Sources Behind the Footnotes
Haines’s footnotes cite dozens of other ancient and later authors, usually in a single compressed line — see Haines’s Footnote Key for the abbreviation itself decoded. What the work is, and why it matters for understanding Marcus or the Meditations, is a different question from what the abbreviation stands for — a primary eyewitness account, a secondhand anecdote collection, a philosophical school text, or something else entirely. Not every one-off citation is included; the entries cover the works Haines cites most often and those that bear directly on Marcus’s life.
Primary Historical Sources on Marcus’s Reign
A history by a Roman senator of the next generation, a younger contemporary of Marcus, and one of only two substantial ancient narrative sources for Marcus as a ruler rather than a private philosopher. The book on Marcus (71 in Haines’s numbering) covers the Marcomannic Wars, the Avidius Cassius revolt, and Marcus’s own habits and temperament, but it survives only through later Byzantine abridgements, not the original unabridged text. See Ancient Historians & Modern Scholars.
A collection of Latin biographies of emperors, heirs, and usurpers, including a Life of Marcus Aurelius, a Life of Antoninus Pius, and a Life of Avidius Cassius — the other major ancient narrative source alongside Dio, and the source for most biographical detail the Meditations itself never mentions (Marcus’s childhood, his marriage, the Avidius Cassius revolt in more depth). Its six named authors (Capitolinus and Vulcacius Gallicanus among them, per Haines’s Footnote Key) are widely regarded as fictitious, its date and authorship are disputed, and it is embellished in places, so historians use it with caution. See Ancient Historians & Modern Scholars.
A Greek history of the emperors that begins with the death of Marcus in 180. Haines cites its opening chapters for Marcus’s last days, his manner with those who approached him, and his concern for his son Commodus.
The leading physician of the age, who attended Marcus. Haines cites him by volume and page in Kühn’s 19th-century edition of his collected works, for Marcus’s health and sleeplessness, the theriac Galen prepared for him, his anxiety about Commodus, and the words Galen uses of his character.
The surviving private correspondence between Marcus and Cornelius Fronto, his teacher of rhetoric — a firsthand source, independent of the Meditations, for Marcus’s own voice as a young man, and for the tension between rhetoric, Fronto’s specialty, and the philosophy Marcus was increasingly drawn to. The letters were rediscovered in the early 19th century in a palimpsest manuscript. See Fronto in Names in the Text.
A satire by the emperor Julian, who reigned from 361 to 363, in which the gods judge the past emperors. Haines cites it for its portraits of Antoninus Pius and of Marcus, and for Marcus’s answer there when asked in what the imitation of the gods consists: “having the fewest possible needs, and doing good to the greatest possible number.”
The Stoic Tradition Marcus Inherited
The Stoic teacher Haines cites most often, in 48 footnotes. Epictetus was a former slave who taught at Nicopolis; his Discourses were written up by his student Arrian, and the Manual (Enchiridion) condenses them. They set out the distinction between what is “up to us” and what is not, which underlies much of what Marcus writes to himself. The two men never met; Marcus knew the teaching through the “Memoirs of Epictetus,” which Rusticus supplied him from his own library (I.7), and he quotes Epictetus by name several times, most of all in the run of quotations at XI.33–38. See Names in the Text.
The Stoic philosopher, dramatist, and adviser to Nero, whom Marcus never names or quotes in the Meditations. Haines cites him in some 40 footnotes (the Moral Letters, On Anger, On Providence, Natural Questions, and others) as the standard comparison for how Roman Stoicism expressed a given idea, at greater length than Marcus’s compressed notes.
A 3rd-century biographical compendium and the source for most surviving anecdotes about Socrates, the Cynics, and the early Stoics — secondhand and centuries removed from its subjects, but often the only source for figures Marcus mentions in passing, like Monimus the Cynic or Telauges.
A 5th-century compiler whose Eclogues preserve excerpts from many otherwise lost Stoic and philosophical texts — a very late, secondary source that is nonetheless the only one for much of what it quotes.
