Although the sect numbered not a few prominent Romans among its

adherents, it never attained the success of Stoicism, and was regarded with
genial contempt by most outsiders. The quietism endorsed by the
Epicureans was obviously difficult to reconcile with an active public life—
an important Roman value—and the Epicurean equation of the good with
pleasure was bound to raise eyebrows among conservative Romans. “Eat,
drink and be merry” was popularly supposed to be the Epicureans’ motto,
though Epicurus himself had been quite explicit in identifying pleasure with
intellectual contemplation rather than the vulgar enjoyment of food and sex.
Though a minority view, Epicureanism was, nonetheless, the only potential
rival to Stoicism in offering a systematic cosmology, as Marcus
acknowledges on a number of occasions by the stark dichotomy
“Providence or atoms” (4.3, 10.6, 11.18, 12.14).
Marcus normally seems to view Epicureanism with disapproval (as we
would expect). In Meditations 6.10 he contrasts the Epicurean universe,
founded on “mixture, interaction, dispersal” with the components of the
Stoic system: “unity, order, design”—clearly to the advantage of the latter.
Should we not be ashamed to fear death, he asks in another entry, when
“even” the Epicureans disdain it? (12.34). But other entries suggest a less
dismissive attitude. Marcus quotes with apparent approval Epicurus’s
account of his own exemplary conduct during an illness (9.41) and twice
seeks comfort in the philosopher’s remarks on the endurance of pain (7.33,
7.64). Like other late Stoics (Seneca is a notable example), he was willing
to accept truth wherever he found it.
Thus far we have been concerned with the content of the Meditations:
the ethical doctrine of late Stoicism, incorporating a certain amount of
Platonic and Heraclitean material, and overlaid with occasional reference to
other schools and thinkers. But what of the Meditations itself? How and
why was it written? Who is its audience? What kind of book is it? For the
answers to these questions we must turn from the book’s content to its form
and origins.

The MEDITATIONS: Genre, Structure, and Style

I suspect that Marcus would have been surprised (and perhaps rather
dismayed) to find himself enshrined in the Modern Library of the World’s