Book I
I.1¶From my Grandfather Verus,1 a kindly disposition and sweetness of temper.
- 1.Namely, “I had an example of,” “was in the way to learn.” But the construction varies and sometimes a direct statement of characteristics is given. It is obvious that Marcus does not claim to possess all the good qualities enumerated.
I.2¶From what I heard of my Father2 and my memory of him, modesty and manliness.
- 2.Died before 136. The grandfather of Marcus (§ 1) died aged nearly 90 in 138 (Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus vi. 1; Life of Pius iv. 2).
The father is Marcus Annius Verus, who died while Marcus was a child; Haines gives only an outer limit for the date. The grandfather, also Marcus Annius Verus, is the “Grandfather Verus” of I.1. Capitolinus is one of the six purported authors of the Historia Augusta, a late-antique collection of Latin biographies of the emperors from Hadrian onward whose date and authorship are disputed; his lives of Marcus and of Antoninus Pius are Haines’s sources for the grandfather’s age and year of death.
I.3¶From my Mother, the fear of God, and generosity; and abstention not only from doing ill but even from the very thought of doing it; and furthermore to live the simple life,3 far removed from the habits of the rich.
- 3.Compare Aristides, To the King 115 (Jebb) διαίτης εὐτέλεια (of Marcus).
Aelius Aristides was a Greek orator of the 2nd century. To the King is a speech in praise of an emperor transmitted among his works, cited here by section in Samuel Jebb’s edition; the phrase diaitēs euteleia, “simplicity of living,” is used there of the emperor, whom Haines takes to be Marcus.
I.4¶From my Grandfather’s Father,4 to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home,5 and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.
- 4.Catilius Severus, urban prefect, who hoped to succeed Hadrian (Spartianus’s Life of Hadrian v. 10; xxiv. 6).
Catilius Severus was Marcus’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side; the Historia Augusta records that he was twice consul and urban prefect (praefectus urbi), and that he hoped to succeed the emperor Hadrian. Spartianus, like Capitolinus, is one of the purported authors of the Historia Augusta.
- 5.Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus (ii. 3–iii. 4) gives a list of these.
Capitolinus’s list runs from Marcus’s first teachers of letters, music, and geometry through his grammarians (among them Alexander of Cotiaeum), his teachers of rhetoric (among them Herodes Atticus and Fronto), and his philosophers (among them Apollonius of Chalcedon, Sextus of Chaeronea, Junius Rusticus, Claudius Maximus, and Cinna Catulus). Several of these are the teachers Marcus thanks in I.6–I.15.
I.5¶From my Tutor,6 not to side with the Green Jacket or the Blue7 at the races, or to back the Light-Shield Champion or the Heavy-Shield in the lists; not to shirk toil,8 and to have few wants, and to do my own work, and mind my own concerns; and to turn a deaf ear to slander.
- 6.The name has perhaps dropped out. Capitolinus’s Life of Pius x. 5 has an anecdote of the death of the educator of Marcus, but Aristides in his funeral oration on Alexander of Cotiaeum calls the latter not only διδάσκαλος but τροφεὺς to Marcus and Verus (Jebb’s edition § 149). But he is mentioned below § 10.
Marcus’s Greek has tropheus, “the one who brought me up,” with no name, which Haines renders “Tutor”; educator, the word Capitolinus uses, is the Latin equivalent. Aristides, in his funeral oration for Alexander of Cotiaeum, calls Alexander both didaskalos, “teacher,” and tropheus of Marcus and Lucius Verus, but Alexander is thanked separately in I.10.
- 7.Capitolinus’s Life of Verus vi. 2; Malalas xi., near the end.
Chariot racing at Rome was contested by teams identified by colour, and their partisans were known by it; the Green Jacket and the Blue are two of these, as the Light-Shield and Heavy-Shield champions are rival types of gladiator. John Malalas was a 6th-century Greek chronicler from Antioch. Capitolinus’s Life of Verus vi. 2 records that Lucius Verus was insulted by the Blues for openly taking sides against them.
