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Three Sources of Joy in Stoicism
What did Marcus Aurelius say about our reasons to be cheerful?
Meditations, 7.68
Many people assume that ancient Stoic philosophers such as the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius were a grave and joyless lot. However, that’s a misconception. In fact, the Historia Augusta tells us that, despite his “serious and dignified” bearing as emperor, Marcus was “without gloom” and known for his pleasant and genial nature.
Biographical Note W. V. Harris read Greats at Oxford at the same time as Alan Cameron. The most recent of his historical monographs is
Roman Power: a Thousand Years of Empire (2016). He is now working principally on the social history of ancient healthcare. Anne Hunnell Chen specializes in the art and architecture of the Late Antique Mediterranean and Western Asiatic worlds. She is a former Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and currently a Postdoctoral Associate in Pre-Modern Cultures and Civilizations at Yale University’s ARCHAIA Program. Contributors are: Averil Cameron, Raffaella Cribiore, Carmela Franklin, Arianna Gullo, Jean-Luc Fournet, W. V. Harris, Anne Hunnell Chen, Gavin Kelly, Michael Kulikowski, Noel Lenski, Charlotte Roueché, Michele Renee Salzman, Rita Lizzi Testa, Edward Watts.
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COMMENT: Marty,
Each day I read reports from so called reputable people expressing what they think might happen given the backdrop today. It is laughable. Most do this based on superficial analysis or cursory comparisons with things that appear to line up, appear to rhythm, to paraphrase M Twain. What a joke.
I say this here because as I relearn what I once thought I knew, analyze my mistakes using real data…it brings me back to you and your marvelous study of history, your database, which is incomparable, and your willingness…let’s call it humility, to let Socrates make the call. Just remarkable.
by Ilkka Syvänne Barnsley, Eng.: Pen & Sword / Philadelphia: Casemate, 2020. Pp. xxii, 282. Illus., maps, appends., notes, biblio., index. . $52.95. ISBN: 1526767503
The Restorers of the Empire
While he concentrates on the lives and times of the emperors Aurelian (
r., AD 270-275) and Probus (
r., 276-282), Prof. Syvänne, author of
Caracalla: A Military Biographyand many other ground-breaking works, deals more broadly with the “the Crisis of the Third Century”, during which the empire nearly collapsed, only to make a remarkable recovery.
Syvänne sets the stage with a critique of the sources, particularly the notorious
Historia Augusta, and then outlines the state of the empire in 268, after some 30 years of being plagued by Barbarians, usurpers, and the virtual secession of both the westernmost and the easternmost provinces. Then, after a look at the early lives of Aurelian and Probus, professional soldiers from the Balkans, Syvänne plu