Customer Reviews

The Meditations

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When I read passages from authors from Ancient Rome like Flavius Renatus, Cato the Elder, Livy etc... I feel a tone of pride and sometimes even haughtiness and self-righteousness. I can almost here them speak it in their native tongue of Latin when they were still alive. The Meditations is the first book, authored by a Roman, that is very humbling and reverent to me.

Marcus Aurelius is someone I now respect since reading his book. He seems to have flaws and either accepts it or knows it. And yet he tries to remedy and adapt to it. He resolves to act on living the right way. He is a reluctant heir to control an empire and turned out to be good at his duties as an Emperor. One of the good Emperors in fact.

Aurelius even have questions that we still have until today regarding death and the after-life; the universal links of nature; etc. Reading The Meditations is like listening to someone long gone for over two thousand years ago speak to you, the reader. And it tells you: live in modesty, not to pass judgement on others, to become disciplined despite the difficulty, to become tolerant, and other virtues a civilized person try to attain. Great book. Marcus Aurelius is very human. It made me realize that after all these centuries, human beings are still the same.

The amount of typos in this version is appalling. Do not get this version of the Meditations. I'm only in Section 1 and it is unbearable to read.