Meditations

but it enforces them all simply because they are general rules, and if it did not or could not enforce them, so far Law would not be Law. Justice, or the doing what is just, implies a universal rule and obedience to it; and as well as we all live under universal Law, which commands both our body and our intelligence, and is the law of our nature, that is the law of the whole constitution of man, we must endeavor to discover what this supreme Law is. It is the will of the power that rules all. By acting in obedience to this will, we do justice, and by consequence everything else that we ought to do. ↩

The story is told by Horace in his Satires (II, 6), and by others since, but not better. ↩

Perhaps the emperor made a mistake here, for other writers say that it was Archelaus, the son of Perdiccas, who invited Socrates to Macedonia. ↩

Gataker suggested Έπικονρείων for Έϕεσίων. ↩

The verse of Empedocles is corrupt in Antoninus. It has been restored by Peyron from a Turin manuscript, thus:⁠—

Σϕαῖρος κνκλοτεὴς μονίς περιϒηθέϊ ϒαίων.

↩

See Book III, ¶4. ↩

The interpreters translate γοργός by the words acer, validusque, and “skillful.” But in Epictetus (II, 16, 20; III, 12, 10) this word means “vehement,” “prone to anger,” “irritable.” ↩

There is something wrong here, or incomplete. ↩

See Book VII, ¶25. ↩

See Epictetus, II, 8, 9, etc. ↩

μετ οίήσεως. Οῐησις καί τῦϕος, see Epictetus I, 8, 6. ↩

“Seen even with the eyes.” It is supposed that this may be explained by the Stoic doctrine, that the universe is a god or living being (Book IV, ¶42), and that the celestial bodies are gods (Book VIII, ¶19). But the emperor may mean that we know that the gods exist, as he afterwards states it, because we see what they do; as we know that man has intellectual powers, because we see what he does, and in no other way do we know it. This passage then will agree with the passage in the Epistle to the Romans (1:20), and with the Epistle to the Colossians (1:15) in which Jesus Christ is named “the image of the invisible god;” and with the passage in the Gospel of St. John (14:9).

Gataker, whose notes are a wonderful collection of learning, and all of it sound and good, quotes a passage of Calvin which is founded on St. Paul’s language (Romans 1:20): “God by creating the universe [or world, mundum), being himself invisible, has presented himself to our eyes conspicuously in a certain visible form.” He also quotes Seneca (De Beneficiis IV, C, 8): “Quocunque te flexeris, ibi illum videbie occurrentem tibi: nihil ab illo vacat, opus suum ipse implet.” Compare also Cicero, De Senectute (C. 22), Xenophon’s Cyropædia (VIII, 7) and Memorabilia IV, 3; also Epictetus, I, 6, De Providentia. I think that my interpretation of Antoninus is right. ↩

See Book II, ¶16 and Book IV, ¶31. ↩

See Book III, ¶8. ↩

Colophon

Meditations
was written between 170 and 180 by
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Emperor of Rome.
It was translated from Koine Greek in 1862 by
George Long.

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