His notes to himself are, in the phrase of the historian Pierre Hadot, “spiritual exercises”-the means not to inform himself about this thing or that, but instead to form himself according to the insights of Stoicism. Not only does he rarely refer, except in the first section of the Meditations, to places or people, but he also refers to himself only as someone who remains to be made. Marcus, however, was not a typical travel writer. The ailing emperor-who had never before led a military campaign or, for that matter, left his native Italy-was struck by these strange lands inhabited by tribes like the Quadi and the Marcomanni, as well as by the rhythms of military camps like Carnuntum, which was established in present-day Austria. In 170 CE, Marcus retreated to writing as he advanced to his empire’s northern borders to join his army’s effort to repel the Germanic tribes. This year marks, just maybe, the 1,850th anniversary of the birth of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.

Instead, one who wrote, “Soon you will have forgotten all things: soon all things will have forgotten you.” But a philosopher of a particular sort, a Stoic, one who would never wonder what future historians would say about him. The world has indeed remembered Marcus Aurelius as a philosopher. Asking how the world will speak his name in years to come, Marcus quickly gives Maximus a hint: “As a philosopher?” But Marcus drops a hint about what he was writing in the ensuing conversation with Maximus. We might have thought that the emperor was dashing off official orders.

Only after a long silence does a weary-faced and bleary-eyed Harris look up and, wiping his nose, pop his question. (This was more than 30 years after Harris vaulted to fame singing the Jimmy Webb song “MacArthur Park.”) When Maximus, battered but victorious over a Germanic army, is commanded to appear at the emperor’s tent, he enters to find its occupant bowed over a sheaf of parchment and intensely writing. This scene appears early in the 2000 movie Gladiator, and though the star of the film may be Russell Crowe as Maximus, it is Richard Harris as the elderly Marcus Aurelius who steals the scene. The answer, we learn, is, “For the glory of the Roman Empire, sire.”

Why are we here?” Here is somewhere in the wintry Balkan plains-a long way from Rome-and the question is asked by the emperor Marcus Aurelius of his general Maximus. Replica of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Capitoline Hill, Rome (Wikimedia Commons)

Meditations marcus