Share <Embed>

Buy New

$20.02

List Price: $24.99
Save: $4.97 (20%)

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

This item ships to France. Want it Friday, Oct. 19? Choose AmazonGlobal Priority Shipping at checkout. Learn more

Deliver to France

Buy Used

$13.95

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Deliver to France

Used: Good | Details

Sold by -SecondSale-

Fulfilled by Amazon

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Marcus Aurelius: A Life Paperback – August 10, 2010

by Frank McLynn (Author)

46 customer reviews

See all 10 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$9.64

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$26.50

$4.07

Paperback

"Please retry"

$20.02

$7.01

$1.29

Save an extra $1.23 when you apply this coupon.

Details

$1.23 extra savings coupon applied at checkout.

Details

Sorry. You are not eligible for this coupon.

Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) is one of the great figures of antiquity whose life and words still speak to us today. His Meditations remains one of the most widely read books from the classical world, and his life represents the fulfillment of Plato's famous dictum that mankind will prosper only when philosophers are rulers. Based on all available original sources, Marcus Aurelius is the definitive biography to date of this monumental historical figure.

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Marcus Aurelius

3,513

in Greek & Roman Philosophy
Paperback
$4.00
Jacob Needleman

57

Paperback
$10.00
Anthony Everitt

74

Paperback
$16.69
Julian Bennett

8

Paperback
$39.06
Adrian Goldsworthy

226

Paperback
$21.34
William B. Irvine

452

in Sustainability & Green Design
Hardcover
$17.90

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Frank McLynn is the author of many critically acclaimed biographies, including Richard & John and Napoleon. He has been a visiting professor at Strathclyde University. He lives in England.

Paperback: 720 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1 edition (August 10, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780306819162
ISBN-13: 978-0306819162
ASIN: 0306819163
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.8 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 46 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #568,730 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #224 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > Europe > Rome
- #985 in Books > History > Ancient Civilizations > Rome
- #16856 in Books > History > Military

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Be the first video

Your name here

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

See Kindle Edition

Customer reviews

Write a customer review

See all 46 customer reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

sully

The life of Marcus Aurelius from your cranky uncle Frank

December 20, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Just imagine you are at a family dinner and your brilliant but very opinionated Uncle Frank McLynn had a few glasses of wine and decided to tell you all about Marcus Aurelius. He starts out telling you how much he thinks Stoic philosophy is self absorption and denial of emotions and how he can't stand stoicism. Well, you know how it is when uncle Frank gets going and how you feel like disagreeing with him, but he talks too loud and he is very interesting, so you just sit and listen. Before you know it, he is describing the very interesting early life of Marcus and how he was educated by Greek philosophers and was being groomed to someday be the emperor of Rome. On and on Uncle Frank goes narrating the life of Marcus and various other main characters of the time, but then after a sip of wine, Uncle Frank curses that darn stoicism that Marcus has taken to be his core way of viewing the world. Why that fool Marcus uses his stoic philosophy to rationalize away the possible death of his child rather then emote like normal people do. Uncle Frank gets into almost raging on that one.
Well, Uncle Frank calms down a bit and takes us through Marcus's military campaigns against those German barbarians where stoic philosophy doesn't stop Marcus from chasing down and beheading thousands of the Teutons. Uncle Frank likes this part of Marcus's story until he admits that this was the time Marcus wrote his "Meditations" which was a summation of that darn stoic thinking which Uncle Frank finds so terrible. Well, Marcus, the stoic, had been writing about accepting death and he finally accepts it for himself but Uncle Frank won't let him go as he complains about how many modern writers and thinkers have been adversely affected by that darn stoicism promoted by Marcus.
By this time, you are ready to go home as you have had your fill of Uncle Frank's intense opinions but you have to admit he really knows his history and tells a compelling story. Time to go home and nurse your hangover, in a stoic manner of course.

27 people found this helpful

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment

Lisa Henson

This is a history book, not a companion to the Meditations.

