It's an excerpt from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. Aurelius was a philosopher in addition to an Emperor, and his writings are excellent-but-pretty-orthodox expressions of Stoic doctrine of the time.

The big three surviving philosophical schools of the time all had a very "Look inwards" worldview - Stoicism claiming that we decide ourselves how the outside world pains or does not pain us; Epicureans claiming that it is by learning to appreciate the simple pleasures of life that one achieves contentment with life; and Cynics claiming that mankind is happiest in a state of nature, and that the constructs of human society are window dressing at best - as such, one should act according to one's 'gut' in any given situation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

i still cant take it for what you say it is.

there was/is this dude (perhaps a journalist) who coined a question to ask oneself as a reader.. "who? says what? to whom? with what purpose? using what channel?"

something like that. and since being able to read/write wasnt as common as today, i can only read this as "to whoever wants to be a good citizen: beware" coming from a ruler, and pointedly not "how to be a happy human on earth <3"

but that is just me. and i only replied again because iheartneopets replied, but he basically says what you were saying... so i feel like you deserve my response more.

sorry if you were hoping lecturing me was over :P

[–] PugJesus 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No, no, I enjoy discussing such things!

Marcus Aurelius's Meditations were not released during his lifetime - they were his, well, private meditations. It wasn't a call for the citizens of the Empire to be obedient - there is a fascinating tradition of Emperors doing that, but it uses very different phrasing and is typically divorced from the Greek philosophical tradition that Aurelius drew upon when writing the Meditations. You find many other Emperors exhorting the citizenry to be dutiful and loyal to the Roman state, but Aurelius and Julian the Apostate are the only ones with serious philosophical inclinations that they express in their writings. I don't think it's too bizarre to think that, out of some 500 years of rulers, two were genuinely interested in and proficient with philosophy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

i found the first mention of rome in that book and basically, speaking about societies that didnt write (like the celts and uh germanics) the authors cite another book by some jack goody saying something like (im translating a german book here citing an english author... oh well, good night. as we say in german:) regarding their gendernorms we have little more than observations from roman authors like tacitus, which often - partly due to ignorance and partly to make a political statement in rome - seemed to talk not about real people but ideal types. greek and roman authors who spoke about wars, wrote that women were allegedly present on battlefields, cheering on their men and caring for their wounded. In extreme cases, as plutarch wrote women too would wield axes or swords. but it is questionable as to how reliable these depictions are, or whether the authors wanted to point out how "barbaric" it was outside of the male dominated culture of the roman empire.

the authors of "the good book of human nature" then state "it is difficult to make a statement about how women fared in the script free europe." it then blames a disinterested and long time male dominated archeological field. apparently archeologists kept finding rich burial sites from iron age women in middle europe, but the scientists didnt question their roles in day to day goings. graves of rich women were apparently as lavish as their male counter parts, but even worse than ignorance, some graves were attributed wrongly to men, like the "Fuerstin von Vix" discovered in 1953, they thought she must have been a man, since such riches were unimaginable to have belonged to a woman. died 490 bce and some analysis showed she was female... while typing i realize some problem.... anyway. i think this could explain why i assumed the role of women was what i said... not much info and it was bad later, so why shouldnt it have been bad before there already?

i guess patriarchy was mostly monotheistic religion's fault

edit: clarifying last line, and some grammar in the middle