Meditations — Marcus Aurelius

MABCUS AUBELIUS ANTONINUS. 193 reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness [of deserting his post]. 46. But, my good friend, reflect whether that which is noble and good is not something different from saving and being saved ; for f as to a man living such or such a time, at least one who is really a man, consider if this is not a thing to be dismissed from the thoughts : f and there must be no love of life : but as to these matters a man must intrust them to the Deity and believe what the women say, that no man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live. 2 47. Look round at the courses of the stars, as if you were going along with them ; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another, for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life. 48. This is a fine saying of Plato : 2 That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place ; should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labors, marriages, treaties, 1 Plato, Gorgias, c. 68 (512). In this passage the text of Antoninus has iartov, which is perhaps right ; but there is a difficulty in the words /xt) yhp tovto pAv, rb $rjv oiroa-ovdrj xp^op rdvye us 6Xr]dQs &v8pa kartov iari, ical oi, &C. The conjecture eiiKriov for iariop does not mend the matter. * It is said that this is not in the extant writings of Plato.

194 MEDITATIONS. births, deaths, noise of the courts of justioe, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries. 49. Consiler the past, — such great changes of political supremacies ; you may foresee also the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of the things which take place now ; accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more will you see ? *T50. That which has grown from the earth to the earth, But that which has sprung from heavenly seed, Back to the heavenly realms returns.1 This is either a dissolution of the mutual involution of the atoms, or a similar dispersion of the unsentient elements. 61. With food and drinks and cunning magic arts Turning the channel's course to 'scape from death.2 The breeze which heaven has sent We must endure, and toil without complaining. 1 From the Chrysippus of Euripides. 8 The first two lines are from the Supplices of Euripides, T. 1110.

MARCUS AUBELIUS ANTONINUS. 195 52. Another may be more expert in casting his opponent ; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbors. 53. Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear ; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected. 54. Everywhere and at" all times it is in your power piously to acquiesce in your present condition, and to behave justly to those who are about you, and to exert your skill upon your present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined. 55. Do not look around you to discover other men's ruling principles, but look straight to this, to what nature leads you, both the universal nature through the things which happen to you, and your own nature' through the acts which must be done by you. But every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution ; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of rational beings, just as among irrational things the inferior for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another. The prime principle then in man's constitution