Philosophy in a tent
The Meditations was not written for readers but for himself: each morning he reminded himself that "today I shall meet the meddling, the ungrateful, the arrogant," and then talked himself out of being moved by them. "The time you have is limited; if you do not use it to light your own soul, it will pass, and you with it." For a man holding absolute power in the midst of war and plague, the deepest struggle was not to conquer the enemy but "how not to be ruled by anger and fear." Two thousand years later it is still one of the best-selling works of philosophy in the world.
The end of the age of the worthy
The four preceding good emperors either had no son or chose to adopt the capable — Nerva chose Trajan, Trajan chose Hadrian, ability rather than blood deciding the succession, and that was the golden age’s institutional secret. Marcus Aurelius instead passed the throne to his own son Commodus. Commodus amused himself as a gladiator, cruel and debauched, and was assassinated twelve years later, after which Rome slid into the Crisis of the Third Century. Historians often ask: with Marcus’s wisdom, how could he not see his son’s unfitness? The answer may be — once "passing to the son" became possible again, even the best emperor could not resist the pull of blood.