Reading List

Authors Like Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome on 26 April 121. In 138, on terms set by the dying Hadrian, he was adopted by the next emperor, Antoninus Pius, and in 161 he became emperor himself, insisting that his adoptive brother Lucius Verus share the title. His reign brought the Antonine Plague, which began in 165 or 166, and most of the 170s he spent on the Danube frontier at war with the Marcomanni, the Quadi and the Iazyges. Somewhere in those campaigns he kept a notebook in Greek, with no title and no reader in mind: Book 1 is headed as written in the country of the Quadi, Book 2 at Carnuntum. He died in his military quarters on 17 March 180, and the notebook — twelve books we now call the Meditations — was first printed in Zurich in the late 1550s. Readers come to it for the rare sight of the most powerful man in the world reminding himself, again and again, to be patient, honest and unafraid of death, in plain sentences meant for no one else. The writers below share either his Stoic school, his form — the private note, the letter, the fragment — or his question of how to stay decent under pressure you did not choose.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Stoicism · Philosophy as a way of life · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Marcus Aurelius, read Epictetus next: the Meditations are full of his teaching. For the same school in letters, Seneca. For a novel addressed to Marcus himself, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. And to understand why the Meditations repeat themselves so much, Pierre Hadot.

10 authors like Marcus Aurelius

01
The teacher he never met · Closest match

Epictetus

Greek · b. 50 · Philosopher

Epictetus was born into slavery around 50 AD in Hierapolis, in Phrygia, studied Stoicism in Rome with Musonius Rufus and, once freed, taught at Nicopolis in western Greece until his death around 135. He wrote nothing; his pupil Arrian recorded the Discourses, of which four books survive, and the short Enchiridion, or Handbook. In the first book of the Meditations Marcus thanks his teacher Rusticus for introducing him to the discourses of Epictetus, lent from Rusticus's own copy.

The source of most of what Marcus tells himself. The division between what is up to us and what is not, the habit of treating every loss as a return, the scorn for fame — it is all here first, said by a former slave to a room of students. Where Marcus is quiet and self-correcting, Epictetus is blunt, funny and impatient, and reading him explains why the emperor kept returning to these ideas.

— Lisanne

Every book by Epictetus →

02
The Stoic in letters

Seneca

Roman · b. 4 BC · Philosopher and dramatist

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born around 4 BC in Corduba, in Roman Spain, spent eight years in exile on Corsica under Claudius, and became tutor and then adviser to the young Nero. The 124 Letters to Lucilius, written in the last two or three years of his life, are his most-read work. He was enormously rich, and the gap between his Stoic teaching and his wealth and service to Nero has been held against him since antiquity. In 65 AD Nero ordered him to take his own life after he was linked to the Pisonian conspiracy.

The same school a century earlier, written for a reader rather than for the self. Seneca covers Marcus's ground — time, anger, grief, the approach of death — but as a friend writing letters, with more style and more vanity. Both were men close to imperial power trying to live by a philosophy of indifference to it; Seneca shows how hard that was more openly than Marcus ever does.

— Lisanne

Every book by Seneca →

03
A novel addressed to Marcus

Marguerite Yourcenar

French · b. 1903 · Novelist

Yourcenar was born in Brussels in 1903, became a US citizen in 1947 and lived on Mount Desert Island in Maine with her partner and translator Grace Frick. Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), which Frick translated into English, is written as a long letter from the dying emperor Hadrian to the young Marcus Aurelius, his adoptive grandson and eventual successor. The Abyss won the Prix Femina in 1968, and in 1980 she became the first woman elected to the Académie française.

The closest thing in fiction to the Meditations: an emperor taking stock of himself in the first person, near the end, in calm and exact prose. It also gives you the man who chose Marcus as heir, speaking to him directly. Yourcenar's Hadrian is more sensual and less dutiful than Marcus, which makes the pairing illuminating rather than repetitive.

