Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations for himself. This is not an inference — it is evident from the text, which is addressed in the second person to himself, organized not as an argument for public consumption but as a series of private reminders, admonitions, and attempts to hold himself to standards he found difficult to maintain. The work was not intended for publication, and if it had been published by its author rather than preserved by accident, it would probably have been a different book. As it survives, it is the most intimate document of a Roman emperor’s inner life that exists, and one of the most honest accounts of what it is like to try to live according to a moral philosophy while holding enormous power over other people.