ABSTRACT
As many of the reflections that make up Marcus Aurelius's Meditations are forms of practical and psychological advice, it is harder to pick out and evaluate a set of clear philosophical theses or doctrines from the text than is typically the case with other great contributions to the history of the philosophical tradition. One of the curious features of Meditations, however, is that it is sometimes difficult to identify whether its message should be assessed as a Stoic argument. One of the principal difficulties posed by Meditations is knowing when and why it was written. It is not a work that appears to have been intended for a wider readership, and as a result has a degree of formlessness and can also appear to lack much sense of arguments logically organized. The absence of structure means that it can be difficult for the reader to grasp the complex interconnections between the themes on which Marcus focuses.
