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Meditations
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Overview
- Written
- Probably during the 170s AD, much of it in army camps on the Danube frontier during the Marcomannic Wars; Marcus died in 180
- Author
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180), Roman emperor from 161 to 180
- Language
- Greek, the language of philosophy at Rome, written in a plain, compressed and often abrupt style
- Original title
- No title survives from Marcus himself; the manuscripts call the work Ta eis heauton, 'The things to himself'. 'Meditations' is a modern English title
- Genre
- Private philosophical notebook (hypomnēmata): maxims, arguments, self-exhortations and quotations
- Length
- 12 books of unequal length, 487 numbered sections in the standard division
- Philosophy
- Roman Stoicism, deeply shaped by Epictetus, with debts to Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato and the Cynics
- Voice
- Marcus addresses himself in the second person ('thou'), alternating command, argument, reproach and consolation
- First printed
- Zurich, 1559, in Wilhelm Xylander's edition, from a manuscript now lost; first English translation by Meric Casaubon (1634)
- Quote edition
- George Long's translation (1862), the version reviewed by Matthew Arnold and read by generations of Victorian readers
Context
Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome in 121 into a wealthy family of Spanish origin. His father died when he was a small child, and he was brought up by his mother and his grandfather. The emperor Hadrian noticed the serious boy, and in 138 arranged for him to be adopted by his own successor, Antoninus Pius. For more than twenty years Marcus served his apprenticeship at the side of Antoninus, whose patience and simplicity he describes with love in Book I. He was educated in rhetoric by the great orator Fronto, whose letters to and from the young prince survive, and in philosophy by a succession of Stoic teachers. On Antoninus' death in 161 he became emperor, sharing power at first with his adoptive brother Lucius Verus (Birley 1987) (Champlin 1980).
His reign was among the hardest of the second century. A plague brought back from the eastern campaigns spread through the empire, and from the late 160s Germanic peoples, the Marcomanni, Quadi and Iazyges, pressed across the Danube. Marcus spent most of the 170s with the army on the northern frontier. In 175 the general Avidius Cassius proclaimed himself emperor in the East, and the revolt collapsed only when Cassius was murdered; in the same period Marcus lost his wife Faustina. He died on campaign in 180, and was succeeded by his son Commodus, whose reign the historian Cassius Dio saw as a fall from an age of gold to one of iron and rust (Birley 1987).
The Meditations were written in these years, in Greek, the language in which Romans did philosophy. Two notes in the text, 'Among the Quadi at the Granua' and 'This in Carnuntum', place parts of it in military camps on the Danube. The work was not composed for publication. It is a set of hypomnēmata, notes to oneself, in which Marcus rehearses the principles of Stoicism so as to keep them alive in his own mind. Its Stoicism is above all that of Epictetus (c. 50–c. 135), the former slave whose lectures, recorded by Arrian, Marcus first read in a copy lent him by his teacher Rusticus. Pierre Hadot has shown that many of the notebook's apparently random entries are disciplined spiritual exercises built on Epictetus' threefold scheme of judgment, desire and action (Hadot 1998) (Long 2002) (Rutherford 1989).
How the private notebook survived is unknown. It is barely mentioned in antiquity; the Byzantine scholar Arethas knew a copy around 900, and the text depends on two main witnesses, a large manuscript in the Vatican and the lost Palatine manuscript from which Xylander printed the first edition at Zurich in 1559. From the Renaissance onward the book became one of the most widely read works of ancient philosophy, admired by readers as different as Christian moralists, Enlightenment philosophers and Victorian sages, and in the twenty-first century it has found a vast new public through popular 'practical Stoicism' (Sellars 2021) (Hadot 1998).
George Long (1800–1879), a classical scholar and one of the founding professors of the University of London, published his translation in 1862 as The Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus. Long renders Marcus' terse Greek in a sober, slightly archaic English, with 'thou' for Marcus' self-address and square brackets for words he supplies. Matthew Arnold's essay on Marcus Aurelius began as a review of this version, praising Long's fidelity while regretting a certain stiffness (Arnold 1865). The section numbers used in this guide follow the standard division, which Long's text shows inline. Readers who want a modern version may turn to the translations of Hays or of Hard with Gill's notes; Fronto's letters are available in Haines's Loeb edition (Hays 2002) (Hard 2011) (Haines 1920).
Plot overview
The Meditations have no plot and no argument running from beginning to end. They are twelve books of separate entries, some a single line long, some several pages, in which a man talks to himself about how to live. Book I stands apart: it is an ordered list of what Marcus learned from his family, his teachers and his adoptive father, ending with thanks to the gods. Books II to XII return again and again to a small set of convictions, varying their wording as if the repetition itself were the point.
Those convictions can be put simply. The universe is a single living whole, ordered by a divine reason (the logos) that runs through all things. Human beings share in that reason, and so are kin to one another and citizens of a world-city. The only true good is virtue, a mind in agreement with reason; health, wealth, fame, pain and even death are 'indifferent'. What disturbs us is never things themselves but our judgments about them, and those judgments are in our power. Everything changes and passes; we ourselves will soon be dead and forgotten. Therefore we should accept what happens as part of the whole, act justly for the common good, and keep our inner 'ruling part' free and calm.
Within this frame the books have different emphases. Books II and III, written in camp, are urgent with the sense of time running out. Book IV develops the retreat into oneself and the image of the world as a city. Books V to VIII return to the work of the day, the dangers of power, the kinship of human beings and the mind as a citadel. Books IX to XII deal more often with injustice, the anger provoked by other people, the alternative 'providence or atoms', and the final acceptance of death, closing on the image of an actor dismissed from the stage before the fifth act.
Book by book
Book 1: Debts of Gratitude
Summary
Book I is a catalogue of debts. In seventeen sections Marcus lists, one by one, what he learned from the people who formed him: good morals and an even temper from his grandfather Verus, modesty from the memory of his father, piety and simple living from his mother, the value of good teachers from his great-grandfather, and endurance and contempt for factions from the unnamed tutor who kept him away from the chariot parties of the Circus.