Wider Philosophical Background
Marcus quotes Plato directly at VII.35 and VII.44–46, within the run of quotations in Book VII, marked as from Plato in Haines’s text, and again at X.23. Haines identifies the passages in the Apology, Republic, Gorgias, and Theaetetus, and cites the Symposium and Phaedo for Socrates’ conduct and sayings.
A Roman philosophical dialogue on facing death, pain, and hardship, written two centuries before Marcus. Cicero was not a Stoic (he aligned himself with the Academy), but Haines cites the work as a comparison for how a Roman writer treated the same problems.
Philosophical works of the 4th century BC, not Stoic (Aristotle founded his own school), but part of the shared inheritance of any philosophically trained Roman, cited occasionally to clarify a term or distinction Marcus uses without explanation.
A later Skeptic philosopher, cited mainly for his Adversus Mathematicos (“Against the Mathematicians,” a broad critique of dogmatic philosophy) — evidence less for Marcus himself than for how a rival school characterized Stoic positions.
A biographer and moral essayist of the generation before Marcus, cited across several works — including On Stoic Self-Contradictions, which criticizes Stoic doctrine from outside the school.
A miscellany of anecdotes, quotations, and grammatical notes by a 2nd-century Roman writer, cited for sayings of philosophers, among them Epictetus’s two-word summary of ethics, “bear and forbear,” and Chrysippus’s image of the rolling cylinder.
Poets
The foundational texts of Greek literary education. Marcus quotes both epics, usually for a single line or image, as at X.34 (the generations of leaves) and XI.31.
Marcus quotes all three, Euripides most, including lines from lost plays that Haines identifies by fragment number, noting where Plutarch or Cicero quotes the same lines (see the modern note at VII.35 on the run of quotations in Book VII).
The leading playwright of Greek New Comedy, quoted at V.12 for a coarse joke about wealth that Haines’s English softens — see the modern note at V.12.
The Roman lyric poet and satirist of the age of Augustus, whom Marcus does not quote. Haines cites his Epistles, Satires, and Ars Poetica for parallels, among them “they change their sky, not their mind, who run across the sea” (XII.1) and the wise man “whole in himself, smooth and round” (XII.3).
Rhetoricians & Orators
A Greek satirist of Marcus’s own time, cited in 22 footnotes: most often for parallels, such as the view of human affairs from a height in Charon and Icaromenippus or the sayings of the philosopher in Demonax, and also for anecdotes about Marcus’s contemporaries, among them his teacher Apollonius of Chalcedon.
Dio of Prusa, a Greek orator and philosopher, called Chrysostom, literally “golden-mouthed.” Haines cites his Orations, among them the discourses On Kingship, by page in Reiske’s 18th-century edition for parallels to Marcus’s language, and his index suggests that the “Dion” Marcus names at I.14 may be Dio rather than Dion of Syracuse.
A Greek orator of Marcus’s own time, cited mainly for his oration To the King, whose praise of the emperor Haines applies to Marcus, and for his Sacred Tales, a record of his own illnesses and dream-cures.
A 4th-century Greek orator, two centuries after Marcus, cited for his Orations — evidence for how later antiquity remembered Marcus, his teachers, and his reputation.
The Bible
Fifty-three of Haines’s footnotes cite the Bible in the King James wording, as parallels rather than as evidence that Marcus knew the texts; see About This Edition.
Cited most often, chiefly Paul’s letters and the Gospels, for parallels to Marcus’s moral language, as at V.18, set beside 1 Corinthians 10:13.
Chiefly the wisdom books — Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and, from the Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus — cited for parallels on mortality and the transience of things, as at X.14, set beside Job 1:21.
Early Christian Sources
These cluster around Haines’s Note on Christians, where he weighs the evidence for Marcus’s policy toward Christians and concludes that Marcus has been judged a persecutor on insufficient evidence. In support he prints a letter of Marcus to the Common Assembly of Asia protecting Christians, “if authentic,” and questions the traditional date of the martyrdoms at Lyon. Modern scholarship generally regards that letter as a later forgery and dates the Lyon martyrdoms to 177, within Marcus’s reign.
