The classic work of philosophy and literature, written by a Roman Emperor. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was a Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher who reigned from 161 AD to 180 AD, alongside his adoptive brother, Lucius. Known as one of the Five Good Emperors, he would be the last ruler of the Pax Romana (Roman Peace), a two hundred year Golden Age of relative peace and stability. His greatest surviving work, Meditations, was written in private and for himself, a kind of self-help journal with philosophical underpinnings that helped keep him on his moral path of self-improvement. "Understand, at long last, that you have something greaterand more powerfully transcendent than the strong effectsof things that pull you by the strings. "