In the immortal words of Walt Whitman
Where did you get my journal?
Why would you do this to me?
I'll sue you, I'll sue you all.
That was private.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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These Romans were selfish assoles, for sure. Imagine writing massive encyclopaedias, detailing how people saw the world at the time, to only read them at family gatherings in best case, or just have them hidden away and eventually burned.
The reason the Romans were so weirdly stingy when it came to books is because they were a bitch to make and expensive as hell so unless it happened to be in a library you had to find someone with a specific book in their collection. It wouldn't be until the early medieval period when scriptoriums started to appear that you see large numbers of books being reproduced for relatively cheaply.
Oh also if a book wasn't well liked or just wasn't copied frequently then it had a pretty good chance of being lost. This is how the works on the Etruscans by Augustus was lost, note it was multiple volumes yet I'm pretty sure we have none, from what citations still exist is seems to have been a proper historical and anthropological work.
Pretty sure if you went back in time and started spouting the things Mac A wrote about, he'd invite you to dinner and ask you to see yours and he'll show you his ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
I actually don't know jack shit about ancient Rome's library system, if any.
I miss that damn Pug.
But it wasn't uncommon a trend in antiquity for the learned and educated to maintain private memoirs and journals relating to their interests.
They just never got to figure out Wikipedia.
And most of them probably sucked, we're kinda lucky with Meditations.
I doubt that there was any sort of commonality to the rigors applied by the educated wealthy towards their "look at me, I can write and ponder about stuff because I don't need to worry about food" projects.
Openly admiring Aurelius or stoicism is a big red flag. Nothing inherently bad about that philosophy, but it tends to appeal to a certain type who tend to think stoicism is just the serenity prayer duct-taped to an overwhelming sense of superiority.
Some of us are aware of that and I have heard the term "broicisim" used before and I THINK thats the demographic that was being described, the same one you are talking about.
It's a shame they're bringing the reputation of this philosophy down.
Ryan Holiday is the pusher for that.
Stoicism helped me have more empathy for myself, which in turn helped me become more empathetic for others. This was after I read the book.
Growing up, I thought Dr. Cox from Scrubs was the emotional role model, as he was described as a "stoic." Couldn't have been more wrong. Meditations turned that on it's head for me and gave me the tools to try and become radically empathetic.
Radical empathy is central to Stoic thought, especially if you look at Chrysippus.
That's right, I remember hearing it from him somewhere.
That's good to hear. Some years ago, I heard the word "stoic" in some lyrics and looked it up. I got into philosophy in general from there. It has done a lot of good for me as well.
lol get ~~reckt~~ read, loser