The list then moves to his teachers: Diognetus, who turned him from superstition towards philosophy; Rusticus, who cured him of rhetorical display and lent him Epictetus; the Stoics Apollonius and Maximus; Sextus, Plutarch's nephew; the grammarian Alexander; Fronto; Alexander the Platonist; Catulus; and Severus, through whom he learned of the Stoic martyrs Thrasea and Helvidius and the ideal of a state with equal laws. The long section 16 is a portrait of his adoptive father Antoninus Pius, and section 17 thanks the gods for everything from his family and teachers to the fact that he did not waste his time on syllogisms or astronomy.
Analysis
No other ancient author begins a work this way, and Book I may well have been written separately, perhaps late in the reign, as a kind of moral autobiography. It is not a history of events but an inventory of qualities. Each person is remembered for a virtue Marcus wishes to keep, so that the book becomes a gallery of models to imitate; it is gratitude used as a spiritual exercise (Hadot 1998) (Rutherford 1989).
The portrait of Antoninus (1.16) is the centre of the book. What Marcus admires is not brilliance but steadiness: careful deliberation, indifference to flattery, thrift with public money, courtesy, and the ability to enjoy comforts without needing them. It is a portrait of the ruler Marcus wants to be, and it explains much in the later books, where he warns himself not to be 'made into a Caesar' (6.30) and tells himself to act 'as a disciple of Antoninus'.
The final thanks to the gods (1.17) is strikingly frank. Marcus is grateful for things that did not happen as well as things that did: that he was never put to a test he might have failed, that he recovered from 'amatory passions', and that he did not become a good enough rhetorician or poet to be tempted into a literary life. The note 'Among the Quadi at the Granua', printed at the end of the book, places at least the next part of the work in camp on the Danube.
I am indebted to him for being acquainted with the discourses of Epictetus, which he communicated to me out of his own collection.
The single most important intellectual debt in the work. Rusticus lends Marcus his own copy of Epictetus' Discourses, and Epictetus' teaching shapes almost every later book.
he was a man who looked to what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts.
The heart of the portrait of Antoninus Pius: duty preferred to reputation, a contrast that returns throughout the Meditations' many reflections on fame.
To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good.
The book closes by turning all human debts into a debt to the gods, so that gratitude becomes a way of seeing one's whole life as a gift of providence.
Book 2: The Morning Exercise
Summary
Book II opens with the most famous of Marcus' exercises: at the start of the day he prepares himself to meet the meddling, the ungrateful, the arrogant and the envious, and reminds himself that they act from ignorance, that they share in the same reason as he does, and that no one can harm his mind. Human beings are made to work together, like the parts of a body.
The rest of the book presses the shortness of time. Marcus tells himself to throw away his books and act, to do every act as if it were his last, to stop being jerked about 'like a puppet', and to remember that a fixed limit of time has been set for him. He reasons that death cannot be an evil, since whether there are gods or not, it cannot make a man worse; he insists that the longest and the shortest life lose the same thing, the present moment; and he ends (2.17) with a bleak summary of human life from which only philosophy can rescue us. The book closes with the note 'This in Carnuntum'.
Analysis
The morning exercise of 2.1 is a model of Stoic 'premeditation': imagining in advance what will happen so as not to be surprised by it. But it is also an argument about kinship. The wrongdoer is 'akin to me' not by blood but because he shares the same intelligence and 'portion of the divinity'. To be angry with him would be to act against nature, which made us for co-operation. Here the physics of a shared logos becomes an ethics of patience (Hadot 1998).
Section 2.14 contains one of the key Stoic arguments against fearing death. Since we live only in the present, and the present is the same size for everyone, a long life and a short one lose exactly the same thing at death. Section 2.17 then gathers the theme of impermanence into a single list (body a stream, soul a dream, life a warfare, fame oblivion) and answers it with one word, philosophy, understood as care for the 'daemon within'.
For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.
The image of the social body: human beings are parts of one organism, so that acting against another person is as unnatural as one hand fighting the other.
no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.
The argument from the present: since only the present moment is ever lived or lost, length of life makes no real difference.
everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion.
A compressed lament for human transience, echoing Heraclitus' river. It sets up the turn to philosophy as the one guide that can 'conduct a man'.
Book 3: Death and the Daemon Within
Summary
Book III begins with a new urgency: not only is life wasting away, but the mind may fail before the body does, so there is no time to lose. Marcus then observes that even the by-products of nature, the cracks in baked bread, ripe figs bursting, the foam of a wild boar, have their own beauty to the eye that understands the whole. He lists the great men who died after all their achievements (Hippocrates, Alexander, Caesar, Heraclitus, Socrates) and draws the lesson: the voyage is over, get out of the ship.
Much of the book is a portrait of the good man, who lives as if ready to leave life at any moment, keeps the 'deity which is in thee' as his guide, needs no one to prop him up, and values nothing above justice, truth, temperance and courage. Marcus urges himself to keep his principles ready like a surgeon's instruments, to stop reading his own memoirs, and to distinguish body, soul and intelligence.
Analysis
Section 3.2 is one of the most surprising passages in ancient philosophy: an aesthetics of decay. Things that seem accidental or ugly, the split crust, the over-ripe olive, are beautiful when seen as part of nature's whole. This is Stoic physics turned into a way of looking, and it anticipates Marcus' later insistence that even 'the lion's gaping jaws' are 'after-products of the grand and beautiful' (6.36).
The 'daemon' or 'deity within' (3.5, 3.6, 3.16) is Marcus' name for the ruling part of the soul, the hēgemonikon, which is a fragment of the divine reason. The good man treats it as a guardian and a judge. Scholars have debated how far Marcus' sharp separation of 'intelligence' from body and soul (3.16) departs from older Stoicism, in which the soul was itself a body, and moves towards Platonism (Gill 2013) (Asmis 1989).
figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit.