— Lisanne
04
How to read the Meditations

Pierre Hadot

French · b. 1922 · Philosopher and historian

Hadot was born in Paris in 1922 and held the chair in the history of Greek and Roman thought at the Collège de France from 1982. The Inner Citadel, published in France in 1992 and in English by Harvard University Press in 1998, is a book-length study of the Meditations as a set of spiritual exercises with a specific philosophical method. Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995) is the English selection of his essays on the same idea across ancient philosophy.

The book that explains why the Meditations read as they do. Hadot argues that Marcus was not confiding or composing but practising: rewriting Epictetus's rules for himself until they became habits, which is why the same thoughts come back in different words. After him the repetitions stop looking like padding and start looking like the point.

— Lisanne
Every book by Pierre Hadot →
05
Marcus as a modern therapist would read him

Donald Robertson

Scottish · b. 1972 · Psychotherapist and writer

Robertson is a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist, born in Ayrshire, who worked in London and now lives in Quebec; he is one of the founders of the nonprofit Modern Stoicism. The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (2010) traces CBT's roots in Stoic philosophy. How to Think Like a Roman Emperor (2019) combines a life of Marcus Aurelius with Stoic exercises, and Verissimus (2022) is a graphic novel about him.

The most useful modern companion to the Meditations specifically. Robertson tells Marcus's life in order and pauses at each stage to show which Stoic technique he was using — on anger, on pain, on fear of death — and how it maps onto modern therapy. Less literary than Hadot, but more practical.

— Lisanne
Every book by Donald Robertson →
06
Philosophy at the end of power

Boethius

Roman · b. 480 · Philosopher

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born into a Roman patrician family around 480, became consul by 510 and rose to the highest offices at the court of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric. Accused of treason, he was imprisoned around 523 and executed in 524. The Consolation of Philosophy, written while he waited, alternates prose and verse as Lady Philosophy argues him out of his despair; it was translated by Alfred the Great, Chaucer and Elizabeth I, among others.

Another Roman statesman talking himself through catastrophe, three and a half centuries later. Boethius's philosophy is more Platonic than Stoic, but his lesson is Marcus's: fortune's gifts were never yours to keep. Marcus writes from the top of the world and Boethius from a cell, and the book is the more moving for it.

— Lisanne
Every book by Boethius →
07
The self as subject

Michel de Montaigne

French · b. 1533 · Essayist

Montaigne retired from public life in Bordeaux to his family estate in 1571 and spent the rest of his life writing and rewriting the Essays, first published in 1580 and enlarged in 1588. Steeped in Seneca, Plutarch and the Stoics, they range from death and friendship to cannibals and kidney stones. He served two terms as mayor of Bordeaux in the 1580s.

The writer who turned Marcus's private method into a public form. Both write to examine themselves, and both return again and again to death; but where Marcus corrects himself toward a rule, Montaigne watches himself with curiosity and lets the contradictions stand. Read him when the Meditations start to feel too stern.

— Lisanne

Every book by Michel de Montaigne →

08
Another unfinished notebook

Blaise Pascal

French · b. 1623 · Philosopher and mathematician

Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist and Catholic writer who died in 1662 at 39. The Pensées, published in 1670, are the fragments he had prepared for a defence of Christianity he never finished; editors still disagree on their order, and the argument known as Pascal's wager comes from them. In a recorded conversation with Isaac Le Maistre de Sacy at Port-Royal he weighed Epictetus against Montaigne, praising Epictetus's sense of human duty and faulting him for pride.

The other great book of private notes that the world was never meant to see in that form. Like the Meditations it is fragmentary, urgent and addressed partly to its author, and it argues directly with the Stoics — Pascal admired Epictetus and thought he trusted the human will too much. Read it as the strongest Christian reply to Marcus's kind of self-reliance.

— Lisanne
09
The choice that remains

Viktor Frankl

Austrian · b. 1905 · Psychiatrist and memoirist

Frankl was a Viennese psychiatrist and neurologist who was deported in 1942 and survived Theresienstadt and Auschwitz; his parents, brother and first wife were killed. Man's Search for Meaning, published in German in 1946, combines an account of camp life with an outline of logotherapy, his method built on the search for meaning.

