Aurelius, Marcus (A.D. 121-180), Roman emperor and philosopher.

In the midst of the almost constant wars which occupied the later years of his reign, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus found time to compose a brief work of ethical and religious devotion known as the Meditations. Its general tenor is that of Stoicism as found in Epictetus; its particular details include some thoughts derived from the Plato and Aristotle.

Rather than an orderly doctrine, these cogitations are a chain of disparate thoughts apparently stitched together in the spurt of the moment. Neither lectures nor speeches, much less a treatise of philosophical concepts, these rambling thoughts read like entries in a personal diary. Perhaps the author’s intention was to examine himself and his acts, as if he was following the Socratic admonitions that the ‘unexamined life isn’t worth living.’ In sum, we can refer to these meditations as the spiritual journal of Plato’s ideal of the philosopher-king.

As emperor, Marcus Aurelius never intended to teach others what to do or how to live a life of virtue. As emperor he made decisions that affected people’s lives —subjects and enemies alike— ruling with a sword in one hand and compassion in the other. That is in essence the teachings of the Roman stoics (Epictetus, Seneca, and Cicero): be indifferent to the thing over which we have no control, and since the sorrows of life are many and the blows many, enjoy life, your friends, and your family, for life is but a whisper between two eternities.

Though Marcus Aurelius feigns distaste for poetry, rhetoric, and writing, but what he does in his meditations is precisely that. Take for instance this passage which is fraught with antitheses:

But death surely, and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good men as well as to bad men, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Thus, they are neither good nor evil.

Let’s see some examples of ‘sentence openers’:

Opening with a simile: “As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so you have principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human…”

Opening with a correlative conjunction: “Neither in writing nor in reading will you be able to lay down rules for others before you shall have first learned to obey them yourself.”

From a literary point of view, the Meditations contain many essay writing tips and and pointers for writing autobiography.

To become a writer I write every day. Since English is my second language, when I write articles I consult Mary Duffy’s Sentence Openers.

When writing a novel or short stories I consult Toolbox for Writers

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