3921–3940 AM · 161 CE — 180 CE · world history
Marcus Aurelius
The last of the five good emperors keeps a campaign diary that becomes a classic of endurance.
His reign is one long emergency: war on the Danube, floods, and a plague brought back by the legions. At night in camp he writes notes to himself in Greek—that the crowd's opinion is worth nothing, that offence lives in our judgement rather than the event. The Meditations were never meant for publication.
Sources
Documents of the period
- inscriptions and coinage of the Roman Empire — the inscriptions, coins and column of Marcus Aurelius
Scholarship
- Marcus Aurelius, “Razmishleniya”; “the history of Avgustov” — the emperor’s campaign journal itself
Basis: documents and evidence.