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Page 9
I have made this translation at intervals after having used the book for
many years. It is made from the Greek, but I have not always followed
one text; and I have occasionally compared other versions with my own. I
made this translation for my own use, because I found that it was worth
the labor; but it may be useful to others also; and therefore I
determined to print it. As the original is sometimes very difficult to
understand and still more difficult to translate, it is not possible
that I have always avoided error. But I believe that I have not often
missed the meaning, and those who will take the trouble to compare the
translation with the original should not hastily conclude that I am
wrong, if they do not agree with me. Some passages do give the meaning,
though at first sight they may not appear to do so; and when I differ
from the translators, I think that in some places they are wrong, and in
other places I am sure that they are. I have placed in some passages a
+, which indicates corruption in the text or great uncertainty in the
meaning. I could have made the language more easy and flowing, but I
have preferred a ruder style as being better suited to express the
character of the original; and sometimes the obscurity which may appear
in the version is a fair copy of the obscurity of the Greek. If I should
ever revise this version, I would gladly make use of any corrections
which may be suggested. I have added an index of some of the Greek terms
with the corresponding English. If I have not given the best words for
the Greek, I have done the best that I could; and in the text I have
always given the same translation of the same word.
The last reflection of the Stoic philosophy that I have observed is in
Simplicius' Commentary on the Enchiridion of Epictetus. Simplicius was
not a Christian, and such a man was not likely to be converted at a time
when Christianity was grossly corrupted. But he was a really religious
man, and he concludes his commentary with a prayer to the Deity which no
Christian could improve. From the time of Zeno to Simplicius, a period
of about nine hundred years, the Stoic philosophy formed the characters
of some of the best and greatest men. Finally it became extinct, and we
hear no more of it till the revival of letters in Italy. Angelo
Poliziano met with two very inaccurate and incomplete manuscripts of
Epictetus' Enchiridion, which he translated into Latin and dedicated to
his great patron Lorenzo de' Medici, in whose collection he had found
the book. Poliziano's version was printed in the first B�le edition of
the Enchiridion, A.D. 1531 (apud And. Cratandrum). Poliziano recommends
the Enchiridion to Lorenzo as a work well suited to his temper, and
useful in the difficulties by which he was surrounded.
Epictetus and Antoninus have had readers ever since they were first
printed. The little book of Antoninus has been the companion of some
great men. Machiavelli's Art of War and Marcus Antoninus were the two
books which were used when he was a young man by Captain John Smith, and
he could not have found two writers better fitted to form the character
of a soldier and a man. Smith is almost unknown and forgotten in
England, his native country, but not in America, where he saved the
young colony of Virginia. He was great in his heroic mind and his deeds
in arms, but greater still in the nobleness of his character. For a
man's greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe,
nor yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with
the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high
places, and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man's true greatness
lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a
just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent
self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to
be right, without troubling himself, as the emperor says he should not,
about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not do that
which he thinks and says and does.
THE PHILOSOPHY
OF
MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONIUS
It has been said that the Stoic philosophy first showed its real value
when it passed from Greece to Rome. The doctrines of Zeno and his
successors were well suited to the gravity and practical good sense of
the Romans; and even in the Republican period we have an example of a
man, M. Cato Uticensis, who lived the life of a Stoic and died
consistently with the opinions which he professed. He was a man, says
Cicero, who embraced the Stoic philosophy from conviction; not for the
purpose of vain discussion, as most did, but in order to make his life
conformable to the Stoic precepts. In the wretched times from the death
of Augustus to the murder of Domitian, there was nothing but the Stoic
philosophy which could console and support the followers of the old
religion under imperial tyranny and amidst universal corruption. There
were even then noble minds that could dare and endure, sustained by a
good conscience and an elevated idea of the purposes of man's existence.
Such were Paetus Thrasae, Helvidius Priscus, Cornutus, C. Musonius
Rufus,[A] and the poets Persius and Juvenal, whose energetic language
and manly thoughts may be as instructive to us now as they might have
been to their contemporaries. Persius died under Nero's bloody reign;
but Juvenal had the good fortune to survive the tyrant Domitian and to
see the better times of Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.[B] His best precepts
are derived from the Stoic school, and they are enforced in his finest
verses by the unrivalled vigor of the Latin language.
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