Marcus to Himself

DURING MARCUS’ LAST STAY at Rome, reports the biographer, ‘the saying of Plato was always on his lips, that states flourish if philosophers rule or if rulers are philosophers.’ The story may be apocryphal, but if true would be ammunition for those who view the Meditations as the musings of a self-conscious prig. Self-conscious Marcus certainly always was, and sometimes he recognized that he was in danger of being priggish. If he was really quoting Plato frequently at that time, it may have been to justify to sceptics and critics his continued public preoccupation with philosophy, of which the culmination was the extraordinary scene on the eve of his departure in August 178. He knew he had critics. ‘Penetrate inside their guiding reason,’ he writes, ‘and you will see what critics you fear – and what sort of critics they are of themselves.’ Again, a little later, ‘Whenever someone else blames or hates you …, approach their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will see that you shouldn’t torment yourself so that they should think in a certain way about you.’ But, he adds, ‘you must, however, think kindly of them, for by nature they are friends.’ This kind of reflection crops up in the later books. In one, more elaborate, passage in Book 10 he allows himself some gentle satire. ‘No one is lucky enough not to have some people standing by his death-bed welcoming the evil that is happening to him. Say he was virtuous and wise, won’t there be someone at the last to say of him: “we shall breathe more freely now this schoolmaster has gone. Even if he wasn’t hard on any of us, still I felt that he was silently condemning us.” So much for the virtuous man – but as for us, how many other reasons are there for many to want to be rid of us! Think of this then when you’re dying and you will depart the easier if you consider: “I am leaving a world in which even my companions, for whom I struggled, prayed and worried so much, wish me gone, hoping for some relief thereby.” Why then should anyone cling on to a longer stay? Still, don’t leave them in a less friendly spirit for this reason: be consistent to your own character, loving, good-natured, gracious. And don’t leave as if being wrenched away, rather your departure from them should be like that gentle slipping away of soul from body of one who dies well. It was nature that bound you and united you to them and now she releases you. I am released as from my own kinsfolk, not dragged away and not compelled. For this too is a part of nature.’ ¹