Marcus Aurelius · 121–180 CE
Meditations 7.49 — Marcus Aurelius
Translation by George Long (1862)
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.49
Consider the past; such great changes of political supremacies. Thou mayest foresee also the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of the things which take place now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?
Cite this passage
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.49, tr. George Long (1862)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/meditations/7.49
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, tr. George Long (1862). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesLook back at how empires rise and fall and you can foresee what will come, since the future will have the same shape as the past. Watching human life for forty years teaches you what ten thousand would, so there is little to fear in missing out on something new.
Older wording
- “supremacies”
- — ruling powers and empires
Themes and situations
- Change and impermanence
- Time and the present
- Ambition and success
- Getting older
- Anxiety about the future
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