More historical context than biography
Besides being a Roman emperor, Marcus was also a philosopher. Many regard him as perhaps the closest anyone has come to the ideal of the philosopher-king that Plato put forth in his Republic. Marcus’s brand of philosophy was Stoicism, and he is considered one of the big three of that school (along with Epictetus and Seneca) because of his book Meditations, a classic Stoic text. If you’re considering reading McLynn’s biography because you are a modern disciple of Stoicism, prepare to be disappointed. McLynn despises Stoicism, calling it “nonsense” and “gibberish.” He thinks Marcus’s philosophical pursuits were a waste of time. Marcus should have concentrated on military and economical matters, as McLynn mostly does in this book. To McLynn’s credit, however, he does give some thoughtful and intelligent discussion to Marcus’s views on philosophy and religion, at least three solid chapters worth, plus a relentlessly negative appendix on Stoicism. Although tens of thousands of books have been published disputing contradictory views on Christian theology, McLynn thinks any time two Stoics disagree with each other, such inconsistency renders the whole school of thought null and void. I don’t agree with everything (or much) that McLynn has to say about Stoicism, but he’s certainly done his research, and I learned a lot about Marcus from this analysis of his philosophical thought.
The biggest complaint I have about McLynn’s biography of Marcus Aurelius is that only about a third of the book is actually about Marcus Aurelius. As the book opens, we get biographies of other figures who were connected to Marcus: a chapter on Hadrian, a chapter on Antoninus Pius, one on Lucius Verus, and maybe two on Fronto, Marcus’s tutor. McLynn provides historical context about what was going on in Rome at the time of Marcus’s reign, but he goes way overboard with it. For example, when he informs us that a war against the Parthians was underway during Marcus’s reign, we then get a complete detailed history of Rome’s relations with the Parthians going back two or three centuries, then a discussion of the Parthians themselves—their governmental structure, internal conflicts, the various nations and peoples surrounding them—then a primer on the organization of the Roman military, before we ever even get to talking about Marcus. After all that, what Marcus actually did about the Parthians, I couldn’t tell you. The Germanic tribes get a similar background treatment, but then you actually do get a pretty detailed blow-by-blow account of Marcus’s relations with them. McLynn sometimes wanders pretty far afield in his digressions, particularly towards the end of the book. In a book about Marcus Aurelius, did we really need the whole life story of Jean-Jacques Rousseau?
McLynn’s books have achieved a wide popular audience, but if this book is any indication, he writes with the scholarly rigor of a historian. This is not Marcus Aurelius for Dummies. Part of the historian’s job is to bust myths, and McLynn does some of that here. Given all the adulation that has been heaped upon Marcus over the centuries, the truth can’t help but be less flattering than the legend. McLynn points out that life was not so fine under the Marcus administration, and of all the Roman emperors, he was one of the most severe in persecuting Christians. McLynn certainly does admire Marcus as a leader, and he shows his respect for his subject by conducting a fair and thorough character analysis, neither a panegyric nor a hatchet job. He should have narrowed his focus more tightly on the man himself, however, instead of cramming in so much extraneous detail.
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