The beauty of things on the edge of decay: for one who understands nature, even what is incidental or near to rotting belongs to the order of the whole.
Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore; get out.
After a catalogue of famous deaths, Marcus tells himself to accept his own with the brusqueness of a ship's captain. Note the dilemma that follows: another life, or a state without sensation; neither is to be feared.
A man then must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.
Self-sufficiency in a single image: the Stoic does not depend on the support or approval of others for his uprightness.
Book 4: The Retreat into Oneself
Summary
Book IV opens with the classic passage on retreat. People long for country houses, beaches and mountains, but a man can withdraw at any moment into his own soul and renew himself there with a few brief principles: that rational beings exist for one another, that the universe is either providence or atoms, that things cannot touch the soul, and that everything changes. The next section argues that if reason is common to all, there is a common law, and the world is in a sense a single state.
The rest of the book is one of the richest in the work. Marcus addresses the universe in a hymn ('O Nature: from thee are all things'), reviews the vanished courts of Vespasian and Trajan, describes time as a river, compares himself to a promontory against which the waves break, quotes Epictetus' description of man as 'a little soul bearing about a corpse', and considers what becomes of souls after death.
Analysis
The retreat of 4.3 is not escape. The 'inner citadel' is a place to which one withdraws in order to return to the world with renewed calm, 'free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest'. Hadot reads the passage as a demonstration of the method of the whole notebook: brief, ready principles that one recalls and rewrites in order to reshape one's state of mind (Hadot 1998).
The argument of 4.4 is the clearest statement of Stoic cosmopolitanism in the work: from shared reason to shared law to a shared citizenship of the world. Together with the address to the 'Dear city of Zeus' (4.23) it gives a political shape to Stoic physics. The meditations on time in 4.32, 4.33, 4.43 and 4.48 turn the same physics against vanity: whole generations, cities and dynasties have vanished, and so shall we (Sellars 2021).
it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself.
The founding statement of the inner retreat: the mind is a refuge always available, unlike villas and sea-shores.
The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and wilt not thou say, Dear city of Zeus?
A line of Aristophanes calls Athens the dear city of Cecrops; Marcus transfers the patriotic affection to the cosmos, the city of Zeus.
Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.
The most famous image of Stoic constancy. The rest of the section turns it into an argument: misfortune borne nobly is good fortune.
Book 5: The Work of a Human Being
Summary
Book V begins with a scene from the bedroom: Marcus, reluctant to get up in the morning, argues with himself that he was made for action, like the plants, birds, ants and bees that work at their own parts of the universe. He goes on to distinguish three kinds of benefactors, praising the one who does good without counting it, 'like a vine which has produced grapes'.
Other sections consider how to read 'the nature of the universe prescribed' illness or loss, as a doctor prescribes cold baths; how the soul is 'dyed' by its habitual thoughts; how other people can obstruct our actions but never our disposition; and how soon we shall be ashes and a name, while 'fidelity and modesty and justice and truth' have fled from the earth.
Analysis
The opening of Book V shows the notebook's humanity. The emperor's dialogue with himself in bed, complete with his own objections ('But this is more pleasant'), turns a grand Stoic doctrine, that each thing has its proper work in the cosmos, into a domestic struggle anyone can recognise (Rutherford 1989).
Section 5.20 states a principle central to Stoic action. An obstacle to what we intend is not an obstacle to our virtue, because the mind can always act 'with reservation' and turn the hindrance into material for a new act. Taken with 5.16 ('the soul is dyed by the thoughts'), it explains why the Meditations are so repetitive: one changes one's character by changing the thoughts one habitually thinks (Hadot 1998).
I am rising to the work of a human being.
The morning reluctance answered by a reminder of human purpose: to work, like everything in nature, at one's proper task.
Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
The rationale of the whole notebook: writing and rehearsing the right thoughts slowly colours the mind.
for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid
The Stoic doctrine of the obstacle turned into an opportunity: nothing outside can prevent the mind from acting well.
Book 6: Do Not Be Made into a Caesar
Summary
Book VI begins with the obedience of matter to the reason that governs it, and returns repeatedly to the choice between a universe of order and providence and a mere 'confusion' of atoms. Marcus practises stripping things of their glamour: fine food is the dead body of a fish or bird, wine a little grape-juice, the imperial purple sheep's wool dyed in shellfish blood.
At the book's centre is the warning to himself not to be 'made into a Caesar', followed by a second, shorter portrait of Antoninus. Elsewhere Marcus reflects on the flowing stream of existence, on Asia and Europe as mere corners of the universe, on how all men co-operate in the cosmic work even when they resist it, and on his double citizenship: as Antoninus he belongs to Rome, as a man to the world.
Analysis
The exercise of 6.13 is what Hadot calls 'physical definition': describing a thing in purely material terms to remove the false value our judgments attach to it. It is applied above all to the trappings of power, which makes the following warning against becoming 'Caesarified' the more pointed. Marcus knew that absolute power corrupts, and the Meditations are partly a defence against his own office (Hadot 1998) (Brunt 1974).
Section 6.44 is the clearest statement of Marcus' double identity. He does not abandon his Roman duties for an abstract humanity; rather, what is useful to Rome and to the world-city is the only thing useful to him. Section 6.54 puts the same idea in seven words about the swarm and the bee.
this purple robe some sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shell-fish
Physical definition applied to the emperor's own robe: the symbol of supreme power reduced to its materials.
Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar, that thou art not dyed with this dye; for such things happen.
The emperor's warning to himself against the moral danger of his position. The 'dye' recalls both the purple of 6.13 and the dyed soul of 5.16.
my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.
Marcus' double citizenship, Roman and cosmic, the political core of his Stoicism.
