Meditations (1)

9.41 “During my illness . . .”: Epicurus frg. 191.
10.10 Sarmatians: One of the barbarian tribes Marcus spent his last decade
fighting.
10.21 “The earth knows longing . . .”: Euripides frg. 898.
10.23 “fencing a sheepfold . . .”: A paraphrase of Plato, Theaetetus 174d, in
which we are told that the philosopher will look down on a king as if the
latter were a humble shepherd.
10.31 When you look . . . : Most of the names mentioned here are mere ciphers
(see the Index of Persons for the best guess as to their identities), but
Marcus’s point does not depend on knowledge of the individuals.
10.33 as a cylinder rolls down: The comparison is taken from Chrysippus frg.
1000.
10.34 “. . . leaves that the wind . . .”: Homer, Iliad 6.147 ff., a very famous
passage.
11.3 [like the Christians]: This ungrammatical phrase is almost certainly a
marginal comment by a later reader; there is no reason to think Marcus
had the Christians in mind here. (See Introduction.)
11.6 “o Mount Cithaeron!”: Sophocles, Oedipus the King 1391 (Oedipus’s
anguished cry after blinding himself, invoking the mountain he was
abandoned on as a baby.)
“If I and my two children . . .”: See on 7.41.
“And why should we feel anger . . . ?”: See on 7.38.
“To harvest life . . .”: See on 7.40.
11.18 from Apollo: Often depicted as the leader of the nine Muses.