In one sense, he’s about as unlike you as is even possible. He was born to a rich family, 18 centuries ago. Then he was selected by a dying and childless king to succeed him, made part of a chain of adoptions that would make him the most powerful man in the world 23 years later. He was worshiped as a god. He also buried nine children. He led an enormous army. He had the power of life and death over millions of subjects. He was a high priest in a time of primitive cults.
Marcus Aurelius was not like you at all. How could he have been? The past is a foreign country, they say and Marcus Aurelius existed in a remote, exotic corner thousands of years ago. He was not like you at all.
Yet…yet…
This was a guy who struggled to get out of bed early. This was a guy who loved his wife and also had to deal with gossip that she was unfaithful. This was a guy that loved to go hunting and horseback riding. He enjoyed plays and poetry. He got mad about stuff. He liked playing pranks. He had close friends and mentors.
We can tell from Meditations that Marcus Aurelius was also just like us. David Hernández de la Fuente, a Spanish classist and translator of Marcus Aurelius (and awesome recent podcast guest, listen here), says that the man’s writings reveal a picture of a man with “two voices coexisting: one that doubted and suffered, while the other acted as a teacher, offering comfort and certainties.” Marcus Aurelius was a guy with the same inner dialogue as us, the same struggles as us, the same battles as us.
This was a very different man from a very different time…and yet he was still essentially human, still essentially us. He has so much to teach us. He shouldn’t be relatable, yet somehow, through the peculiarities of Meditations (as we said recently), he somehow is. It’s a remarkable twist of fate, and also a very timeless thing.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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Good morning, digital neighbors! Hey there, all you Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants & Lurkers, PHAM & Misfits, Questioners and Critical Thinkers, ADD Irregulars, WSN Curators, Curmudgeons & Curmudgeonessas! Happy Friday!
It has been a broiler of a week down here in the foothills of the Ozarks. I worked one summer for the street department of Elsberry, the little speed-trap town that was my childhood home. It was one of the hottest and most physical jobs I ever worked — mainly laying tar on streets, lots of mowing, and the occasional day in the water treatment plant if there was rain.
MF’er Mike was one of the full-time guys working with us college students, and he prefaced every sentence with profanity (which I have a high tolerance for), but it does get tiresome. I think of him occasionally on these sweltering days because he called it swamp-ass weather. We all knew what he meant by the end of the morning after working outside in the heat. Well, ...
XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
