The private notebook of a Roman emperor, written to no one but himself — and, by accident, to us.
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This is how every Great Library book reads, word beneath word. Meditations’s own first lines appear here the day its pilot is pressed.
Marcus Aurelius wrote these notes at night on campaign, in Greek, reminding himself how to be good, how to bear power, how to die. He never meant a single line to be read.
That is exactly why they are so bare, and so trusted. Read word by word, the Stoic Greek is plain and near — self-counsel you can almost hear him whispering to himself.
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