Philosophy as a way of life

born at the beginning of the second century, as we are entitled to deduce from his official cursus, it would then be entirely possible for Rustious to have been Epictetus' student. Moreover, it is hard to imagine that there was no copy of Epictetus' Discourses available in Rome around AD 145-6, even though the work had been widely diffused in Greece by 140. Besides, Marcus represents Rusticus' gift as something exceptional; we are thus entitled to wonder if the gift may not, after all, have been Rusticus' own notes. It is, moreover, more or less certain that Marcus had read Arrian's work, since the Meditations are full of literal citations taken from it.

Whether Marcus had read only the Discourses as arranged by Arrian, or whether he had read Rusticus' notes as well, one thing is beyond doubt: Marcus was familiar with more texts concerning Epictetus' teaching than we are today. We possess only a part of Arrian's work; and if Rusticus' notes did in fact exist, they may well have revealed to Marcus some aspects of Epictetus' teachings which had not been noted down by Arrian.

It is thanks to Marcus that we know some otherwise unknown fragments of Epictetus, such as the following: "You are a little soul, bearing the weight of a dead body." 113 This fragment also goes to show that "pessimistic"

features are not exclusively characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, as has often been claimed. Thus, we may suppose that the differences in presentation of the three exercises which we find in Marcus and in the extant works of Epictetus can be explainc:d by the influence of passages of Epictetus which were known to Marcus, but subsequently were lost.

Finally, we must not forget that there is a profound difference between the literary genre of Epictetus' Discourses and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

Arrian's work, even if it was more extensively rearranged than its author is willing to admit in his preface, is quite literally a series of Discourses given before an audience. Their subject-matter was inspired by specific circumstances: questions directed to the master, or visits of people from outside the school. The argumentation was adapt<.>d to the capacities of the audience, and its goal was to persuade them.

By contrast, Marcus wa"> alone with himself. For my part, I cannot discern in the Meditations the hesitations, contradictions, and strugglings of a man abandoned to his solitude, which some scholars have thought to detect in them. 1 1� On the contrary, one is rather astounded by the firmness of thought and technical nature of the philosophical vocabulary one encounters from beginning to end of the Meditations. Everything points to the conclusion that either Marcus had perfectly assimilated the teachings of Rusticus and Epictetus, or else that he always had Epictetus' own texts at hand, for the practice of his meditation exercises. One is also astonished, moreover, by the extraordinary literary quality of the majority of the Medittitions. M11rcus'

former teacher of rhetoric, Fmn10, had tnuicht him how tu finely chiHd his

Marcus Aurelius

20 1

sentences, and Marcus always sought to give to his thoughts the clarity, rigor, and striking formulations necessary to give them the sought-after therapeutical and psychagogic effect. After all, it is not enough merely to repeat some rational principle to oneself, in order to be persuaded of it; 1 15 everything depends on how you formulate it. The Meditations have the appearance of variations, sometimes executed with supreme virtuosity, on a small number of fundamental themes; indeed, they are variations almost exclusively on the three themes first taken up by Epictetus. In some passages, such as those we have seen cited above, the triple schema, enunciating the three philosophical exercises we must practice at each instant, is presented in its entirety, with only some slight variations. Elsewhere, only two of the themes, or even a single one, are presented.

As for the variations: sometimes they develop one or another of the three themes, at other times they set forth motifs associated with these principal themes. For instance, under the heading of the discipline of desire, we are presented with the theme of destiny weaving for us in advance all that is going to happen to us;1 16