The twentieth century's hardest test of the idea Marcus repeats most often: that events cannot touch the mind unless the mind lets them. Frankl was not a Stoic, but his conclusion — that the attitude you take toward suffering stays yours when everything else is gone — is close kin. Marcus states it from power; Frankl from the bottom.

— Lisanne

Every book by Viktor Frankl →

10
The modern popularizer

Ryan Holiday

American · b. 1987 · Writer

Holiday, a former marketing director of American Apparel, has done more than anyone to bring Stoicism to a mass readership. The Obstacle Is the Way (2014) takes its title from a passage in Book 5 of the Meditations; The Daily Stoic (2016), written with Stephen Hanselman, gives a passage from Marcus, Epictetus or Seneca for every day of the year. His earlier Trust Me, I'm Lying (2012) described his own media-manipulation tactics as a marketer, and some Stoicism scholars have questioned how much of his self-help version is Stoic at all.

The book most readers meet before the Meditations, or straight after. Holiday builds his work around Marcus more than any other Stoic, and turns the emperor's notes into advice for work and ambition. Best read as a door back to the original rather than a substitute for it.

— Lisanne

Every book by Ryan Holiday →

Where to start if you loved Marcus Aurelius

If you want the source of the ideas, read Epictetus.

The Enchiridion: the whole teaching in under an hour.

If you want the same school in letters, read Seneca.

Letters to Lucilius, the best prose Stoicism produced.

If you want a novel, read Marguerite Yourcenar.

Memoirs of Hadrian: an emperor's letter to the young Marcus.

If you want to understand the method, read Pierre Hadot.

The Inner Citadel: why the Meditations are exercises, not a diary.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Marcus Aurelius

Who should I read if I love Marcus Aurelius?

Epictetus first: the Meditations are built on his teaching, which Marcus met through his teacher Rusticus. Then Seneca's Letters to Lucilius. For fiction, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian is written as a letter to Marcus. For guides to the Meditations, Pierre Hadot's The Inner Citadel and Donald Robertson's How to Think Like a Roman Emperor; for the same question under extreme pressure, Boethius and Viktor Frankl.

What books are like Meditations?

Epictetus's Enchiridion is the closest: short, practical Stoic rules, many of which Marcus rewrites for himself. Seneca's Letters to Lucilius cover the same subjects at greater length. Pascal's Pensées share the form — unfinished private notes published after the author's death — and Montaigne's Essays share the habit of making the self the subject.

Did Marcus Aurelius know Epictetus?

No. Marcus was born in 121 and Epictetus died around 135, teaching in Nicopolis in Greece, so they never met. In the first book of the Meditations Marcus thanks his teacher Rusticus for introducing him to the discourses of Epictetus, from Rusticus's own copy.

Was the Meditations meant to be published?

No. Marcus wrote it in Greek as private notes, without a title; the Greek phrase usually attached to it means roughly “to himself”. It is not known exactly how it survived. The first printed edition, edited by Wilhelm Xylander, appeared in Zurich in the late 1550s, and Meric Casaubon's English translation followed in 1634.

Which translation of the Meditations should I read?

Gregory Hays's (Modern Library, 2002) is the most widely read modern version and the plainest. Martin Hammond's (Penguin Classics, 2006) and Robin Hard's (Oxford World's Classics, 2011) are closer to the Greek and come with fuller notes. George Long's Victorian translation (1862) is free online but much harder going.

Is the Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator accurate?

Only in outline. He did fight long wars on the Danube frontier and was succeeded by his son Commodus, a choice historians have criticised. But he was not murdered by Commodus: he died in his military quarters in March 180, and the cause is unknown. Persecution of Christians also appears to have increased during his reign, though how far he directed it is debated.

Footnotes

  1. Meditations — Wikipedia
  2. Marcus Aurelius — Wikipedia
  3. Memoirs of Hadrian — Wikipedia
  4. Marguerite Yourcenar — Wikipedia
  5. The emperor of self-control (review of Hadot, The Inner Citadel) — Times Higher Education
  6. Pensées — Wikipedia
  7. Pascal, On Epictetus and Montaigne — monadnock.net
  8. Best Translation of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius — Orion Philosophy

List last reviewed 15 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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