Marcus Aurelius – The Philosopher King of Rome

Philosopher: Marcus Aurelius | Lived: 121 to 180 AD | Born: Rome | Status: Roman Emperor, 161 to 180 AD | Teacher: Junius Rusticus, who introduced him to Epictetus | Known For: Meditations, the philosopher-king ideal

Marcus Aurelius (121 to 180 AD) was a Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, the closest history has come to Plato’s ideal of a philosopher-king. He is remembered not only as one of the Five Good Emperors but as a man who ruled himself before ruling others, embodying the Stoic ideal of reason and restraint not in a classroom, but in the chaos of empire, on campaign, during plague, under the weight of a civilisation that depended on him not to break. We know him through his letters to his teacher Fronto, the laws he enacted, and the accounts of contemporary historians. But what makes him different from every other Roman emperor is a private journal he kept for no one but himself. That journal is Meditations, and it remains one of the most widely read works of philosophy in history.

Early Life and Education

Born Marcus Annius Verus into an influential Roman family, he lost his father at a young age and was partly raised by his grandfather, a man of status who served twice as consul. This early loss was Marcus’s first encounter with death, one that would echo throughout his life.

Much of what we know about these early years comes from the Historia Augusta, a Roman biographical collection compiled more than a century after Marcus died. Modern historians treat it with real caution, it mixes genuine historical detail with outright invention in places, but its life of Marcus Aurelius specifically is considered one of the more reliable entries in the collection, since several of its details line up with what Marcus wrote about himself in Meditations. With that source in mind: biographers describe him as a serious child, yet active in sports like boxing, wrestling, running, and falconry. He received an excellent education, studying rhetoric, Greek, Latin, and philosophy, the foundation that would shape the rest of his life.

The Path to Becoming Emperor

At an early age, Marcus came to the attention of Emperor Hadrian, who admired his honesty and gave him the nickname Verissimus, “the most truthful one,” an anecdote that also comes to us through the Historia Augusta. Around the age of six, Hadrian granted him equestrian rank and later appointed him to the College of the Salii.

Hadrian had no children and needed a successor. He first chose Lucius Ceionius Commodus, but after his premature death, Hadrian selected the senator Titus Aurelius Antoninus on the condition that Antoninus adopt both Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, the late Commodus’s son.

Hadrian expected Antoninus to rule briefly and then pass power to Marcus, but Antoninus reigned for twenty-three years. During this time, Marcus learned the arts of leadership and moderation, lessons he would later record in the first book of his Meditations as expressions of gratitude to his adoptive father.

Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor

When Antoninus Pius died in 161 AD, Marcus Aurelius became emperor at the age of forty, and immediately made Lucius Verus his co-ruler. It was the first time Rome had two emperors. For Marcus, this was a wise and cautious move: it prevented rivalry over succession and ensured stability.

The young rulers soon faced major challenges. A plague, later called the Antonine Plague, spread through the empire, likely brought back by soldiers returning from campaigns in the East. Meanwhile, the Parthians attacked Armenia, testing the strength of the new emperors. Lucius Verus was sent to command the army with the experienced general Avidius Cassius. Though Verus enjoyed the privileges of power more than its burdens, Cassius won the war and temporarily restored peace.

The Wars in the North

In the last decade of his reign, Marcus Aurelius turned his attention to the northern frontier, where Germanic tribes threatened Roman lands. It was during these difficult campaigns that he wrote parts of his Meditations. Book II begins “On the River Gran, among the Quadi,” and Book III “In Carnuntum,” both in present-day Austria.

After the Parthians’ defeat, new conflicts erupted in the north. Marcus and Lucius Verus both went to the front, but Verus soon fell ill and died, likely from the plague. Marcus now bore full responsibility for the empire and its armies, without much combat experience.

He learned quickly, aided by his trusted general and son-in-law, Pompeianus. His Stoic training helped him stay steady amid crisis and loss. During one campaign, a rumor spread that he had died. Avidius Cassius, the general in the East, used the moment to declare himself emperor. Marcus marched to confront him, but before the armies met, Cassius was assassinated by his own men. The civil war that might have shattered Rome was over before it began.