Book 7: Look Within
Summary
Book VII, the longest by number of sections, is a mixture of short maxims and quotations. Marcus reminds himself that all things are bound together in one holy order, that it is 'peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong', that pain is either bearable or soon over, and that he will soon forget all things and be forgotten by all.
A distinctive feature of the book is a cluster of quotations from Euripides, Plato, Antisthenes and Epictetus (7.35–7.51), copied as if from a commonplace book. Among them is Plato's advice to view human affairs 'from some higher place'. The book also contains the short command 'Look within', and ends with reflections on the perfection of character as passing every day as if it were the last.
Analysis
Section 7.9 is one of the fullest summaries of Stoic physics in the work: one universe, one god pervading all things, one substance, one law, one common reason. The bond that connects all things is 'holy'. This is the logos-doctrine in its religious mode, and it underlies Marcus' constant claim that the parts must not quarrel with the whole (Sellars 2006).
The quotations of Book VII show how Marcus worked: like other ancient readers, he collected sayings and copied them out to make them his own. Antisthenes' 'It is royal to do good and to be abused' (7.36) has a special point for an emperor. The 'view from above' (7.48) is one of the spiritual exercises Hadot found throughout the notebook: imagining the world from a height so as to see human ambitions at their true size (Hadot 1995).
All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy
The unity of the cosmos as a sacred bond: Stoic physics expressed as religious reverence.
It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong.
Love of wrongdoers, grounded in kinship, ignorance, shared mortality and the fact that no one can harm our ruling faculty.
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
The inward turn in its most concentrated form: goodness is a spring inside the self, available to anyone who works for it.
Book 8: The Citadel of the Mind
Summary
Book VIII opens with Marcus admitting that he can no longer hope to be thought a philosopher, since he has lived his life in other ways; he should be content to live the rest according to nature. He reminds himself that soon he will be 'nobody and nowhere, like Hadrianus and Augustus', and composes a litany of the dead in which every mourner dies in turn.
Among the other entries are the image of a man who cuts himself off from society as a severed hand or head, which, unlike a limb, can rejoin the body; the principle that it is not things but our judgment of them that pains us; and the description of the mind free from passion as a citadel. The book ends with the saying 'Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then, or bear with them.'
Analysis
Section 8.48 gave Hadot the title of his book, The Inner Citadel. The citadel is not a place of withdrawal from duty but the 'ruling faculty' made secure by right judgment, so that nothing outside can compel it. It sits beside 8.47, the central Stoic claim that we suffer from judgments rather than things, which Marcus takes directly from Epictetus (Hadot 1998) (Long 2002).
The litany of 8.25 (Lucilla saw Verus die, and then Lucilla died) has a hypnotic, almost liturgical rhythm, and many of the names are those of Marcus' own family and court. Brunt argued that such passages reflect the real loneliness and burdens of a ruler, rather than mere philosophical commonplace (Brunt 1974).
If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it.
Marcus' version of Epictetus' famous maxim that people are disturbed not by things but by their opinions about things.
Therefore the mind which is free from passions is a citadel
The inner citadel: the mind's freedom lies in its judgments, which no external force can storm.
Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then, or bear with them.
Duty to others reduced to two options, both forms of care: correction or patience.
Book 9: Justice and the Torrent of Causes
Summary
Book IX opens with an argument that injustice, lying and the pursuit of pleasure are acts of impiety, since they offend universal nature, the oldest of divinities. Marcus then tells himself to be content with death as one of nature's operations, like growing teeth or grey hair, and to wait for it as a pregnant woman waits for birth.
Later entries compare the universal cause to a winter torrent, mock the 'poor people' who play at philosophy in politics, and warn against expecting Plato's Republic; a ruler must be content if the smallest thing goes well. The book closes with advice on prayer (pray not to be free of fear, but not to fear) and on dealing with the shameless, who must of necessity exist in the world.
Analysis
Section 9.1 links ethics and physics with unusual force: wrongdoing is not merely a mistake but a sin against the nature of things. Section 9.29 is the passage most often cited on Marcus as a ruler. Its sober realism, the refusal to expect an ideal state and the recognition that one cannot change people's opinions by force, reveals a practical politician rather than a philosopher-king out of Plato (Birley 1987) (Brunt 1974).
The alternative of prayer in 9.40 is characteristic. Marcus does not dismiss traditional religion; he redirects it towards what is in our power. Praying to be free of desire rather than to obtain its object is the Stoic theory of value turned into a form of worship.
He who acts unjustly acts impiously.
Injustice as impiety: since nature made rational beings for one another, to wrong another is to offend the divine.
Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since this too is one of those things which nature wills.
Death as a natural process like growth and ageing, to be awaited calmly, not merely endured.
nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well
The emperor's realism: philosophy does not promise an ideal state, only the small goods within reach.
Book 10: Live as on a Mountain
Summary
Book X opens with a prayer-like address to the soul, asking when it will at last be good, simple and content. Marcus then works through his favourite alternative, atoms or nature, and concludes that in either case he is a part of a whole and should accept his allotted portion. He gives himself a set of 'names' to live up to: good, modest, true, rational, equable, magnanimous.
Other entries command him to stop discussing what a good man is and be one, to live 'as on a mountain', to think of the vanished courts of Hadrian, Antoninus, Philip, Alexander and Croesus, and to see human beings as leaves blown down by the wind, quoting a line of Homer.
Analysis
Book X is one of the most demanding in tone. The commands are short and severe ('No longer talk...'), and the address to the soul in 10.1 has the intensity of a confession. The names of 10.8 show Marcus' habit of fixing an ideal in a few words that he can remember and return to (Rutherford 1989).
The leaves of 10.34 come from Homer's simile of the generations of men (the image is spoken by the Trojan warrior Glaukos in the Iliad). Marcus uses the poetic tradition not for pleasure but as a 'brief precept' to cure grief and fear, an example of how a Stoic reads poetry (Gill 2013).
Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain.
Living 'as on a mountain' means living anywhere as a citizen of the world, without depending on place or society.
No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.
The shortest statement of philosophy as a way of life: theory must become practice.
Leaves, also, are thy children
Homer's leaves turned into a Stoic remedy for the fear of loss and the love of fame.
Book 11: The Rational Soul and the Sayings of Epictetus
Summary
Book XI begins by listing the properties of the rational soul: it sees itself, analyses itself, shapes itself and reaches its end whenever life is cut short, unlike a dance or a play. Marcus discusses the readiness to die, which should come from reasoned judgment rather than obstinacy, and the image of a branch cut from the tree.
Section 11.18 offers a systematic list of considerations to be used against anger. The book ends with a series of quotations and sayings, most from Epictetus, including the advice to whisper to oneself while kissing one's child that tomorrow he may die, and the saying that to look for figs in winter is madness.
Analysis
The phrase 'as with the Christians' in 11.3 is one of the earliest pagan references to Christian martyrdom. Many editors suspect it is a reader's gloss that slipped into the text, since it breaks the syntax; if it is Marcus', it shows contempt for what he saw as theatrical defiance. The issue matters because Christians were persecuted under his reign, notably at Lyon in 177 (Farquharson 1944) (Birley 1987).
The closing extracts from Epictetus (11.33–11.39) confirm what Book I says about Marcus' debt to him. They are not argued but placed together like texts for meditation, and they include some of Epictetus' hardest teaching, on loving what is mortal while knowing it is mortal (Long 2002) (Hadot 1998).
it sees itself, analyzes itself, and makes itself such as it chooses
The rational soul as self-reflective and self-shaping: the faculty the whole notebook is written to exercise.
not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians, but considerately and with dignity
A disputed phrase: either Marcus' only mention of the Christians or a later gloss.
When a man kisses his child, said Epictetus, he should whisper to himself, "To-morrow perchance thou wilt die."
Epictetus' severe exercise in accepting mortality, which Marcus defends as no more ill-omened than speaking of the harvest.
Book 12: The Last Act
Summary
Book XII gathers the work's main themes into a final review. Marcus reminds himself that he is made of three things, a little body, a little breath and intelligence, and that only the last is truly his. He wonders why people value others' opinion of them above their own, and repeats the alternatives: fate, providence or chaos; in any case he has within himself a ruling intelligence.
He reminds himself of what he forgets when troubled: that all things happen by nature, that another's wrong is nothing to him, and that every man's intelligence is a god. He considers how small a part of time, substance and soul is allotted to each person. The work ends with the image of an actor dismissed by the magistrate who hired him, after three acts instead of five.
Analysis
The tripartite self of 12.3 sharpens the distinction of 3.16 and makes the 'intelligence' the true self, a move that some scholars see as a Platonic strain in Marcus' Stoicism, others as a dramatic way of stating orthodox Stoic doctrine about the ruling part (Gill 2013) (Rist 1982).
Whether or not Marcus planned it, 12.36 makes a fitting end. It turns the theatre, a favourite Stoic image for the roles we are given, into a consolation for dying before one's time: the play is complete when its author decides. The final sentence returns to the work's governing note of calm acceptance.
The things are three of which thou art composed: a little body, a little breath [life], intelligence.
The self divided into what we have and what we are: only the intelligence is 'properly thine'.
Thou sayest well, but in life the three acts are the whole drama
The actor dismissed after three acts: a short life is not an unfinished one.
Depart then satisfied, for he also who releases thee is satisfied.
The closing words of the Meditations, an exhortation to leave life with the same good will as the nature that dismisses us.
Characters
Family
- Verus (grandfather)
- Marcus Annius Verus, Marcus' paternal grandfather, three times consul and prefect of Rome, who brought him up after his father's death. Marcus thanks him for 'good morals and the government of my temper' (1.1).
- Marcus' father
- Marcus Annius Verus the younger, who died when Marcus was about three. Marcus knew him only by 'reputation and remembrance', and credits him with modesty and manliness (1.2).
- Marcus' mother
- Domitia Lucilla, a rich and cultivated woman who taught him piety, generosity and simple living (1.3). Marcus records his gratitude that, though she died young, she spent her last years with him (1.17).
- Great-grandfather
- Probably Lucius Catilius Severus, his mother's grandfather, who saw that he was taught at home by good teachers rather than at public schools (1.4).
- Antoninus Pius
- Marcus' adoptive father and predecessor as emperor (reigned 138–161), the subject of the long portrait in 1.16. His mildness, deliberation, thrift, courtesy and indifference to flattery make him Marcus' model of the good ruler; Marcus later tells himself to act in everything 'as a disciple of Antoninus' (6.30).
- Faustina
- Faustina the Younger, daughter of Antoninus and Marcus' wife, mother of their many children including Commodus. Marcus thanks the gods for 'such a wife, so obedient, and so affectionate, and so simple' (1.17), despite hostile ancient gossip about her.
Teachers
- The governor
- An unnamed tutor who taught the young Marcus to take no side in the chariot factions or the gladiatorial games, to endure labour, want little, work with his own hands and ignore slander (1.5).
- Diognetus
- A teacher, probably of painting, who turned Marcus away from trifles and superstition, encouraged him to write philosophical dialogues and gave him a taste for the hard Greek philosophical life, the plank bed and the skin (1.6).
- Rusticus
- Quintus Junius Rusticus, Stoic philosopher, later consul and prefect of Rome, the most important of Marcus' teachers. He cured him of rhetorical display, taught him to write plainly and to forgive quickly, and lent him his own copy of Epictetus (1.7).
- Apollonius
- Apollonius of Chalcedon, a Stoic summoned to Rome by Antoninus Pius. Marcus learned from him freedom of will, steadiness, and the combination of firmness and gentleness in a teacher (1.8).
