself.
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  I imagine a small light, a quiet hour, maybe late at night,
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  maybe before dawn, and the scratch of a pen.
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  That's my picture, not a documented detail.
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  We simply don't know the hour.
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  But the tone of the page is unmistakable.
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  He's blunt.
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  He doesn't flatter himself.