Which Meditations Translation Should You Read?

The Meditations has never been out of print. It has been translated into English dozens of times, from the seventeenth century onward, and the translations vary enormously: in register, in accuracy, in how much they smooth over Marcus’s repetitions, and in how much scholarly apparatus they provide. The question of which edition to read depends almost entirely on what you want from the book. The short answer: Hays to read it fast, Hammond to live with it, Hard to study it, Waterfield for the newest scholarship.

Gregory Hays — Modern Library (2003)

The Hays translation is the most popular modern version and the one most readers encounter first. Published by Modern Library as part of their Classics series, it is concise, punchy, and written in a style that reads like contemporary prose. Hays strips away archaic diction and renders Marcus’s aphorisms with a directness that has made this edition a bestseller.

Its strength is also its limitation. Hays is willing to use general and imprecise wording in place of the technical Stoic terms Marcus employs, which can obscure the underlying philosophical precision. For a reader coming to The Meditations for the first time, wanting to read it quickly and get the feel of the book, Hays is the right choice. One scholar described it as “Marcus Aurelius on Twitter,” which is both a compliment and a warning. It is the edition to read if you want to knock it out in a weekend.

Martin Hammond — Penguin Classics (2006)

The Hammond translation is reliable, readable, and more faithful to the original Greek than Hays. It is the edition you are most likely to find in a bookshop, and it has the advantage of the Penguin Classics infrastructure: a strong introduction, useful notes, and a text that has been carefully edited.

Hammond is the better choice for a reader who wants to study the text more closely, who finds Hays too colloquial, or who wants a version that holds up to rereading and marginalia. It preserves more of Marcus’s technical vocabulary and is generally considered the more accurate of the two most widely available versions. If you are going to buy one edition to live with for years, Hammond is the safer investment.

Robin Hard — Oxford World’s Classics (2011)

The Hard translation, published by Oxford University Press with an introduction and commentary by Christopher Gill (professor emeritus of ancient thought at the University of Exeter), is the most scholarly of the widely available versions. It is more literal than either Hays or Hammond, which makes it somewhat drier to read but more useful for anyone who wants to understand what Marcus actually said rather than what translators have decided he meant.

Hard’s edition also includes selections from the surviving correspondence between Marcus and his rhetoric tutor Fronto: letters that give a vivid picture of the young Marcus as a student and show a warmer, more playful side than the later philosophical notebooks. For a reader who has already read The Meditations and wants to go deeper into Marcus’s life and thought, the Hard edition is the right next step.

C. Scot Hicks and David V. Hicks — The Emperor’s Handbook (2002)

The Hicks brothers’ translation, published by Scribner under the title The Emperor’s Handbook, is less well known than the Hays or Hammond versions but has devoted admirers. It is praised for its combination of accuracy and prose quality: more faithful to the Greek than Hays but more readable than Hard. Those who love it tend to recommend it as the version they would give as a gift.

It is harder to find than the Penguin or Modern Library editions but worth seeking out if you want something between the breezy accessibility of Hays and the scholarly precision of Hard.

Robin Waterfield — Basic Books (2021)

The most recent major translation, Waterfield’s version offers clear, accurate prose with strong footnotes that appear at the bottom of the page rather than at the back of the book, a significant practical advantage for a text that rewards annotation. It is considered by many scholars to be among the most accurate of the modern translations while remaining genuinely readable.

If you are coming to The Meditations for the first time and want something that balances accessibility with fidelity, Waterfield is worth considering alongside Hays.

Which One for Rebind?

Derren Brown’s copy, the one held together with tape and covered in marginalia, is the Penguin version. And the approach he brings to The Meditations (a working document, returned to repeatedly, marked up in the margins, used as a practical tool) is most compatible with either the Hammond (for its balance of readability and accuracy) or the Hard (for its scholarly depth and included correspondence).

For a first reading alongside the Rebind commentary, any of the four main translations will serve. The most important thing, as Brown says, is simply to read it more than once, and to go back to it when you have something to bring to it.