December 30, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

If you an admirer of the Meditations, you may not enjoy this biography. The author judges Marcus Aurelius' Stoic beliefs as being a weakness of character, and he bemoans the Emperor's emotional inaccessibility rather than admiring his clarity of vision and perspective. When Marcus Aurelius writes of cultivating non-attachment, even to the lives his own children, this philosophy is described as tragic.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment

Marcus P. Hagen

Well researched, poorly published.

February 4, 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Thoroughly examines the life & beliefs of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, with extensive footnotes & bibliography for those who wish to go even deeper.

There are occasional errors by the author (such as calling a mesuzah a "shibboleth", & some inaccuracies in describing orthodox Christian doctrine), but the more common & annoying errors are in the production of the ebook - duplicating words or entire phrases in a rather confusing way. This occurs in both the text & the notes.
It would also be helpful if the notes were linked to the numbers in the text (as has been done in other scholarly ebooks) so that the reader could check a note, then return to the text for continued reading.
For these reasons, I gave the book a 3-star rating. If it had been a 99-cent book, I would have understood these shortcomings - but I expect more care & effort to be made when publishing an ebook at this price point.

Comment

June 15, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

McLynn's biography of Marcus Aurelius is an oddly lopsided book. On the one hand, the author provides a fairly balanced, and fairly well historically informed, account of the life of the famous emperor (though he cannot resist putting forth his non-professional opinions on a number of issues, opinions that are not shared by the majority of professional historians, whom it occasionally treats with downright contempt). On the other hand, however, McLynn really hates the philosophy of Stoicism, with a degree of gusto surpassed only by his (possibly willful) misunderstanding of it. Which is even more strange given that Marcus is arguably the most famous Stoic of all times, and explicitly modeled his life and his reign after the principles of Stoicism. If one rejects Stoicism without a serious attempt to understand it and read it charitably, then one cannot possibly understand Marcus Aurelius. For those interested, I have published four (not entirely unbiased) commentaries of this book at my howtobeastoic dot org site, easily found by searching "McLynn" as a keyword.

24 people found this helpful

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment

Fernando Villegas

Very Good Book, Very Deceiving Title..

December 12, 2011

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This book should have been entitled Marcus Aurelius and his Age, not as it is, Marcus Aurelius, a Life. In fact, so much of the age of MA the author take the care to talk about that, in fact, as example of this, the life and feats of his son Commodus, with MA already dead, is almost enough large to make possible another biography, this Time "Commodus, a Life". So what the author gives us is a lot fuller view than what you expect from a biography, where, of course, we demand an amount of extra history to understand the character; Mc Lynn gives much more. Another peculiarity: he gives that extra history not as it is usual, in compartmentalized chapters of the kind "Economic features of the age of so and so..." Instead, McLynn just stop what he is telling us about MA, leave him somewhere in the thread of the narration and begin to tell us about that extra aspects in full, page after page, so you remember the stile of Montaigne and his genial digressions. But this is not a flaw; he does such a thing with verve and so you find after a while that so a massive books is almost already read in just a couple of days. Informative, opinionated, sometimes humorous, this is great reading even for experienced Rome history geeks.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Marcus Aurelius: A Life

Set up a giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Marcus Aurelius

3,513

in Greek & Roman Philosophy
Paperback
$4.00
Anthony Richard Birley

6

Hardcover
27 offers from $3.96
Jacob Needleman

57

Paperback
$10.00
Anthony R Birley

4

Paperback
$41.36
Hourly History

18

Paperback
$12.99
THE HISTORY HOUR

5

Paperback
$10.99

Buy New

$20.02

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Buy Used

$13.95

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Marcus Aurelius: A Life Paperback – August 10, 2010

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Related Video Shorts (0)

Be the first video

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

Customer reviews

Filter by popular topics in reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Most recent customer reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Buy New $20.02

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Buy Used $13.95

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Marcus Aurelius: A Life Paperback – August 10, 2010

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Related Video Shorts (0)

Be the first video

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

Customer reviews

Filter by popular topics in reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Most recent customer reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Buy New

$20.02

Buy Used

$13.95