Defences of Christianity addressed to Roman authorities. Justin, the philosopher later condemned by Rusticus as urban prefect, addressed his First Apology to Antoninus Pius and his adopted sons, Marcus among them, and Haines cites it more than any other Christian work, mostly for parallels. Tertullian’s Apology, in Latin, is cited by Eusebius for a letter of Marcus crediting the prayers of Christian soldiers (see The Rain Miracle on the Wars and Battles page).
The first major history of the Church, written more than a century after Marcus died. It preserves documents, among them the letter describing the martyrdoms at Lyon and the Christian account of the Rain Miracle, that are otherwise lost.
Byzantine Preservers
A 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, compiled some eight centuries after Marcus, which preserves fragments and anecdotes from earlier, otherwise lost sources. Haines’s back matter notes that the Suda quotes Marcus by name 29 times, and probably alludes to him without naming him on 30 more occasions.
A 12th-century Byzantine verse work on history, myth, and literary anecdote — very late and secondhand, but occasionally the only surviving source for a detail Haines cites.
Modern Scholarly Editions
The standard scholarly edition of Fronto’s letters when Haines was writing, cited by page number throughout his footnotes (“Nab. p. 96” and similar).
The English scholar Thomas Gataker’s edition, with a Latin translation and commentary, which Haines cites throughout for readings and interpretations, sometimes to disagree with them.
Works Consulted for This Edition’s Notes
The commentary beneath Haines’s footnotes and the reference pages cite little inline; they set out what Haines is pointing to. Each statement of fact in them was checked against a primary text or an academic reference work, read in the edition or translation listed below. Wikipedia and web-search summaries were used only to locate sources, never as sources themselves, and statements that could not be checked in this way were removed.
Works Consulted: Haines’s Own Apparatus
Introduction, Index of Proper Names, Index of Matters, Bibliography, Sayings of Marcus, and Note on the Christians, reproduced on this site; page scans of the printed volume, Wikisource.
Vol. 1, Internet Archive; vol. 2 and its index, Wikisource.
Ed. J. H. Leopold (Oxford Classical Texts), Perseus Digital Library.
Works Consulted: Ancient Historians & Documents
Trans. E. Cary (Loeb), LacusCurtius: books 55, 56, 72, 74, 76.
Trans. D. Magie (Loeb), LacusCurtius: lives of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus.
Trans. R. Crawley, Project Gutenberg.
Trans. J. G. Frazer (Loeb), theoi.com.
Trans. J. C. Rolfe (Loeb), LacusCurtius.
Trans. W. C. Wright, attalus.org.
New Advent.
Latin text, The Latin Library.
Works Consulted: Philosophers
Trans. B. Jowett, Project Gutenberg.
Perseus Digital Library.
Discourses, trans. W. A. Oldfather (Loeb), Wikisource; Encheiridion, trans. T. W. Higginson, Project Gutenberg.
Moral Letters to Lucilius, trans. R. M. Gummere (Loeb), Wikisource; On Anger, On Providence, Consolation to Marcia, trans. A. Stewart, Project Gutenberg; Natural Questions, Latin text, The Latin Library.
Latin text, The Latin Library.
Trans. J. C. Rolfe (Loeb): book 7, LacusCurtius; book 17, Internet Archive.
Works Consulted: Poets, Orators & Satirists
Trans. S. Butler, Project Gutenberg.
Hesiod, Works and Days; Euripides, Medea and Suppliants; Herodotus, Histories: Perseus Digital Library.
Latin text, The Latin Library.
Trans. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, Project Gutenberg and the Internet Sacred Text Archive.
Works Consulted: The Bible & Early Christian Writers
Project Gutenberg; the Apocrypha, eBible.org.
Justin, First and Second Apology; Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians; the Epistle to Diognetus: New Advent.
Works Consulted: Reference Works
Online edition.
“Stoicism.”
LacusCurtius.
LacusCurtius.
Endnotes, Standard Ebooks.
Digital Latin Library.
See Haines’s Footnote Key to decode the abbreviations these works are cited by, or Ancient Historians & Modern Scholars for the ones available as modern editions in full.