Where this was said
Marcus Aurelius and Meditations
At 2:13:34 · chapter starts 2:02:30
Ryan Holiday describes Marcus Aurelius as perhaps the only instance of a genuine philosopher king in human history — someone who actually had to rule rather than just theorize. Meditations is unlike any other book in any philosophical tradition: there is nothing performative about it, because it was written for no audience but himself, in his second language, often in campaign tents between battles [1] — Ryan Holiday "Meditations never meant to be published: Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations as a private journal in his second language, never intending it …" 2:04:20 . Yet its specificity — the passages about not wanting to get out of bed, about managing anger, about fear of death and loss of children — is precisely what gives it timeless universality. Holiday draws a comparison to Jimmy Carter: both were perhaps the most fundamentally decent people ever to hold their respective offices, and both found that decency alone was insufficient to master the demands of power. The tragedy is Commodus, who inherited everything and immediately dismantled it.
Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations as a private journal in his second language, never intending it for publication, yet it has been read continuously for 2,000 years.
Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man in the world, wrote his personal journal in Greek because Latin was considered insufficiently elegant for philosophy.
Despite his Stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius passed the empire to his son Commodus, widely considered a sociopath or psychopath, ending the era of Pax Romana.
