Jacob Needleman - The Essential Marcus Aurelius (Tarcher Cornerstone Editions)

1. Only one of Marcus five children lived long enough to succeed him.

10. The reference is to Homers Odyssey , 4.690. Penelope, wife of Odysseus, is telling her suitors about her husband, Odysseus, who has been gone for many years and is thought dead.

11. Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 197 and following, describes the fate of the fallen race of men, where the last of the gods will go from the wide-pathed earth and forsake mankind to join the company of the deathless gods: and bitter sorrows will be left for mortal men, and there will be no help against evil.

12. This is one ancient theory of the nature of the soul. See Heraclitus fr. 12 and Aristotle De Anima 405 a 25.

13. The Greek word for rightly, hod , is derived from the word hodos , meaning road or path.

14. A common tragic lament.

15. Homer, Iliad, 7.97100. Menelaus berates his companions when no one displays the courage to fight Hector, an almost certain death.

16. The bog has been understood to represent our normal state of existence, as opposed to the clarity and purity of the starry sky.

17. The Greeks and Romans typically depicted the Fates as spinning time and destiny on a yarn wheel.

18. According to many branches of ancient philosophy, the planets, stars, and heavenly bodies are considered to be gods and divine, as much as the personified deities.

19. Marcus reminds himself of a passage in Platos Theaetetus (174 de), during a discussion in which the benefits of land ownership are contrasted with the life of the philosopher, who, by owning nothing, in fact owns the entire world.

2. Marcus is applying Epictetus interpretation to a famous saying of Socrates. For just as Socrates used to say that the unexamined life is not worth living, in this way we should never simply accept an impression that we have not scrutinized, but say to it: Just a minute; let me see what you are and where you come from. Epictetus, Discourses, 3.12.15.

20. In Marcus time, the epic poetry of Homer and Virgil comprised not only a literary but also a philosophical and religious education. This passage, and the quotes that follow, paraphrase Homers Iliad , 6.1469.

21. Marcus here points out the separate but related meanings of the Greek word organon , tool, which we retain in English as organ.

22. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 1391. Oedipus, upon discovering his tragic fate, laments that Cithaeron, the sacred mountain upon which he was abandoned as an infant, allowed him to live.

3. I.e., those which have been mentioned above.

4. Agathon (born circa 450 B.C. ) is the celebrated tragic playwright, as well as political figure, who is portrayed in the comedies of Aristophanes and the dialogues of Plato, in particular the Symposium .

5. The contrast here is between a particular citys divinity, Cecrops, the mythical founder of Athens, and Zeus, who is the god of all humankind. This is in keeping with the Stoic notion of a world-state, which unites rather than divides people.

6. The Greek word for abscess literally means stands apart.

7. Helice was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in A.D. 373 (Pausanias 9.30). Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

8. The Greek word is megalopsuch , from which English gets the Latinized word magnanimous.

9. The Greek deity of medicine, who was the mythical first physician.