The Military Metaphor in Marcus Aurelius

Soldiering as a Philosophy of Life in Stoicism

Photo by Hert Niks on Unsplash

In one of the most famous passages of The Meditations, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius writes that everything physical is as transient as a stream rushing past us, everything belonging to the mind is as insubstantial as vapour and deceptive as smoke or mist, and that…

…life is warfare, and…