One should have more than one translation for Meditations. With an Introduction that outlines Marcus’s life and career, the essentials of Stoic doctrine, the style and construction of the Meditations, and the work’s ongoing influence, this edition makes it possible to fully rediscover the thoughts of one of the most enlightened and intelligent leaders of any era. Never before have Marcus’s insights been so directly and powerfully presented. In fresh and unencumbered English, Hays vividly conveys the spareness and compression of the original Greek text. In Gregory Hays’s new translation-the first in thirty-five years-Marcus’s thoughts speak with a new immediacy. For anyone who struggles to reconcile the demands of leadership with a concern for personal integrity and spiritual well-being, the Meditations remains as relevant now as it was two thousand years ago. Marcus’s insights and advice-on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity and interacting with others-have made the Meditations required reading for statesmen and philosophers alike, while generations of ordinary readers have responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style. A series of spiritual exercises filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behavior, it remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life.įew ancient works have been as influential as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and emperor of Rome (A.D. 161-180) as well as the basic tenets of stoicism, is accessible and jaunty. Hays's introduction, which sketches the life of Marcus Aurelius (emperor of Rome A.D. Whether these, and other entries ("Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life.") sound life-changing or like entries in a teenager's diary is up to the individual reader, as it should be. Now take what's left and live it properly.") and rhetorically ("What is it in ourselves that we should prize?"). The book, which Hays calls, fondly, a "haphazard set of notes," is indicative of the role of philosophy among the ancients in that it is "expected to provide a 'design for living.'" And it does, both aphoristically ("Think of yourself as dead. Hays suggests that its most recent incarnation-as a self-help book-is not only valid, but may be close to the author's intent. One measure, perhaps, of a book's worth, is its intergenerational pliancy: do new readers acquire it and interpret it afresh down through the ages? The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated and introduced by Gregory Hays, by that standard, is very worthwhile, indeed.
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