{"id":1282,"date":"2025-04-22T18:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T18:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2025-04-22T18:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T18:14:11","slug":"35-marcus-aurelius-121-180","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/35-marcus-aurelius-121-180\/","title":{"rendered":"35. Marcus Aurelius (121-180)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

He was Emperor of the Roman Empire from 161 to his death (of natural causes) in 180.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Original language: Greek. Although Latin was commonly spoken in Rome at that time, Greek was the language of intellectual culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read the digireads.com edition. The translation is by George Long (1800-1879) and was first published in 1862.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Marcus’s tone is much too preachy. I don\u2019t like his condemnation of pleasure, or his command to throw away your books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s clear that the Meditations<\/strong> was written by Marcus as a message and reminder to himself. That makes it somewhat touching. It’s kind of a self-help manual for emperors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that the word \u201cphilosopher,\u201d or its Latin equivalent, meant a virtuous person rather than (or in addition to) someone who writes about philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His book is repetitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marcus’s philosophy is bleak and devoid of pleasure. He thinks pleasure is bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last thoughts on Marcus Aurelius<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t like or agree with his philosophy. The book was somewhat interesting but I’m glad I’m done with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He was Emperor of the Roman Empire from 161 to his death (of natural causes) in 180. Original language: Greek. Although Latin was commonly spoken in Rome at that time, Greek was the language of intellectual culture. I read the digireads.com edition. The translation is by George Long (1800-1879) and was first published in 1862. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-great-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1284,"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions\/1284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larrykooper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}