Marcus is not impressed 

Marcus lived nearly five hundred years after Alexander died. Yet he’s still a figure who looms large for Marcus. He mentions Alexander five times altogether in Meditations. However, Marcus doesn’t revere Alexander for his military achievements, but views him from the perspective of Stoic philosophy, with a greater degree of cynicism regarding his love of conquest. Indeed, Marcus appears to have viewed Alexander’s legacy as shortlived. According to Herodian, another Roman historian: 

This learned man [Marcus Aurelius] was disturbed also by the memory of those who had become sole rulers in their youth. […] The arrogance and violence of Alexander’s successors against their subject peoples had brought disgrace upon his empire. 

“Go on, then, and talk to me of Alexander,” and of other celebrated rulers. says Marcus. 

If they saw what universal nature wishes and trained themselves accordingly, I will follow them; but if they merely strutted around like stage heroes, no one has condemned me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest; do not seduce me into vain ostentation. 

Meditations, 9.29 

Marcus likes to remind himself that there’s nothing new under the sun and that the lives of great men like Alexander were essentially the same as other rulers throughout the centuries. 

Constantly reflect on how all that comes about at present came about just the same in days gone by, and reflect that it will continue to do so in the future; and set before your eyes whole dramas and scenes ever alike in their nature which you have known from your own experience or the records of earlier ages… 

Meditations10.27 

For example, he says, think of the entire court of Alexander, or the emperors Marcus knew such as Hadrian or his own adoptive father Antoninus—“in every case the play was the same, and only the actors were different.” 

Wisdom is more important than glory 

Wisdom is more important than glory. “What are Alexander, Julius Caesar, and Pompey when compared to Diogenes the Cynic, Heraclitus, and Socrates?” asks Marcus (8.3). The philosophers, he says, were in control of their own minds. They understood all things properly, he says, distinguishing between “cause and matter.” He probably means, as we would say today, that the wise distinguish between concepts and the external events to which they refer—by closely observing their own thoughts and feelings. 

“As to the others,” Marcus concludes, “consider how many cares they had and to how many things they were enslaved!” Although they were, in their times, the most powerful men in the world, Alexander, Caesar, and Pompey, were enslaved by their own passions, such as the craving for glory. They lacked insight into their own minds and therefore they lacked self-control. It was a familiar paradox of ancient philosophy that Diogenes the Cynic, a penniless exile, a beggar who died as a slave, could look upon Alexander the Great, the most powerful man in the world, as his equal, if not his inferior. Alexander had everything but he always wanted more. Diogenes had only what little would fit in his knapsack but he needed nothing, having mastered his own desires. Hence, the philosopher was, in Stoic terms, more powerful and more kingly even than the Lord of Asia. 

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Donald Robertson is an author and Cognitive Behavior Therapist. His latest book is How to Think Like a Roman Emperor (https://amzn.to/2SswfJ1). 

 

 

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