On campaign at Carnuntum: the morning warmup

Book Two opens with a stage direction in some manuscripts: "Among the Quadi, on the Granua." Marcus is on campaign on the Danube. The book begins with the famous morning warmup — "Begin the day by telling yourself you will meet the meddler, the ingrate, the bully, the cheat, the envious." The point is rehearsal. By the time you encounter these people in your day, you have already encountered them in your head, and you are not thrown.

The rest of the book moves at a clip. Marcus reminds himself that the body is just flesh and breath; the soul is what matters. That all things are interconnected and the world is a single thing. That nothing he does should be done without aim. That one should "do every act of your life as if it were your last." That praise and blame are equally outside his control. That time is a river and we are its momentary debris. Many of the lines from Book Two have become aphorisms in their own right.

The mood is urgent. Marcus is older now and on a frontier, and there is a clipped, no-time-to-waste quality to the writing. "Don't waste the rest of your time talking about what a good man should be like. Just be one." Book Two is the book most readers remember from a first reading; it is also the book Marcus seems to have meant most directly for himself.