Ah they and welcome to Emperor of Rome, a podcast about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr.

Sonia Worcester, an honorary fellow in the School of Historical and

Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. This is episode LXXI. Meditations. Very little that has been

written by emperors has survived to the modern day. Among the great

missing works we know of are Hadrian's autobiography

and of course Domitions instructional manual

care of the hair.

As my flowing locks can attest,

the world is a poorer place without these works, but we do have the meditations, written by one, Marcus Aurelius.

The meditations are Marcus Aurelius's private musings.

They are mostly written while he was on campaign during the

Markamanic Wars, and while they lack extensive details, they give a rare insight into the mind

of an emperor. And the popularity of the text has shaped our modern

understanding of the thoughtful Roman leader. Here's Sonia Worcester.

So the meditations are a collection of private thoughts that Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself about Stoic philosophy.

And they're often thought of as exercises, so the idea being that you enabled yourself to live this stoic life by practicing these precepts,

and you practice them in your actions, but you also have to practice them in how you think about situations.

So I guess my impression when I read them is that it's him reminding himself of certain precepts that he's maybe struggling with or which

are applicable to particular circumstances in his life.

So you say private thoughts, so is this like a diary him trying to make sense of what

he's gone through in the recent times? Yeah they're a diary really yeah and there's obviously been discussion about whether he ever intended them for publication or not and I guess that's not a question we can answer.

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