Marcus Aurelius: A Life [Hardcover]

Frank McLynn is an author that you either love or hate. He is very opinionated, self-satisfied, and confident in his opinions and he likes nothing better than to dismiss other author's works as being wrong. He also likes to use large words and complicated sentences. Normally that last wouldn't bother me, but I'm a fast reader and when you have to spend ages on every page since each sentence is so convoluted it becomes problematic. Not everyone will have problems with this. It encourages you to take your time so if you enjoy really savoring a book then you might prefer it this way. McLynn isn't an expert in this field. I think he likes it that way since he's written most of his books in fields he isn't an expert in. Personally, I think he feels he has something to prove but whatever it is he does research the periods he writes about well. Along the same line he also has a tendency to include comparisons to somewhat obscure historical figures that many of his readers will not recognize. It seems to fall under his desire to prove how smart he is. I'm sure that there could be another explanation for all of his writing quirks but that is the way that I interpret them.

Now onto the book. First off this is a really big book. I know that you can see that by just looking at the page numbers on this site but you don't always appreciate that till you see it. I think that each one of his books gets bigger and bigger, which is a shame since I prefer some of his shorter writings like 1066: The Year of the Three Battles. Now I'm not intimidated by a book's size but this one can be a chore. There is already an excellent biography on Marcus Aurelius by Anthony Birley which is about half the size of this one and is written by an expert in the field. Having read that I was rather curious what McLynn could say that would take up so much extra space. Would it be a more in-depth and detailed look at the era that he lived in? Would it include details about his life that Birley left out? Would it include a detailed analysis of his personality, a subject that McLynn is particularly strong at? I have to say that when it did either of those things it was a very enjoyable read, but most of the book seemed to focus on his philosophy. Now, I suppose that this is to be expected when the subject wrote his own philosophy on life down, but I'm really not interested in a discourse on philosophy and a comparison of how Aurelius matched up with later philosophers. I'm even less interested in hearing McLynn's views on philosophy as he states that several beliefs are wrong or show poor reasoning. Frankly, the reason that there are so many different philosophies out there is that every philosophy appeals to a different aspect of the human experience. There is no single philosophy that can make everybody happy. Stating that philosophical beliefs are wrong shows the most arrogant presumption I've seen in a long time. Just because you disagree with a philosophical concept doesn't make it incorrect. I certainly don't agree with all the philosophers he mentions but that doesn't mean that I'm going to call them mistaken. I know that the author is intelligent and that he presumably has a philosophy of beliefs, but he doesn't need to keep showing off the former and I couldn't care less about his opinions on the latter. As far as his analysis of Aurelius' philosophy goes this book is an utter failure. It is McLynn at his worst: uninteresting, arguing ideas of interest only to himself, and unspeakably arrogant. Quite frankly, a little of McLynn goes a long ways. When he keeps it short his works usually deliver.

So, the good news: The rest of the book is pretty good. It suffers from all of the faults I mentioned when discussing his writing style earlier, but it is also well researched and interesting. First off, his interpretation of Aurelius' personality seems pretty much spot on. His insight that a certain humorlessness can lead to difficulty handling depression seems to fit Marcus quite well. He doesn't go into quite as much annoying psychoanalysis as he did in his book on Napoleon, and the absence of such extremely questionable neuroses is very welcome. Actually, since he has the discourse on philosophy early on it leaves the rest of the book reasonably free of such annoyances. Characterizations have always been McLynn's strong point and his vivid characterizations in this book are interesting, and he expresses them quite clearly even if he is extremely blunt in his personal judgments. Some of the characterizations are odd though, such as when he refers to Hadrian as a psychopath. I don't know what information he's looking at but there is nowhere near enough data to make that sort of a statement. In "Napoleon" he stated that nearly every leader in history could be considered a psychopath which has always kind of rankled me. Even assuming a generous definition of psychopath, I wouldn't call any harsh action that they take psychotic. Leaders have to make hard decisions, but that isn't the same thing as saying that they get some sort of sick thrill out of it. The section on Marcus' life is certainly worth reading and I only wish that it wasn't preceded by such a pretentious distraction. I honestly think that the rest of this book is worth the purchase price. Still, the book can't just be divided into good and bad sections and reviewed separately, so I'm giving this book three stars as an average between them. That's probably being overly generous since the good section doesn't deserve a full five stars but the book deserves better than a two. I have a feeling that future reviewers will not be so kind, but I definitely recommend reading this if you're at all interested in the subject matter and don't mind a long slog.

Marcus Aurelius is probably one of the better known figures from antiquity, although he does not nearly have the notoriety or fame of more vivid, melodramatic figures such as Julius Caesar or Mark Antony. To most familiar with the 2nd-Century emperor, he is the embodiment of Plato's "philosopher king," an intellectual whose real passion was for the life of the mind who nonetheless devoted himself to the thankless task of ruling simply from a sense of duty.

In this biography, Frank McLynn, while plainly an admirer of his subject, nonetheless seeks to disabuse modern readers of romantic preconceptions about the last of the truly "good" emperors. He points out that, like any other human being, Aurelius was a product of his time and place and thus subject to the mores and viewpoint of that era. Despite the apparently modern, almost Zen-like views which Aurelius frequently expresses in his Meditations, his personal compilation of Stoic aphorisms, McLynn ably demonstrates how he was nonetheless a typical aristocratic Roman with rigid, hierarchical views and an unshakable faith in the rightness of Roman ways. One good example of this is the emperor's readiness to persecute anyone opposed to Roman order, specifically Christians, a fact which many modern admirers would prefer to ignore. McLynn also notes that, like all other Roman emperors, Aurelius had to be ruthless, to the point of exterminating blood kin or any other potential rival for the purple.

Even while noting these flaws, however, McLynn devotes the bulk of his biography to Aurelius's good points: his devotion to duty, his steadfast courage, so strong that he didn't lose his philosophical detachment even in the face of death. Beset with crises such as plague and barbarian incursions throughout the length of his reign, Aurelius never despaired, never gave way to weakness, stuck to his guns to the bitter end. The author concludes that, if anyone ever deserved the title of philosopher king, it was Aurelius.

For a layman with little knowledge of antiquity, this book will probably be a pretty hard slog. McLynn devotes a great deal of the biography to discussion of philosophy in the ancient world, with a particular focus on Stoicism, Aurelius's preferred doctrine (there is even a fairly lengthy appendix at the end of the book on Stoicism). When the fairly complicated politics of the early Empire is also factored in (most of which depended on complex, extensive personal relationships), this adds up to a fairly daunting prospect. Nonetheless, I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about 2nd-Century Roman history and to fans of biography in general.

McLynn always goes to great lengths to inform himself and he has read a wide variety of source material on Aurelius. The problem is that simply researching does not make for a good history book. McLynn frquently fails to analyze the information he has discovered. Too often, he'll pluck a quote from Meditations to buttress a poorly analyzed point and move on, certain he has convinced the reader because he has a quote to back it up (even if he misses the context of that quote). He quite clearly despises Stoic philosophy and this blinds him in his argumentation and leads to simplistic analysis. McLynn was just as biased in Richard and John, where he was smitten with King Richard and this blinded him to the faults historians generally agree that Richard exhibited. In this book on Aurelius, McLynn can't get over his hatred of Marcus' philosophy and this often makes the book infuriating for an ancient historian. This is not a terrible book but I would not recommend it. The problem I see is that historians aren't going to like his analytical deficiencies and obvious bias while regular readers won't slog through 700+ pages (with long winding detours to provide background) to inform themselves. Regardless, Aurelius deserves better than this.