- Sextus
- Sextus of Chaeronea, a philosopher and nephew of Plutarch, admired for his benevolence, his idea of living according to nature, and his freedom from passion combined with deep affection (1.9).
- Alexander the grammarian
- Alexander of Cotiaeum, a Homeric scholar, who taught Marcus to correct others' mistakes tactfully, by using the right word himself rather than by reproach (1.10).
- Fronto
- Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the leading Latin orator of the age and Marcus' teacher of rhetoric, whose affectionate correspondence with him survives. Marcus thanks him for teaching what envy and hypocrisy are in a tyrant (1.11).
- Alexander the Platonist
- A Platonist who served as Marcus' secretary for Greek correspondence. He taught Marcus not to excuse neglect of duty by pleading that he was too busy (1.12).
- Catulus
- Cinna Catulus, a Stoic, who taught Marcus to take a friend's complaints seriously, to speak well of his teachers and to love his children truly (1.13).
- Maximus
- Claudius Maximus, a Stoic and senior statesman, admired for self-command, cheerfulness in illness, and a character that seemed incapable of being turned from the right (1.15). The portrait of Antoninus ends by recalling how Antoninus behaved during Maximus' illness (1.16).
Friends
- Severus
- Claudius Severus, a Peripatetic, called 'my brother' perhaps because his son married Marcus' daughter. Through him Marcus learned of the Stoic martyrs Thrasea and Helvidius and the ideal of a state with equal laws and freedom of speech (1.14).
Philosophers
- Epictetus
- The Stoic teacher (c. 50–c. 135), once a slave, whose Discourses Marcus read through Rusticus (1.7). He is quoted or echoed throughout the Meditations, especially in 4.41 and the closing sections of Book XI, and is the most important single influence on the work.
Exemplars
- Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, Brutus
- Statesmen remembered as defenders of liberty against tyranny (Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus were Stoics put to death under Nero and Vespasian). Marcus learned of them through Severus (1.14), and they stand for his ideal of a monarchy that respects the freedom of the governed.
Themes
Stoic physics and the logos
For the Stoics the universe is a single living body, pervaded and governed by a divine reason, the logos, which they also called god, nature, Zeus, fate or providence. Everything happens according to this reason, and everything is connected to everything else. Marcus repeats this teaching constantly: 'one universe made up of all things, and one god who pervades all things' (7.9). Human reason is a fragment of the universal reason, so that each person's intelligence is 'a god and an efflux of the Deity' (12.26) (Sellars 2006) (Long 1987). (Inwood 2003)
Marcus does not study physics for its own sake; he admits that he has 'despaired of becoming a dialectician and skilled in the knowledge of nature' (7.67). He uses it as therapy. To see an event as part of the whole is to accept it; to see a precious thing as matter is to stop desiring it. Physics, Hadot argued, becomes the 'discipline of assent' and the 'discipline of desire' (Hadot 1998).
Impermanence and flux
Change is the law of the universe in the Meditations. 'Time is like a river' (4.43); everything flows as in Heraclitus, and 'the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are' (4.36). Marcus surveys past reigns, the courts of Vespasian and Trajan, Hadrian and Antoninus, and sees the same scenes replayed with different actors.
This vision is often taken for pessimism, but it has a constructive purpose. If everything passes, then fame, possessions and grievances lose their grip, and the present moment, the only thing anyone has, becomes precious. The work's many reminders of transience are exercises in seeing things at their true size (Hadot 1998) (Rutherford 1989).
The inner citadel
Marcus constantly distinguishes what is in our power, our judgments, choices and desires, from what is not, everything else. Things 'do not touch the soul'; what disturbs us is 'thy own judgment about it' (8.47). The ruling faculty, when it rests on right judgment, is 'a citadel' that no outside force can capture (8.48).
This is not withdrawal from the world. The retreat into oneself (4.3) is a pause before returning to one's duties with renewed calm, and the citadel is defended so that one can act well. The idea, taken from Epictetus, made the Meditations a key text for later traditions of inner freedom (Hadot 1998) (Long 2002).
Duty and the common good
Because all human beings share reason, they are kin, 'made for co-operation' (2.1), fellow citizens of a world-city (4.4). The good of the part cannot be separated from the good of the whole: 'That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee' (6.54). The Stoic must therefore act for the common good and bear patiently with those who act badly, who do so out of ignorance.
For Marcus this cosmopolitan ideal is tied to a concrete office. He is a Roman and a ruler 'who has taken his post' (3.5), and he warns himself against the corruptions of power. His political realism appears in the refusal to expect 'Plato's Republic' (9.29) (Brunt 1974) (Birley 1987).
Death
Death appears on almost every page. Marcus argues that it is natural, a 'dissolution' like the other changes of life (9.3); that it takes from us only the present moment (2.14); that whether there are gods or only atoms it is nothing to fear (2.11, 3.3); and that it releases us from a stage on which our part is complete (12.36).
Yet the work is not cold about mortality. The litanies of the dead in 4.48 and 8.25, the reminders that his children are 'leaves' (10.34), and Epictetus' advice about kissing one's child (11.34) show a man training himself to love what he knows he will lose (Rutherford 1989).
Philosophy as a way of life
The Meditations treat philosophy not as a body of theory but as a daily practice. 'No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such' (10.16). Writing itself is part of that practice: the notebook is the place where Marcus rehearses and reformulates the doctrines that will 'dye' his soul (5.16).
Hadot's work on this aspect has had a wide influence, and Michel Foucault drew on Marcus in his late studies of the 'care of the self' in antiquity (Hadot 1995) (Foucault 1986).
Motifs
Self-address
Marcus speaks to himself as 'thou', and sometimes to his soul ('my soul', 2.6, 10.1). The second person turns doctrine into command, reproach and encouragement, and gives the work its intimate tone.
