A golden-age Roman Emperor's advice

The 'Meditations' of Marcus Aurelius celebrates values that may be going out of style in Trump's America

(Photo by Nicholas Hartmann.)

“The golden age of America begins right now.” So declared newly inaugurated President Donald Trump at the beginning of his speech in the Capitol rotunda.

In the golden age of the Roman Empire, nearly 2,000 years ago, an emperor compiled his thoughts about life and philosophy in a series of notes on papyrus scrolls. In his 50s and expecting his life to end soon, Marcus Aurelius began his reflections (now known as “Meditations”) with a volley of thanks to various friends, mentors and relatives.

As the book confirms, he was a believer in Stoicism, which prizes values such as “wisdom, morality, courage, and moderation,” according to Donald Robertson, author of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.

Marcus Aurelius paid a particularly fulsome tribute to Antoninus, his adopted father and predecessor as emperor.

He posthumously praised Antoninus for resisting “all attempts to flatter him.”

For his “constant devotion to the empire’s needs. His stewardship of the treasury. His willingness to take responsibility—and blame—for both.”

“His attitude to the gods: no superstitiousness. And his attitude to men: no demagoguery, no currying favor, no pandering…

“His willingness to yield the floor to experts—in oratory, law, psychology or whatever—and to support them energetically, so that each of them could fulfill his potential…”

“That he respected tradition without needing to constantly congratulate himself for Safeguarding Our Traditional Values…”

“The way he kept public actions within reasonable bounds—games, building projects, distributions of money and so on—because he looked to what needed doing and not the credit to be gained from doing it.”

History remembers both Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius for presiding over the latter years of the “Golden Age” of the Roman Empire.

Trump’s beliefs

Ever since Donald Trump became a serious candidate for the White House, critics have pointed to a variety of stances he took that sharply differed from his earlier positions.

The man whose Supreme Court appointees would overturn Roe v. Wade said in 1999 on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I am strongly pro-choice.” The candidate who would bash Barack Obama and Joe Biden for their handling of the economy told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in 2004 that the economy does better under the Democrats. And years before he ran a vituperative campaign against Hillary Clinton, he was one of her supporters and donors.

Trump was also criticized for regularly making false claims. The Washington Post’s team of fact checkers, led by Glenn Kessler, catalogued 30,573 “false or misleading claims” Trump made during his presidency.

Not least was his statement on January 6, 2021: “We won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.” He made that bogus claim 14 times from Nov. 21, 2020 through Jan. 6, according to the Post. And he’s repeated it endlessly ever since, leading up to his pardons Monday for those convicted in the riot.

If you believe it

The overall picture is of a man willing to say whatever he needs to say to satisfy his base and advance his cause. But watching his inaugural address Monday, the suspicion crept in that, however insincere Trump was in voicing conservative positions in his first campaign and presidency, he might have come to believe some of his own press releases (or Truth Social posts).

After all, “it’s not a lie if you believe it,” as George Costanza told Jerry on “Seinfeld.”

We may never know for certain if Trump does believe it.

But the adoration he receives from his supporters, the wild enthusiasm that greets his rallies, the fawning from billionaires and the conservative press all contribute to a self-reinforcing universe in which the president is seen as a warrior chosen by God to save America from its foes.

Self-image

That was the confident self-image he strove to project in his Inaugural Address:

“For many years, the radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens. While the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair, we now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad...”

“Over the past eight years, I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history,” said Trump, voicing a sentiment George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt might question.

“And I've learned a lot along the way. The journey to reclaim our Republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you. Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and indeed to take my life. Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin's bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”

It’s natural

Marcus Aurelius also claimed divine help, but in a different way. "The gods did all they could—through their gifts, their help, their inspiration—to ensure that I could live as nature demands,” he wrote. “And if I’ve failed, it’s no one’s fault but mine. Because I didn’t pay attention to what they told me—to what they taught me, practically, step by step."

Getting angry at the consequences makes no sense, he believed. There is a pre-ordained order to the world. “Everything that happens is natural,” he wrote. “Whatever happens has always happened, and always will, and is happening at this very moment, everywhere.”

How does Trump reconcile divine inspiration and free will? We’ll have to wait for his “Meditations” to know more about the inner life of the 45^th and 47^th president.