The Emperor’s Final Years

Marcus Aurelius and his wife, Faustina, had thirteen children, though only five survived to adulthood. His only surviving son, Commodus, was made co-emperor in 177 AD.

In 180 AD, while on campaign in the north, Marcus Aurelius fell ill, likely from the same plague that had haunted his reign, and died in his military camp. Before his death, he asked that his son continue the campaign under Pompeianus’s guidance, but Commodus instead returned to Rome, paid off the tribes, and proclaimed peace. It was the beginning of Rome’s decline.

Commodus proved the opposite of his father: indulgent, cruel, and detached from philosophy. After five good emperors, his reign marked the empire’s moral descent. But the question of why Marcus made that choice deserves a closer look.

The Commodus Question

Historians often hold this against Marcus Aurelius. Here was a man who wrote constantly about reason, virtue, and seeing things clearly, and yet he handed the empire to a son who would become one of Rome’s worst emperors. It looks like a straightforward failure of judgment. But the situation he was actually in was more complicated than that.

Choosing your son as heir was not simply tradition. It was the expected order of things. The emperors before Marcus who had adopted capable successors did so because they had no sons of their own. Marcus did. Not choosing Commodus would have been seen as a deliberate rejection, and that carried enormous consequences in Rome.

His most trusted general and son-in-law, Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, was the strongest candidate on merit. But passing over a living son in favour of a general is exactly the kind of decision that starts civil wars. Marcus had already seen what succession uncertainty could produce. When a false rumour spread that he had died on campaign, his own general Avidius Cassius declared himself emperor without hesitation. A clear, unambiguous heir, even an imperfect one, was his way of preventing that.

He also believed that character could be shaped through rigorous philosophical education and the right environment. His own formation proved it. He gave Commodus the best teachers available, surrounded him with capable advisors, and trusted that the structure would hold.

It didn’t. And Marcus had probably sensed this. He had watched Commodus as co-emperor for three years. He knew who his son was. But knowing that Commodus was not the ideal candidate is not the same as having a better option. He may simply have concluded that an imperfect known quantity was safer than the chaos an unconventional choice would bring.

The philosophy that made him one of history’s greatest rulers may be precisely what he clung to when the evidence was pointing elsewhere. That is a very human failure. And in a strange way, it makes him more worth reading, not less.

The Philosopher King

From an early age, Marcus Aurelius was educated for leadership. He studied rhetoric with Fronto, but over time grew closer to his Stoic mentors: Apollonius of Chalcedon, Sextus of Chaeronea, and Junius Rusticus, the last having the greatest influence on him.

Junius Rusticus introduced him to the works of Epictetus, the freed slave turned philosopher whose teachings shaped Marcus’s thought. Though they never met, the connection between them is clear throughout Meditations. Marcus’s notes reveal a man constantly striving to align his prohairesis, his own faculty of moral choice, with justice, humility, and reason, principles drawn directly from Stoic philosophy.

Meditations gives us a rare insight into the inner life of the most powerful man of his time. It is filled with reminders to control one’s thoughts, accept fate, and serve others with integrity. Whether he intended it or not, Marcus left a guide for anyone seeking strength of character. Leaders from George Washington to Nelson Mandela have kept this book close as a source of steadiness in adversity.

Marcus Aurelius and His Stoic Contemporaries

Marcus sits at the end of a chain rather than at its centre. Musonius Rufus taught Epictetus, Epictetus never met Marcus but reached him anyway through Arrian’s written Discourses and through Marcus’s own teacher, Junius Rusticus. Seneca belongs to an earlier generation entirely, dead before Marcus was born. And behind all of them stands Zeno of Citium, who founded Stoicism roughly three centuries before Marcus ever picked up a pen. The timeline below shows how these five lives actually lined up.

Death and Marcus Aurelius

It is worth remembering that Marcus Aurelius did not write Meditations from a place of comfort. He wrote much of it on the northern frontier, commanding armies, during a plague that had already killed millions across the empire. When he reflected on death, he was not doing so as an exercise. He was surrounded by it.

