It was during his campaigns against the barbarians that the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, wrote his famous "Meditations". They record the passing thoughts, the maxims and the musings on life and death of a sensitive and humble mind which had been trained in that stoic philosophy which contributed so much to Christianity. In this translation from the scholarly Greek in which Marcus kept his private journal, Staniforth gives us a simple and straightforward version of a work which has often been compared to "the imitation of Christ".