ABSTRACT
At one level, the task of positioning Meditations within Marcus Aurelius's body of work is straightforward: the only other work of his to have survived is his correspondence with his tutor Fronto, which was discovered only in 1815 on reused parchment in a library in Milan. A comparison between Meditations and the surviving letters offers valuable insights not only into Marcus's personality but into his thinking. Apart from Meditations and the correspondence with Fronto, there is no evidence from external sources that he wrote anything else. In sharp contrast to Augustine, Marcus cultivates a curiously detached tone and almost never attempts to illustrate a philosophical or ethical point by citing an event from his own life that might serve as an example. In many ways the work embodies the ideal of a philosopher-ruler first proposed by Plato in his most famous dialogue, Republic.
