A soul unconquered by illness
Read the full text in our reader
τὸ δὲ ἰσχύειν καὶ ἐγκαρτερεῖν καὶ ἐννήφειν ἑκατέρῳ ἀνδρός ἐστιν ἄρτιον καὶ ἀήττητον ψυχὴν ἔχοντος, οἷον ἐν τῇ νόσῳ τῇ Μαξίμου.
But to stay strong, to endure, and to keep a clear head in either case belongs to a man who has a sound and unconquered soul — as Maximus did in his illness.
Continues Marcus's tribute to his adoptive father Antoninus Pius (1.16), naming a soundness of soul that holds under strain — with the illness of Maximus offered as living proof it can be done.
This fragment isolates a narrower virtue than mere toughness: not just enduring hardship (ἐγκαρτερεῖν) but doing so without losing clarity of mind (ἐννήφειν) — the difference between grim survival and genuine self-possession. The word ἄρτιον, "sound" or "fitted together," suggests a soul that hasn't come apart under pressure, and ἀήττητον pushes further: not merely intact but undefeatable, incapable of being forced by circumstance. The two verbs paired with "either case" (ἑκατέρῳ) imply the sentence once weighed two opposed conditions — probably success and hardship, or pleasure and pain — of which this fragment preserves only the conclusion.
The proof offered is concrete rather than abstract: the illness of Maximus. This is almost certainly Claudius Maximus, the Stoic teacher Marcus thanks earlier in Book 1 (1.15) for his composure and freedom from complaint. Citing a real sickbed, not a hypothetical, is characteristic of how Marcus builds his moral portraits throughout Book 1: a trait is named, then anchored to a person he actually watched live it. The unconquered soul is not the absence of suffering but a steadiness running underneath it — the same intuition Marcus later generalizes into the idea that the ruling faculty (ἡγεμονικόν) can, in principle, remain undisturbed by whatever happens to the body around it.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Meditations 1.16.10 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Meditations — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Meditations 1.16.10 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/meditations-greek/1.16.10/