Mattheus Guttenberg's Reviews > Meditations

These are the personal writings of Marcus Aurelius, a 2nd century Roman emperor (the last of the Five Good Emperors) and a devoted student of the Stoic philosophy. These are writings he wrote for himself and never intended to publish. Marcus, along with Seneca, Epictetus, and Musonius Rufus, was a champion of Stoicism and probably its most popular exemplar ever. During his time as emperor, however, he must have consorted with a number of rather immoral and dangerous people as the main themes of the Meditations are 1) How to handle stressful situations, and 2) How to tolerate vulgar and immoral people. One gets a rather depressing vibe from Marcus reading this. He ruminates on how "soon he will be dead" more than a few times... Besides his sort of weary and frustrated vibe, there is a lot of valuable Stoic insight to be gained in its pages. His wise commentary on anger, fate, duty, Nature, and peace of mind are certainly worth the price of admission.