Faith + Reason = Truth

Think back about 1,850 years, in the city of Rome, at the height of the Roman Empire.  You are the Emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.  What do you suppose your deepest, most personal thoughts revolve around?  After all, this is a cruel and brutal age, is it not?  All the world is nothing more than an epic struggle between civilization and murderous barbarians, blood games in the coliseums around the Empire, mutilation, torture, crucifixions (and not just for peaceful Jewish teachers), and on and on.  Yet if one takes it upon him/herself to peruse the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, those very deep and personal thoughts of the Emperor (and philosopher) himself, one could easily be taken with aspirations of becoming talented enough to author such a work in his or her lifetime during our present era.  Filled with gratitude, humility, diplomacy, the value of hard work, freedom of speech, and all manner of insightful observations and ideas concerning the human condition (then, as now - hardly the stuff of our preconceived notions of Roman Emperors), it is an eye-opening journey into the mind and soul of a man with a good deal of the world at his command, a man whose words one would do well to take to heart during each and every day of life's journey.

I recommend George Long's translation from the mid-1800's, from which follows the opening lines of The Meditations:

"From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.

From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character.

From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.

From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.

From my governor, to be neither of the green nor of the blue party at the games in the Circus, nor a partizan either of the Parmularius or the Scutarius at the gladiators' fights; from him too I learned endurance of labour, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander.

From Diognetus, not to busy myself about trifling things, and not to give credit to what was said by miracle-workers and jugglers about incantations and the driving away of daemons and such things; and not to breed quails for fighting, nor to give myself up passionately to such things; and to endure freedom of speech; and to have become intimate with philosophy; and to have been a hearer, first of Bacchius, then of Tandasis and Marcianus; and to have written dialogues in my youth; and to have desired a plank bed and skin, and whatever else of the kind belongs to the Grecian discipline."