Providence or atoms
Again and again Marcus sets out the alternative between a universe ordered by providence and a random concourse of atoms, as the Epicureans held (4.3, 6.10, 9.39, 10.6, 12.14). He usually concludes that in either case the right response is the same: calm, justice and acceptance.
Catalogues of the dead
Lists of famous and obscure people who have died (3.3, 4.32–4.33, 4.48, 6.47, 8.25) recur as a memento mori, reducing emperors, philosophers and physicians alike to the same end.
The view from above
Marcus repeatedly imagines human affairs from a great height (7.48, 9.30, 12.24), so that continents become corners and the sea a drop (6.36). The exercise puts ambition and grievance in proportion.
Physical definition
He describes objects of desire in purely material terms, food as dead animals, wine as grape-juice, purple as shellfish blood (6.13), to remove the false value that judgment attaches to them.
Symbols
The citadel
The mind free from passions as a fortress no enemy can take (8.48). It stands for the inviolability of judgment and gave Pierre Hadot the title of his classic study.
The river
Time and substance as a flowing stream (2.17, 4.43, 6.15), after Heraclitus: an image of ceaseless change and of the futility of clinging to what passes.
The promontory
The headland that stands firm against the waves (4.49): constancy under misfortune, which 'tames the fury' around it.
The bee and the swarm
The individual as part of a community whose good is his good (5.1, 6.54); an image of Stoic social duty.
The stage
Life as a play in which each person is given a role and dismissed when the author chooses (10.27, 11.6, 12.36).
Critical debates
What kind of book is it?
The Meditations were not written for readers. The manuscript title, 'to himself', and the notes of place in Books I and II suggest a private notebook. But scholars disagree about how private and how artless it is. Some saw it as a diary recording the moods of a lonely man; others stress its rhetorical polish, its careful variation of a few themes and its links with the ancient genre of hypomnēmata, notes for self-improvement (Rutherford 1989) (Brunt 1974).
Hadot's influential view is that the book is a set of spiritual exercises: Marcus writes in order to reactivate doctrines, not to record his feelings, and its apparent disorder hides a systematic structure derived from Epictetus. Critics of Hadot accept the idea of exercises but warn against finding too rigid a system (Hadot 1998) (Gill 2013).
Epictetus and the three disciplines
Epictetus divided philosophical training into three areas: desire and aversion, impulse and action, and assent to impressions. Hadot argued that the Meditations are organised, at a deep level, by these three 'disciplines', corresponding to physics, ethics and logic, and that many of Marcus' formulas are reworkings of Epictetus' teaching (Hadot 1998).
Long's study of Epictetus confirms the depth of the debt while showing how Marcus adapts it to his own circumstances as a ruler rather than a teacher (Long 2002).
Orthodox Stoic or eclectic?
Marcus calls himself a follower of no school, and he repeatedly allows the Epicurean alternative of 'atoms'. He also separates the 'intelligence' from the soul in ways that recall Plato (3.16, 12.3). Some scholars therefore treat him as an eclectic or a Platonising Stoic; John Rist pointedly asked whether he was a Stoic at all (Rist 1982).
Others reply that the 'providence or atoms' formula is a rhetorical device to show that Stoic ethics holds even on the opponent's premise, and that his psychology can be explained within Stoicism. Recent work by Gill and Sellars broadly places him within the Stoic tradition while recognising his independence (Asmis 1989) (Gill 2013) (Sellars 2021).
Melancholy, pessimism and the opium thesis
Many readers have found the Meditations sad. Ernest Renan described Marcus as a melancholy saint at the end of the ancient world, and later critics saw in his disgust at the body and his constant thought of death a personal pessimism (Renan 1882).
In 1961 Thomas Africa argued that Marcus' visions of time and the cosmos reflected the effects of the opium-based medicine his doctor Galen prescribed (Africa 1961). Hadot rejected the thesis, arguing that the 'pessimistic' passages are deliberate exercises of physical definition and the view from above, taken from the philosophical tradition. Brunt, who stressed the real sources of distress in Marcus' life, also cautioned against reading the book as a confession (Hadot 1998) (Brunt 1974).
The philosopher on the throne
Marcus has often been seen as the nearest thing to Plato's philosopher-king. Historians ask how far his philosophy shaped his rule. His reign saw hard frontier wars, the persecution of Christians, and the decision to make his unsuitable son Commodus his heir. The Meditations themselves are cautious about political idealism (9.29) (Birley 1987).
Brunt read the book as the work of a conscientious ruler struggling with the temptations and frustrations of power, rather than of a theorist applying a programme (Brunt 1974). The single, possibly interpolated, reference to the Christians (11.3) remains a sensitive point (Farquharson 1944).
The date and place of Book I
Book I differs from the rest in form and content. Many scholars believe it was written separately, possibly late, and placed first by Marcus or a later editor. The notes 'Among the Quadi at the Granua' and 'This in Carnuntum' are printed in Long's text at the end of Books I and II, but in the manuscripts they can be read as headings of the following books, and their attachment affects arguments about the order of composition (Farquharson 1944) (Rutherford 1989).
The question matters for interpretation: read as a late retrospect, Book I becomes Marcus' summing-up of his life; read as an introduction, it presents the models whose teaching the rest of the notebook applies (Hadot 1998).
Reception, ancient and modern
The Meditations were almost unknown in antiquity and reached the Renaissance through a fragile manuscript tradition. After 1559 they became a classic of moral literature, translated into English by Meric Casaubon (1634) and later by Long. Victorian readers, led by Matthew Arnold, admired Marcus as a pagan of almost Christian gentleness (Arnold 1865) (Sellars 2021).
In the twenty-first century the book has become a bestseller of practical self-help, an emphasis encouraged by modern Stoic revival movements and by works such as Robertson's. Scholars both welcome this interest and warn that it can strip away the cosmology, theology and political context that give Marcus' ethics its meaning (Robertson 2019) (Sellars 2021) (van Ackeren 2012).
