Meditations III.14

Go astray no more; for thou art not likely to read thy little Memoranda,³¹ or the Acts of the Romans and the Greeks of Old Time,³² and the extracts³³ from their writings which thou wast laying up against thine old age. Haste then to the consummation and, casting away all empty hopes, if thou carest aught for thy welfare, come to thine own rescue, while it is allowed thee.

• 31.It is not clear whether Marcus refers to the present book. He uses a similar word for the discourses of Epictetus (i. 7).

  Marcus’s word is hypomnēmatia, a diminutive of hypomnēmata, “notes” or “memoirs”; in I.7 he uses hypomnēmata of Arrian’s record of Epictetus’s teaching.

• 32.ii. 2. Some have seen here a reference to a history written by Marcus himself.
• 33.See Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Caesar, ii. 10: excerpta ex libris sexaginta in quinque tomis.

  The letter is Marcus’s own, written to Fronto: “I have made for myself during these days extracts from sixty books, in five volumes.” No such collection survives.