Meditations (Medieval Greek: Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, romanized: Ta eis heauton, literally "things to one's self") is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy.  

#MarcusAurelius wrote the 12 books of the #Meditations in Koine Greek[1] as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement.[2] It is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spent much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180. Some of it was written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia, because internal notes tell us that the first book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova (modern-day Hron) and the second book was written at Carnuntum.

  It is unlikely that Marcus Aurelius ever intended the writings to be published and the work has no official title, so "Meditations" is one of several titles commonly assigned to the collection. These writings take the form of quotations varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs.  History of the text There is no certain mention of the Meditations until the early 10th century.[5] A doubtful mention is made by the orator Themistius in about AD 364. In an address to the emperor Valens,

 On Brotherly Love, he says: "You have no need of the exhortations (Greek: παραγγέλματα) of Marcus."[6] Another possible reference is in the collection of Greek poems known as the Palatine Anthology, a work dating to the 10th-century but containing much earlier material. The anthology contains an epigram dedicated to "the Book of Marcus". It has been proposed that this epigram was written by the Byzantine scholar Theophylact Simocatta in the 7th-century.[7]  The first direct mention of the work comes from Arethas of Caesarea (c. 860–935), a bishop who was a great collector of manuscripts.[8] At some date before 907 he sent a volume of the Meditations to Demetrius, Archbishop of Heracleia, with a letter saying: "I have had for some time an old copy of the Emperor Marcus' most profitable book, so old indeed that it is altogether falling to pieces . . . 

This I have had copied and am able to hand down to posterity in its new dress."[9] Arethas also mentions the work in marginal notes (scholia) to books by Lucian and Dio Chrysostom where he refers to passages in the "Treatise to Himself" (Greek: τὰ εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἠθικά), and it was this title which the book bore in the manuscript from which the first printed edition was made in the 16th-century.[10][11] Arethas' own copy has now vanished, but it is thought to be the likely ancestor of the surviving manuscripts.[9]  The next mention of the Meditations is in the Suda lexicon published in the late 10th-century.[10] The Suda calls the work "a directing (Greek: ἀγωγή) of his own life by Marcus the Emperor in twelve books,"[11] which is the first mention of a division of the work into twelve books.[10] The Suda makes use of some thirty quotations taken from books I, III, IV, V, IX, and XI.[11]  Around 1150, John Tzetzes, a grammarian of Constantinople, quotes passages from Books IV and V attributing them to Marcus.[11] About 200 years later Nicephorus Callistus (c. 1295–1360) in his Ecclesiastical History writes that 

"Marcus Antoninus composed a book for the education of his son Marcus [i.e. Commodus] , full of all worldly (Greek: κοσμικῆς) experience and instruction."[11][12] The Meditations is thereafter quoted in many Greek compilations from the 14th to 16th centuries.[12]  Wilhelm Xylander first translated the Meditations into Latin in 1558.