One hears the term Roman Emperor, and at once the very bad ones come to mind: Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus, among others. But not all the emperors were dissolute, arrogant, or insane. Marcus Aurelius remains as a proximate incarnation of those qualities Plato had written about in The Republic as belonging to the best of leaders: Marcus Aurelius was, in fact, a philosopher-king. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, comprised of twelve books, set forth the great man’s thoughts and musings on the judgment of himself and others in accord with those principles of stoicism that look to nature for truths, imminent and transcendent. Unlike so many of his predecessors and unlike his son, Commodus, Marcus Aurelius actually concerned himself with the moral imperative of goodness and reflected often on what it meant to be a good man. “Alone of the emperors,” wrote the historian Herodian, “he gave proof of his learning not by mere words or knowledge of philosophical doctrines but by his blameless character and temperate way of life.” The meditations are the written manifestation of Aurelian thought, set down in passages as short as a sentence, as long as an extended paragraph. The effect is cumulative and, even without favorable contrast to the persecuting emperors, Nero and Domitian, Marcus Aurelius distinguished himself as a philosopher, a thinker and a writer, as well as a man of military might and strategic skill. (Summary by Michael Hogan)

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