Week Eleven

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Wake up, work, repeat:

What is your daily routine?

what are your habits?

The golden age of the Roman Empire was the second century A.D., under the Nerva-Antonine dynasty, with succession more or less determined by adoption. Under Trajan (the “optimus princeps”), who ruled from 98 to 117, the empire reached its greatest territorial extent. His successor Hadrian reverted to a defensive policy. He was a Hellenophile, who thought of the empire as built on a Greek cultural foundation. His cosmopolitan desires were profoundly frustrated by the only war he waged, to quash the Bar Kokhba revolt in Judaea (132-135). (Both Jewish Wars were uncommon in their ferocity.) The Pax Romana came to an end with the death of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180), a Stoic philosopher, and emperor from 161-180. He was truly the rarest of things: a philosopher-king. However, his wisdom failed when it came to choice of successor: he was the last of the Five Good Emperors because he did not continue the adoptive principle, instead wanting his biological son Commodus to take the purple, a man singularly unfit for the role.

Marcus had to confront profound demographic facts, such as the Antonine Plague, which devastated the population of the Empire, and the increasing pressure the Germanic tribes were placing on Roman borders. (Indeed, the Meditations were written in part while he was campaigning on the Danubian frontier.) A few decades later, a new Persian Empire emerged under the Sasanians, more effective than the Parthians, underpinned by a revitalized Zoroastrianism. (Beginning under Marcus, Parthian weakness had allowed Rome to annex the upper third of Mesopotamia, though that is also where the plague originated.) These would be factors in the Crisis of the Third Century, another root cause of which was the disorder following the assassination of Commodus.

- David Franks