The Documents

The book's essays make claims. These are the things the claims rest on: manuscripts, first editions, letters, an inscription, a bust, a flyleaf. Each is listed here with the institution that holds it, its shelf mark, what it shows, and the passage of the book it supports.

• The Vatican manuscript

  Vaticanus graecus 1950, fourteenth century
  Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome

  The oldest complete witness to the Greek text, the manuscript Leopold had photographed for the edition this translation follows. A page from the Meditations, likely the opening of Book Two.

  In the book: How This Book Survived; A Note on the Translation

• The first printed edition

  Zurich, 1558 or 1559
  Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich

  Wilhelm Xylander's editio princeps, the book that gave the world the Meditations in print, with the Latin translation that carried it into Europe's libraries. Title page and first page of Greek.

  In the book: How This Book Survived

• Casaubon's English, 1634

  London, 1634
  Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington

  The first English translation, opened at the start of Book Five, the passage the translation note sets beside this edition's own.

  In the book: A Note on the Translation

• The Fronto palimpsest

  Biblioteca Ambrosiana, E 147 sup.
  Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan

  A leaf on which the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon were written over the letters of Fronto, and through which Cardinal Mai read them again in 1815.

  In the book: Fronto's Letters; How This Book Survived

• Mai's Fronto, 1815

  Milan, 1815
  Public domain

  The title page of the edition that returned the schoolboy's letters to the world after sixteen centuries.

  In the book: How This Book Survived

• Leopold's Oxford text, 1908

  Oxford Classical Texts
  Public domain

  The title page, and the dateline of the preface, signed at Rotterdam in March 1907, of the edition this translation rests on.

  In the book: A Note on the Translation

• Frederick's Antimachiavel

  Œuvres de Frédéric le Grand, VIII, 91
  Universität Trier; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

  The page on which the young king, in the year he took the throne, named Marcus Aurelius his model.

  In the book: Who Carried This Book

• The Kunersdorf note

  Politische Correspondenz, vol. 18
  Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin

  Frederick's note to Finckenstein on the evening of the twelfth of August 1759: of an army of forty-eight thousand, not three thousand left.

  In the book: Who Carried This Book

• The bust at Sanssouci

  Upper terrace
  Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten

  The copy of the Polignac bust of Marcus Aurelius that stands within sight of Frederick's grave.

  In the book: Who Carried This Book

• Roosevelt's flyleaf

  Catalogue o284909
  Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, National Park Service

  The inscription, in his own hand, recording that this copy went down the River of Doubt with him.

  In the book: Who Carried This Book

• The VMI transcript

  25 September 2018
  U.S. Department of Defense

  The record of the words about the tattered copy in the rucksack, spoken to cadets.

  In the book: Who Carried This Book

• Lanterns on the Levee

  Knopf, 1941
  Mississippi Department of Archives and History

  The page with the wintry kingdom of Marcus Aurelius, from the first edition or from Percy's papers.

  In the book: Who Carried This Book

From the book itself

The title page of the hardcover.

The map, drawn for this edition. Explore it.