A while back when I saw Gladiator for the first time and was trying to find out how historically accurate it might be, I learned that the old Emperor in the movie wrote a book. I bought the book, but was slow in getting around to reading it. I'm reading it now and it actually has some nice gems in it. Some because the advice is good, some because it is just kind of amazing that the same things go on now that did in 190 AD.
The book is a collection of short ideas that Marcus Aurelius wrote down. Some a couple of sentences, few longer than half a page. And one has little to do with the next. It serves as a good pickup book that you can read for 5 minutes and put down. Some are boring, but there are some really nice ones and the whole book isn't all that long. It is worth reading to anyone interested in Philosophy. Bear in mind that the writer is the Roman Emperor, the most powerful man in the world.
Here are some clips for those interested:
[What I learned] From Alexander the Platonist: rarely, and never without essential cause, to say or write to anyone that 'I am too busy'; nor to use a similar excuse, advancing 'pressure of circumstances', in constant avoidance of the proprieties inherent in our relations to our fellows and contemporaries.
[I am thankful] That I came under a ruler and a father who was to strip me of all conceit and bring me to realize that it is possible to live in a palace without feeling the need for bodyguards or fancy uniforms, candelabra, statues, or the other trappings of suchlike pomp, but that one can reduce oneself very close to the station of a private citizen and not thereby lose any dignity or vigour in the conduct of a ruler's responsibility for the common good....That whenever I wanted to help someone in poverty or some other need I was never told that there was no source of affordable money: and that I myself never fell into similar want of financial assistance from another.
Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial. All this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil. But I have seen that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong; and I have reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own - not a kinship of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind, the same fragment of divinity. Therefore I cannot be harmed by any of them, as none will infect me with their wrong. Nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him. We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition.
Even if you were destined to live three thousand years, or ten times that long, nevertheless remember that no one loses any life other than the one he lives, or lives any life other than the one he loses. It follows that the longest and the shortest lives are brought to the same state. The present moment is equal for all; so what is passing is equal also; the loss therefore turns ou to be the merest fragment of time. No one can lose either the past of the future--how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess? So always remember these two things. First, that all things have been of the same kind from everlasting, coming round and round again, and it makes no difference whether one will see the same things for a hundred years, or two hundred years, or for an infinity of time. Second, that both the longest-lived and the earliest to die suffer the same loss. It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived; and if indeed this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.
Hippocrates cured many diseases then died of disease himself. The Chaldean astrologers foretold the deaths of many people, then their own fated day claimed them. Alexander, Pompey, Julius Caesar annihilated whole cities time after time, and slaughtered tens of thousands of horse and foot in the field of battle, and yet the moment came for them too to depart this life. Heraclitus speculated long on the conflagration of the universe, but the water of dropsy filled his guts and he died caked in a poultice of cow-dung. Vermin were the death of Democritus, [b]and vermin of another sort killed Socrates[/b]. What of it, then? You embarked, you set sail, you made port. Go ashore now. If it is to another life, nothing is empty of the gods, even on that shore; and if to insensibility, you will cease to suffer pains and pleasures, no longer in thrall to a bodily vessel which is a master as far inferior as its servant is superior. One is mind and divinity; the other a clay of dust and blood.