Key passages
For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.
From the morning exercise. Marcus prepares to meet difficult people by reminding himself that they share his reason and are his kin. The images of the body make the point concrete: hostility among human beings is as unnatural as one hand fighting another.
no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.
The argument from the present moment. Since only the present is lived and only the present is lost, the long-lived and the short-lived lose the same at death. Long life is no advantage and early death no disaster.
it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself.
The retreat into oneself. Instead of seeking peace in country houses or by the sea, one can withdraw into the mind and recall a few principles. The retreat restores one for the duties of the world, not an escape from them.
Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream
The image of flux, borrowed from Heraclitus. Nothing remains long enough to be clung to; everything seen is already being carried away. The awareness is meant to free one from attachment, not to depress.
Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.
The emblem of Stoic constancy. The promontory does not merely survive the waves; it calms them, as the steady mind turns misfortune into an occasion of virtue.
my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.
Marcus' double citizenship. As emperor he serves Rome; as a rational being he is a citizen of the cosmos. The two are not in conflict, since only what benefits both cities benefits him.
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
The inward turn of the Meditations in a single image. Goodness is not received from outside but found and kept flowing by effort.
If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it.
The core of Stoic psychology: suffering comes from judgment, and judgment is in our power. The section goes on to say that one can 'wipe out' the judgment now.
Therefore the mind which is free from passions is a citadel
The inner citadel. The ruling faculty, secured by right judgment, is impregnable; whoever knows this and does not take refuge there is unhappy. Hadot took the image as the title of his study.
Thou sayest well, but in life the three acts are the whole drama
From the last section of the work. An actor protests that he has played only three acts of five; the answer is that the play is complete when its author decides. Death before one's time is not an unfinished life.
Questions for study
Why does Marcus begin with a list of what he learned from others? What does Book I tell us about how he understood character and education?
Notice that each person is remembered for a quality, not a story. Compare the portrait of Antoninus in 1.16 with the warnings about power in 6.30.
The Meditations were written 'to himself'. How does the private character of the work affect its style and its value for other readers?
Consider the second-person address, the repetition, the abrupt commands and the lack of argument from section to section. Think about Hadot's idea of spiritual exercises.
How does Stoic physics, the idea of a universe governed by the logos, support Marcus' ethics?
Look at 2.1, 4.4, 7.9 and 12.26. How does the claim that all share in reason lead to kinship, cosmopolitanism and acceptance of fate?
Is the Meditations a pessimistic book?
Weigh the passages on decay and oblivion (2.17, 4.48, 6.13) against those on beauty and gratitude (1.17, 3.2, 4.23). Consider the debate between Africa, Brunt and Hadot.
What does Marcus mean by retreating into oneself (4.3) and the mind as a citadel (8.48)? Does this make him indifferent to the world?
Notice what the retreat is for, and how often the work insists on social duty and acting for the common good.
How does Marcus try to overcome the fear of death? Which of his arguments do you find most convincing?
Compare the argument from the present (2.14), the alternative of gods or atoms (2.11, 3.3), death as a natural process (9.3) and the actor dismissed from the stage (12.36).
What is the influence of Epictetus on the Meditations, and how does Marcus' position as emperor change Epictetus' teaching?
Start with 1.7, 4.41, 8.47 and the end of Book XI. Then consider what a slave-born teacher and an emperor might mean by freedom and duty.
How does Marcus deal with other people who annoy or wrong him?
Collect the passages: 2.1, 7.22, 8.59, 9.42, 11.18. What arguments does he use, and what do they assume about human nature?
Why does Marcus keep returning to the alternative 'providence or atoms'? Does this show doubt about Stoic doctrine?
Look at 4.3, 6.10, 10.6 and 12.14. Notice whether the practical conclusion changes depending on which alternative is true.
Why has the Meditations become so popular in the twenty-first century, and what may modern readers miss in it?
Think about its brevity and practical advice, and about the cosmology, religion and political responsibility that shape it. Consider the cautions of scholars such as Sellars.
Further reading
- Africa, Thomas W. "The Opium Addiction of Marcus Aurelius." Journal of the History of Ideas 22.1 (1961): 97–102.
- Arnold, Matthew. "Marcus Aurelius." In Essays in Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1865.
- Asmis, Elizabeth. "The Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.36.3, ed. Wolfgang Haase, 2228–2252. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989.
- Birley, Anthony R. Marcus Aurelius: A Biography. Rev. ed. London: B. T. Batsford, 1987.
- Brunt, P. A. "Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations." Journal of Roman Studies 64 (1974): 1–20.
- Champlin, Edward. Fronto and Antonine Rome. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.
- Farquharson, A. S. L., ed. and trans. The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944.
- Foucault, Michel. The Care of the Self. Vol. 3 of The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
- Gill, Christopher, trans. and comm. Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, Books 1–6. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
- Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
- Hadot, Pierre. The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Trans. Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
- Haines, C. R., ed. and trans. The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1919–1920.
- Hard, Robin, trans. Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, with Selected Correspondence. Intro. and notes Christopher Gill. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
- Hays, Gregory, trans. Marcus Aurelius: Meditations. A New Translation. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
- Inwood, Brad, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- Long, A. A. Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.
- Long, A. A., and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
- Renan, Ernest. Marc-Aurèle et la fin du monde antique. Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1882.
- Rist, John M. "Are You a Stoic? The Case of Marcus Aurelius." In Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. 3: Self-Definition in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. Ben F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders. London: SCM Press, 1982.
- Robertson, Donald. How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2019.
- Rutherford, R. B. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
- Sellars, John. Stoicism. Chesham: Acumen, 2006.
- Sellars, John. Marcus Aurelius. Philosophy in the Ancient World. London: Routledge, 2021.
- van Ackeren, Marcel, ed. A Companion to Marcus Aurelius. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-21.