title: Meditations (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature)
author: Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius
description: 'Here, for our age, is [Marcus's] great work presented in its entirety, strongly introduced and freshly, elegantly translated.' --Robert Fagles
zlib_text: INTRODUCTION
  
  The book you are about to read was never intended for publication, whatever
  that might have meant in the second century. It is often referred to as the
  _Meditations_ of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, but in fact it was untitled in
  antiquity and takes the form of notes intended for personal and private use.
  How these notes ever got into our hands is one of those tantalizing mysteries
  that historical novels are made of.
  
  Did the emperor write his notes on fragile papyrus or portable wax tablets?
  When, under the grueling conditions of camp life on the Roman frontier, did he
  find time to jot down his thoughts? Was it a daily routine, or whenever he
  could grab a moment? Or was there a scribe? Might Marcus have dictated such
  probing and introspective, yet strangely impersonal notes?
  
  When he died, probably from exhaustion after thirteen years of grinding
  warfare with the Germans, did he leave instructions for the safekeeping of his
  notes? Did he entrust them to a friend, a relati