Meditations VIII.3

What are Alexander and Gaius and Pompeius to Diogenes and Heraclitus³ and Socrates? For these latter had their eyes opened to things and to the causes and the material substance of things, and their ruling Reason was their very own. But those—what a host of cares, what a world of slavery!

• 3.Justin Martyr (Apology i. 46) mentions Heraclitus and Socrates and others like them as “living with the divine Logos.” And in Apology ii. 8 Heraclitus and Musonius are spoken of as hated and slain for their opinions.

  Gaius is Julius Caesar, and Pompeius is Pompey the Great. Musonius Rufus was a 1st-century Stoic teacher, exiled under Nero, whose pupils included Epictetus.