Emperor Marcus Aurelius is considered a humanist avant la lettre. But he acted with relentless severity against his enemies.

Andrew Tate thinks Marcus Aurelius is cool. "I'm a Stoic," said the podcaster, former kickboxer, and misogynist on a TV show. And he explained what he means by that: "Everything bad that happens to you becomes unlimited energy." Perhaps that's actually how you see it. Sort of. Tate knows the book written by the Stoic Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations." He listened to it as an audiobook in the sauna. And from it, he learned what Stoicism is all about: controlling your emotions.

Tate believes this fits seamlessly into his worldview. Because only men can control emotions, that's a given for him. And women don't like men who openly express their feelings. Stoicism, then, is a philosophy of strength. A school of emotional resilience. And a recipe for success. Thanks to Stoicism, he got his Bugatti, his yacht, and his private jet, Andrew Tat said in a podcast. Millions of young men were impressed. One follower posted: "Andrew Tate is the modern Marcus Aurelius."

Tate isn't the only one to cite the Roman emperor of the 2nd century AD, the man who went down in history as the "philosopher emperor." Even today, Marcus Aurelius remains one of the most famous figures of antiquity. Even during his lifetime, he was considered a model of a good ruler; some modern historians consider his era one of the happiest in world history. More is known about him than about almost any other emperor. And yet he remains an enigma. Two exhibitions in Trier explore the question of who Marcus Aurelius really was—and whether his reign can truly be described as exemplary.

The philosopher-emperor was never lacking in admiration. Voltaire considered him "the first among emperors and men," and for the Prussian King Frederick II, he was an "adorable hero." Helmut Schmidt received the "Meditations" as a confirmation gift and had them with him when he was sent to the Eastern Front as an officer in the summer of 1941. Schmidt, however, read them differently than Tate heard them: The Kaiser taught him serenity, he said. And the duty to follow one's own moral convictions. Schmidt's copy of the book, with handwritten annotations, is on display in the exhibition.

Marcus Aurelius's Meditations are among the world's best-selling books. They have enjoyed a real boom in recent years and are read by people who otherwise rarely engage with philosophical texts. Athletes draw inspiration from the emperor's thoughts during training, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs base their business strategies on them, and popular life coaches like Ryan Holiday have distilled from them four virtues that offer the key to a good life: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.

The emperor could never have imagined such success. He wrote for himself; he never considered publication. The "Meditations" are a kind of philosophical diary. Meditations by a man struggling to remain true to the principles to which he feels committed. Where the manuscript ended up after Marcus Aurelius's death, no one knows. At least a few copies survived the centuries, but the book never became part of the canon of philosophical literature. It is mentioned occasionally, among connoisseurs as an insider tip. The first printed edition appeared in Zurich in 1558, soon followed by translations into various languages, and the "Meditations" became a classic.

Strange, actually. It's a bulky book. Scattered notes, around five hundred short chapters, strung together without any discernible order. Brief memos, some only a few lines, the longest a full page. Reflections on humanity, on time, death, and transience. On right and wrong. Self-admonitions to be moderate in one's demands, to make reason the guideline of one's actions, and not to be distracted by a world in which everything is subject to constant change. Moral principles, some practical advice, and then quotations from Greek philosophers.

"Asia, Europe, corners of the universe, all the seas, drops of the universe," it says, for example, "the entire present a point in eternity. Everything small, changeable, vanishing within it." That is the underlying theme: what is today will be forgotten tomorrow, buildings crumble, people die: "The time is near when you will have forgotten everything, near the time when everyone will have forgotten you." That doesn't mean, however, that everything is the same; quite the opposite. Humans have a duty to recognize the nature of the world and to educate themselves to be the person they should be: honest, dutiful, just.

Marcus Aurelius, his ancient biographers write, felt drawn to philosophy even as a youth. He demonstrated this: He grew the beard characteristic of philosophers, preferred a coarse cloak to fine cloth, and slept on the floor, at least sometimes. It was already clear from his childhood that he would one day become emperor, even though he did not come from the imperial family. His father and grandfather were among the inner circle of advisors at court, and Emperor Hadrian took notice of the boy at an early age.

As a teenager, Marcus Aurelius was honored with public honors and assumed his first state offices. Over the course of Hadrian's reign, it became increasingly clear that he would play a role in Hadrian's succession planning. Emperors chose their successors through adoption, and before his death in 138 AD, Hadrian did so in a way that determined the situation for decades to come: He adopted a childless senator in his fifties, who was to ascend the throne under the name Antoninus Pius, and previously forced him to adopt two young men of his own: the seventeen-year-old Marcus Aurelius and, as co-regents in the second row, Lucius Verus, nine years his junior.

It took more than twenty years for them to come to power. In 161 AD, Antoninus Pius died after a reign of over twenty years. Marcus Aurelius took over. Out of duty, not inclination. His love remained for philosophy and literature. And he was completely unprepared for the task that would dominate the next few years: war. The Parthians invaded Armenia from Central Asia and destroyed a Roman army. They encountered little resistance. Marcus Aurelius sent Lucius Verus, whom he had previously appointed emperor with equal rights.

The danger was averted. But not for long. Rome was under pressure not only in the east, but also from the north. Germanic tribes, whose names were barely known in Rome, joined forces and exerted pressure. In isolated cases they even advanced as far as Italy. New legions had to be raised, for the first time in decades. That cost money. The emperor sold silverware to finance mobilization. That had never happened before. On top of that, an epidemic broke out. People spoke of the plague. What the disease was, no one knew . There was no cure; entire legions were wiped out.

In 169 AD, after years of war, Lucius Verus also fell victim to the plague. Marcus Aurelius himself had to go to war, a task that suited him even less than the day-to-day affairs of state. He was delicate and in poor health. But he did his duty. And he fulfilled it well. He spent more than ten years under arms at the front, longer than any other emperor since Augustus. He was rarely in Rome. The people valued him as a ruler who fulfilled the most important duty of an emperor: to protect his empire and his subjects.

After his death in 180 AD, Marcus Aurelius remained present in Rome as a warrior emperor: The equestrian statue on the Capitol depicts him as a general, and the monumental Victory Column in the Piazza Colonna depicts scenes from the war against the Marcomanni. It makes clear that the man who today sits on the imperial throne as a philosopher, a humanist avant la lettre, acted with relentless severity against his enemies. Barbarians were slaughtered in droves, women and children were not spared, and prisoners were shown no mercy.

"Do not make yourself a tyrant or another's slave," it says in the "Meditations." Humans are created to work together, like one body. Like hands, feet, and eyes. And one should always remember that oneself also makes mistakes. Perhaps the appeal of Marcus Aurelius's notes lies precisely in what resonates in them, without it being explicitly stated: Here is someone writing who knew he could not fulfill the demands he placed on himself. Because otherwise he would have failed in the mission he had as emperor.

The exhibitions "Marcus Aurelius: Emperor, General, Philosopher" at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Trier and "Marcus Aurelius – What is Good Government?" at the Stadtmuseum Simeonstift Trier are on display until November 23.