Meditations

Character Guide

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Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Verissimus (childhood nickname from Hadrian))

The Roman Emperor and author, writing private reflections to himself while on military campaign; raised in the Stoic tradition and devoted to duty, self-discipline, and inner virtue.

Antoninus Pius

Marcus's adoptive father and predecessor as emperor, held up throughout the book as a model of steadiness, justice, and freedom from vanity.

Verus (the elder)

Marcus's grandfather, credited early in Book I with teaching him gentleness and self-restraint.

Rusticus

A philosophy teacher who Marcus says first made him feel his life 'wanted some redress and cure,' and who introduced him to Epictetus's writings.

Diognetus

An early teacher who taught Marcus to avoid superstition, charlatans, and idle pursuits, and encouraged his turn toward philosophy.

Fronto

Marcus's rhetoric tutor and close correspondent, whose letters reveal a warm mentor-student relationship, later somewhat cooled by Marcus's turn to philosophy.

Herodes Atticus

A Greek rhetorician and teacher of Marcus, later the subject of a dispute in which accusers brought charges against him before the emperor.

Lucius Verus (Verus)

Made co-emperor by Marcus, an unusual arrangement meant to share imperial power.

Epictetus

An earlier Stoic philosopher whose recorded teachings (encountered via Rusticus) deeply influenced Marcus's thought, referenced admiringly rather than appearing as a character in the narrative sense.

Glossary

Stoicism / the Stoa

The philosophical school founded by Zeno in Athens's 'Painted Porch,' teaching that virtue and living in accordance with nature and reason constitute the only true good.

Ruling faculty (hegemonikon)

The Stoic term for the mind's governing part, which alone remains within a person's control regardless of external events; central to Marcus's idea of inner freedom.

ἀπάθεια (apatheia)

The Stoic ideal of freedom from destructive passion or emotional disturbance, achieved through reason ruling the soul.

ἀταραξία (ataraxia)

The Epicurean ideal of untroubled calm or freedom from disturbance, contrasted in the introduction with the Stoic apatheia.

Criterion / καταληπτικὴ φαντασία ('holding perception')

The Stoic logical test for truth: a sense-impression so vivid and forceful it compels assent as genuinely true.

Things indifferent (ἀδιάφορα)

Stoic term for externals like health, wealth, and reputation that are neither good nor bad in themselves, only virtue and vice being truly good or bad.

Asclepius

The god of healing, invoked by Marcus as an analogy for how fate 'prescribes' events for one's benefit, like a doctor's remedy.

Salian priesthood

An ancient Roman college of priests devoted to Mars, to which the young Marcus was appointed at age eight as a mark of honor.

The Factions (circus factions)

Rival chariot-racing partisan groups in Rome (Reds, Blues, Whites, Greens) whose fanatical followers Marcus was deliberately kept from joining in his youth.

Quadi

A Germanic tribe on the Danube frontier against whom Marcus campaigned; he dates the first book of the Meditations from their camp.

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