Keeping this in mind matters because it shows his approach to mortality was not theoretical. He returned to it constantly in Meditations because it helped him stay grounded. When we remind ourselves that our time is limited, we stop spending it on things that don’t deserve it. That is what he was doing when he wrote to himself:

This is the Stoic practice of memento mori. Not a morbid obsession with death, but a way of keeping life in perspective. And Marcus Aurelius practised it more honestly than almost anyone.

If you want to go deeper, we have a full article exploring 20 Marcus Aurelius quotes on death, with a reflection and a practice for each one: 20 Marcus Aurelius Quotes on Death.

The Legacy of Marcus Aurelius

What Marcus Aurelius left behind is not a system or a set of rules. It is an example. A man who had access to more power than almost anyone in history, and who spent his private hours writing reminders to himself to be better, to be patient, to stop complaining, to do his duty without seeking recognition for it.

That is what makes Meditations unlike any other philosophical text. It was never meant to be published. It was a man talking to himself, trying to close the gap between who he was and who he believed he should be. The fact that he never quite closed it is not a failure. It is what makes him worth reading.

As he wrote to himself:

Nearly two thousand years later, that remains as clear and as difficult as it ever was.

Marcus Aurelius and Masculinity

If you spend any time on social media, you will find no shortage of images of Marcus Aurelius presented as a symbol of strength and dominance. What those images rarely mention is that he was physically frail, and that the people around him were not always confident he would last long as emperor.

What he had was not physical power. It was character, what the Stoics called the hegemonikon, the ruling faculty of the mind that governs judgment regardless of the body’s condition. In the first book of Meditations, he writes about what he learned from the people closest to him. Reading through those lessons, you notice something. The qualities he valued most were not ambition or toughness. They were integrity, self-reliance, compassion, and doing your duty without complaining about it.

That is a very different picture of masculinity from what we tend to see today. And it is one that is worth examining more closely, especially at a time when the conversation around what it means to be a man is so often confused and loud.

For a closer look at what Stoicism actually says about masculinity, and why it has very little in common with what the internet often calls stoicism, read: What is the Stoic Man? An Examination of Masculinity.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Marcus Aurelius?

A Roman emperor, 121 to 180 AD, and Stoic philosopher, best known for Meditations, his private reflections on virtue, duty, and the nature of life.

What is Marcus Aurelius’s philosophy?

He followed Stoicism, a practical philosophy that teaches living in accordance with nature, focusing on what we can control, and acting with virtue and reason.

Why is he called the philosopher-king?

He embodied the Stoic ideal of a ruler guided by wisdom rather than ambition, aligning closely with Plato’s vision of a philosopher governing for the common good.

Why did Marcus Aurelius choose Commodus as his successor?

The answer is more complicated than it first appears. Passing over a living son risked civil war, something Marcus had already witnessed firsthand. He also believed that the right education and environment could shape his son’s character, and invested heavily in that. It didn’t work. See The Commodus Question above for the full picture.

Why is Meditations still important today?

Because it offers timeless guidance on handling adversity, maintaining integrity, and finding peace of mind, lessons that remain as relevant now as in the second century.

Further Reading

If you’d like to explore more, these sources provide deeper insight:

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory Hays
• How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson
• The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot

Each reveals a different dimension of the philosopher-emperor and the enduring value of Stoic thought.

Continue reading about other Stoic philosophers such as Seneca and Epictetus. For Marcus Aurelius’s most inspiring passages, visit our Marcus Aurelius Quotes page.

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Book a Stoic Coaching free consultation with Benny to get support. Or read more about How to Practice Stoicism here. Listen to the Via Stoica Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

Author Bio

Benny Voncken is the founder of Via Stoica, where he helps people apply Stoic philosophy to modern life. He is a Stoic coach, writer, and podcast host of The Via Stoica Podcast. With almost a decade of teaching experience and daily Stoic practice, Benny creates resources, workshops, and reflections that make ancient wisdom practical today.