ENGLISH COMMENTARY
beginning of Book iii, are now generally thought to be titles to Book ii and Book iii. In that case the present Book will have been composed in the anxious months of the campaign in Moravia, the most striking incident of which was the famous battle connected in Christian legend with the Thundering Legion. Amid like conditions of doubtful warfare Frederick the Great wrote his poem Le Stoicien, under the inspiration of Marcus.
This and Book iii are remarkably alike in matter and manner; they resemble most nearly Book xii, and I have sometimes thought that ii, iii, and xii were the original draft out of which the whole Meditations later grew. In particular the doctrine of the indwelling Genius or Divinity, so prominent in Books ii and iii, recurs but rarely until we pass to Book xii.
The date of the miraculous victory over the Quadi is most likely to be a.d. 173, as general head-quarters removed in the winter a.d. 173–4 to Sirmium (Mitrovitz) on the Saar. Marcus then was writing in the field, on the Danube line and north of it, away from the libraries at Rome. To this situation the allusions to his books and memoranda may perhaps refer (ii. 2 and 3; iii. 14). One notable difference distinguishes the two Books. The solemn and lugubrious stress upon the transience and pettiness of man's life, which shadows the pages of Book ii, gives way in its successor to a more hopeful tone; the burden of disillusionment and disappointment seems lifted. May we suppose that this change reflects the relief, when the anxieties of the campaign in Moravia were past, and Marcus allowed himself to be saluted Imperator for the seventh time and to assume the title Germanicus?
The two Books then are alike, yet contrasted, each has a unity and spirit of its own. Certainly in Book ii there is a nearly continuous current of reflection, uniting the brief and formally distinct chapters; prominence is given to special points of thought and practice, noticeable words and phrases recur, and ch. 17 is a carefully composed conclusion. There is a pause between ch. 3 and ch. 4 as if the first three chapters were a proem, but the impression of unity is confirmed from what is a nearly complete summary of the topics of the Book in xii. 26. He begins by distinguishing the three aspects of Duty, to my neighbour, to myself, and to Nature and the God who sustains Nature. Throughout he assumes the familiar principle of the Stoic school: that