- 8.Dio’s Roman History (71. 6, § 2) calls Marcus φιλόπονος.
Cassius Dio, a Greek senator from Bithynia, wrote his Roman History in the early 3rd century; the books covering Marcus’s reign survive mainly in an abridgment made in the 11th century by the Byzantine John Xiphilinus. Dio’s word is philoponos, “fond of toil”; Marcus’s own word here is phereponos, “enduring toil,” which Haines renders “not to shirk toil.”
I.6¶From Diognetus,9 not to be taken up with trifles; and not to give credence to the statements of miracle-mongers and wizards10 about incantations and the exorcizing of demons,11 and such-like marvels; and not to keep quails, nor to be excited about such things: not to resent plain speaking; and to become familiar with philosophy and be a heaver first of Baccheius, then of Tandasis and Marcianus; and to write dialogues as a boy; and to set my heart on a pallet-bed and a pelt12 and whatever else tallied with the Greek regimen.
- 9.A Diognetus taught Marcus painting (Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus iv. 9).
Capitolinus names a Diognetus as Marcus’s teacher of painting at iv. 9. Haines’s “A Diognetus” leaves open whether this is the same man Marcus thanks here.
- 10.Compare Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus xiii. 6; Dio’s Roman History 71. 9, § 2 (Xiphilinus).
Capitolinus xiii. 6 tells of a man who, during the preparations for the Marcomannic War, preached from a wild fig tree on the Campus Martius that fire would fall from heaven and the world would end. The passage of the historian Cassius Dio, marked “(Xiphilinus)” because it belongs to the abridger rather than to Dio, concerns the “Rain Miracle” of the war against the Quadi, which Dio credited to the Egyptian magician Arnuphis and Xiphilinus to the prayers of Christian soldiers.
- 11.Undoubtedly refers to the Christians, see Justinian’s Digest L. 13. 1, § 3, and compare Justin Martyr, Apology ii. 6, of Rome itself. The Christians constantly boasted of their power to exorcize: Tertullian, Apology 23; Irenaeus ii. 6, § 2; Lactantius v. 21. Compare also the legend of Abercius and his visit to Rome to cure Lucilla.
The Digest is Justinian’s 6th-century compilation of excerpts from the Roman jurists. Justin Martyr’s second Apology, Tertullian’s Apology, Irenaeus’s Against Heresies, and Lactantius’s Divine Institutes are early Christian works, the last three cited for Christian claims to cast out demons; the legend of Abercius has him travel to Rome to cure Marcus’s daughter Lucilla of possession. Marcus’s text speaks only of “miracle-mongers and wizards”; the identification with Christians is Haines’s, and he takes up the subject at length in his note on Marcus and the Christians.
- 12.Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus ii. 6.
Capitolinus says that at twelve Marcus took up the dress of a philosopher and slept on the ground, until his mother persuaded him to sleep on a couch strewn with skins.
I.7¶From Rusticus,13 to become aware of the fact that I needed amendment and training for my character; and not to be led aside into an argumentative sophistry; nor compose treatises on speculative subjects, or deliver little homilies,14 or pose ostentatiously as the moral athlete or unselfish man; and to eschew rhetoric,15 poetry, and fine language; and not to go about the house in my robes, nor commit any such breach of good taste; and to write letters without affectation, like his own letter written to my mother from Sinuessa; to shew oneself ready to be reconciled to those who have lost their temper and trespassed against one, and ready to meet them halfway as soon as ever they seem to be willing to retrace their steps16; to read with minute care and not to be content with a superficial bird’s-eye view; nor to be too quick in agreeing with every voluble talker; and to make the acquaintance of the Memoirs of Epictetus, which he supplied me with out of his own library.
- 13.i. 17, §§ 4, 6. Compare Justinian’s Digest xlix. 1. 1, § 3, “Rusticus, our friend”; Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus iii. 3; Themistius, Orations xiii. 173c; