Marcus AureliusMeditationsThe Complete Text

This is the whole notebook, not a selection. Marcus wrote it in Greek as reminders to himself, and all twelve books and all 487 entries are here, newly translated into plain modern English. Two of the books end with a line on where he was: among the Quadi by the river Gran, and at Carnuntum, an army base on the Danube.

The translation was made from the Greek text J. H. Leopold edited for Oxford in 1908. Each entry keeps its standard number and gets a short heading. Where a name or custom would stop you, a few words of context go inside the sentence: Sinuessa in 1.7 becomes "a town on the coast south of Rome." Where the Greek is damaged or disputed, a note at the end of the book explains the reading chosen.

If you want help with the meaning, look at Marcus Aurelius Greatest Meditations Explained instead. It takes 132 passages and spends two pages explaining each, with a practice. This book adds no commentary. It gives you every entry, in his order, including the many a selection never reaches.

Nobody here tells you what an entry means, and a few are so compressed that the notes admit the sense is uncertain. Others need no help. All of 10.16 is one sentence: "Stop arguing about what a good man should be like, once and for all, and simply be one."