Meditations X.8
Assuming for thyself the appellations, a good man,15 a modest man,16 a truthteller,17 wise of heart, sympathetic of heart, great of heart, take heed thou be not new-named. And if thou shouldst forfeit these titles, e’en make haste to get back to them. And bear in mind that wise of heart was meant to signify for thee a discerning consideration of every object and a thoroughness of thought; sympathetic of heart, a willing acceptance of all that the Universal Nature allots thee; great of heart an uplifting of our mental part above the motions smooth or rough of the flesh, above the love of empty fame, the fear of death, and all other like things. Only keep thyself entitled to these appellations, not itching to receive them from others, and thou wilt be a new man and enter on a new life. For to be still such as thou hast been till now, and to submit to the rendings and defilements of such a life, is worthy of a man that shews beyond measure a dull senselessness and a clinging to life, and is on a level with the wild-beast fighters that are half-devoured in the arena, who, though a mass of wounds and gore, beg to be kept till the next day, only to be thrown again, torn as they are, to the same teeth and talons.
Take ship then on these few attributes, and if thou canst abide therein, so abide as one who has migrated to some Isles of the Blest. But if thou feelest thyself adrift, and canst not win thy way, betake thyself with a good heart to some nook where thou shalt prevail, or even depart altogether from life,18 not in wrath but in simplicity, independence, and modesty, having at least done this one thing well in life, that thou hast quitted it thus. Howbeit, to keep these attributes in mind it will assist thee greatly if thou bear the Gods in mind, and that it is not flattery they crave but for all rational things to be conformed to their likeness,19 and that man should do a man’s work, as the fig tree does the work of a fig-tree, the dog of a dog, and the bee of a bee.
- 15.See on x. 16.
- 16.Capitolinus and Ammianus call Marcus verecundus.
Ammianus Marcellinus was a Latin historian of the 4th century. Verecundus, “modest.”
- 17.Only two kings have had the honourable cognomen of Truthteller, Marcus and Alfred the Great. The former was given Verissimus as a pet name by Hadrian when a child, and the town of Tyras in Scythia stamped it on its coins and Justin and Syncellus use it to designate Marcus.
Verissimus, “most true,” plays on Marcus’s family name Verus, “true”; Justin Martyr addresses his First Apology in part to “Verissimus the philosopher.” Tyras was a Greek city at the mouth of the Dniester. George Syncellus was a Byzantine chronicler of the early 9th century.
- 18.For Marcus’ views on suicide see iii. 1; v. 29; viii. 47, near the end; ix. 2; x. 22, 32. He permits it when external conditions render the life of virtue impossible, or when a man finds in himself a failure to live the true life (compare St. Augustine’s “Let me die lest I die”).
Augustine’s phrase, in the Confessions, is moriar ne moriar: that he might die, lest he die, in order to see the face of God.
- 19.Compare Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato 42; Ignatius’s Letter to the Ephesians §§ 1, 10; Justin Martyr, Apology i. 21; the Epistle to Diognetus § 10; Julian’s The Caesars 427. 21, puts similar words in the mouth of Marcus.
The Epistle to Diognetus is an anonymous early Christian apology; in its tenth chapter it urges the reader to become an imitator of God by kindness to others.