9781945186240

individuals in his life, either directly or from their example (hence the title I
have given the section here, “Debts and Lessons,” which has no warrant in
the transmitted text). The entries roughly mirror the chronology of Marcus’s
early life, from his older relatives to his teachers to his adopted father,
Antoninus, and ultimately to the gods. 9 This logical schema, as well as the
increasing length of the entries, suggests deliberate arrangement,
presumably by Marcus himself. If so, then this book, at least, was
conceived as an organic whole. It may be among the latest portions of the
text, if scholars are correct in thinking (as most do) that the short sketch of
Antoninus Pius in Meditations 6.30 was the starting point for the longer
memoir in 1.16.
Attempts to find organic unity in the remaining books or development
from book to book are doomed to failure. Wherever one opens the
Meditations (with the exception of Book 1) we find the same voice, the
same themes; Marcus’s thought does not change or develop noticeably from
one book to another. Nor can any structure or unity be discerned within
individual books. It seems most likely that the division between books is a
purely physical one. The transmitted “books,” in other words, represent the
individual papyrus rolls of Marcus’s original, or perhaps of a later copy.
When one had been filled, another was begun. 10
If the books as a whole are homogenous, the individual entries show
considerable formal variety. Some are developed short essays that make a
single philosophical point; many of the entries in Books 2 and 3 are of this
type. Others are straightforward imperatives (“Take the shortest route . . .”)
or aphorisms (“no one can keep you from living in harmony with
yourself”). Sometimes Marcus will list a number of basic principles in
catalogue format (“remember that . . . and that . . . and that . . .”). Elsewhere
he puts forward an analogy, sometimes with the point of comparison left to
be inferred. Thus human lives are like “many lumps of incense on the same
altar” (4.15) or like “a rock thrown in the air” (9.17). In other cases the
analogy will be made explicit: “Have you ever seen a severed hand or foot .
. . ? That’s what we do to ourselves . . . when we rebel against what happens
to us” (8.34). Others present a kind of formal meditative exercise, as when
Marcus instructs himself to imagine the age of Vespasian (4.32) or
Augustus’s court (8.31) and then to compare the imagined scene with that
of his own time. Portions of two books (7 and 11) consist simply of
quotations. Some entries appear to be rough drafts for others; several of the