"A mark of the most common sort of men": Marcus Aurelius talks himself out of a country house and into his own soul
A close read of Meditations IV.3 in George Long's 1862 English: an emperor talks himself out of a country house and settles on a calm he can rebuild anywhere.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius has one addressee, and it is the man holding the pen. The notes run to twelve books, in Greek, mostly in the second person and the imperative: do this, stop doing that, remember.
Marcus was Roman emperor from 7 March 161 until his death on 17 March 180 1. The book is hard to date. Its own notes of place put parts of it on the Danube frontier, in the middle of the Marcomannic wars.
One note closes Book I: written in the country of the Quadi, at the river Granua. Another closes Book II: written at Carnuntum 2.
What survives is thin. Xylander's first printing, Zürich, 1558 or 1559, used a manuscript that has since disappeared. The other great witness is a fourteenth-century Vatican copy, Vaticanus 1950, which reaches us with passages missing 2.
George Long, the first professor of Greek at University College London, published his English in 1862 3. The pages quoted below come from a Boston printing of 1889, where this section begins on page 117 4.
Passage
Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much.But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity; and I affirm that tranquillity is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest.For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.
Two hundred and eighteen words: Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV, section 3, written between 161 and 180, in Long's translation, The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1889), pages 117–118 4. The printing sets the whole section as one paragraph; the breaks above fall at sentence ends.
Gloss
- retreats — The Greek noun is ἀναχώρησις, a going back, a withdrawal, from the verb ἀναχωρέω, to retire 5. It arrives in the plural as a place men go looking for, then returns three more times, twice as a verb and once as a noun again. Long's English follows it: "retreats" at the start, "to retire" and "does a man retire" in the middle, "this retreat" near the end. By then the place has turned into an act.
- "a mark of the most common sort of men" — The Greek is ἰδιωτικώτατον, from ἰδιώτης: a private person, one not engaged in public affairs; also a layman, an amateur, a private soldier as against a general 6. Haines, translating in 1916, gives "unphilosophical to the last degree" 7. Casaubon, in 1634, gives "simplicity in the highest degree" 8. Three English sentences, three different words, and each one drops the Greek idea of privacy.
- "tranquillity … the good ordering of the mind" — Two Greek words stand behind that one English word. The first is εὐμάρεια: ease, comfort, good living 9. The second is εὐκοσμία, good order, built on κόσμος, which means order, lawful order, ornament and the world 10. Marcus says the first is nothing other than the second. Long uses "tranquillity" for both, so his sentence comes out as tranquillity is tranquillity. Haines keeps the two apart: "all good ease, and by good ease I mean nothing other than good order" 7.
Close read
The section opens with three places a wealthy Roman could own or reach: a house in the country, a shore, a mountain. The list is short and ordinary, and the sentence keeps going after it. "And thou too art wont to desire such things very much."
That "thou" is the writer. The Greek is εἴωθας δὲ καὶ σὺ, and you too are accustomed 11. The second person of this book runs in one direction: Marcus is catching himself wanting all three, in writing, on a page nobody else was meant to see.
Then the verdict: ἰδιωτικώτατόν ἐστιν. The word belongs to a family about privacy rather than manners. An ἰδιώτης was a private person, a man with no public role, and the same word covered the layman and the amateur. Marcus governed an empire. He reaches for the word for a nobody and applies it to his own wish.
The argument he offers next is about availability. "For it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself." Any hour, any place, nobody's permission needed. He sets the country house beside a place that opens on demand and leaves the comparison there.
Then comes the definition, and it is the hinge of the passage. "I affirm that tranquillity is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind." A feeling arrives on its own; an order can be arranged. Once calm is defined as arrangement, the next sentence becomes possible: "Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself." An order can be rebuilt every morning. A mood cannot.
"Let thy principles be brief and fundamental." The Greek is βραχέα καὶ στοιχειώδη: short and elemental, from στοιχεῖον, the word for a letter of the alphabet and for one of the four elements 12. Haines has "short and elemental". Long's "fundamental" points at foundations; the Greek points at an alphabet — a handful of marks you can re-read anywhere and spell everything else out of.
The sentence then walks him back out of it: "and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest." The retreat has an exit built into it, and the exit is the point of it. What waits outside is named in the very next sentence, and it is people: "For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men?"
The section ends on four words, "and be quiet at last", and then keeps saying them. The phrase comes back three more times as the paragraph works through providence, the body and fame, and after its first appearance the printing sets it in square brackets each time 4. Read down the page, the passage becomes a man repeating a short instruction to himself and putting it back where it had gone missing.
He asked for precepts short enough to carry. What he wrote is 218 words, and four times inside them he stops to say the same four words.
Why it still matters
The notebook reached print in 1558 and English in 1634, and translations have kept coming, from Long in 1862 to Robin Waterfield in 2021 2. A private man's reminders to himself have stayed in print for four and a half centuries.
The wish in this passage now comes with a price list. A cottage for the weekend, a flight to a coast, a course that promises quiet, an app that counts minutes of stillness. The test Marcus applies is availability: can it be done at this hour, without booking anything?
His answer is that the retreat always open is the one he keeps postponing, and its price is the reason. A place you have paid for applies pressure. A place that costs nothing can wait.
He ends by leaving the retreat. The calm is what he carries back out to the badness of men, and the return is where the passage has been heading.
Reflection
Think of a time you wanted badly to be somewhere else — a coast, a hill, a house that was not yours. What did you expect the place to hand you, and what would it have taken to get that without going?
References
- 1Wikipedia: Marcus Aurelius
en.wikipedia.org
- 2Wikipedia: Meditations
en.wikipedia.org
- 3Wikipedia: George Long (scholar)
en.wikipedia.org
- 4
- 5Wiktionary: ἀναχώρησις
en.wiktionary.org
- 6Wiktionary: ἰδιώτης
en.wiktionary.org
- 7Wikisource: Marcus Aurelius, trans. Haines (1916), Book IV
en.wikisource.org
- 8Project Gutenberg: Meditations, trans. Casaubon
gutenberg.org
- 9Greek Wiktionary: εὐμάρεια
el.wiktionary.org
- 10Wiktionary: κόσμος
en.wiktionary.org
- 11Greek Wikisource: Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, Book IV
el.wikisource.org
- 12Wiktionary: στοιχειώδης
en.wiktionary.org
This story was produced automatically by a channel. One sentence is all it takes for Neodrop to keep producing for you.