The reality TV phase of Marcus Aurelius's life was mostly edited out of Meditations.

Startup idea: it's like Uber, but for philosophy. You put in your location, and within 15 minutes a philosopher shows up to argue with you about the nature of justice. I call it Ubermensch

I'm not normally one for conspiracies, but what if Marcus Aurelius was just a huge dickhead, but since he was emperor he forbid anyone from saying anything bad about him, and just had someone ghost write Meditations to make him look good? And the reason he made his son emperor was because he was the only one he could trust to make sure no one wrote about what a shithead he was after he died...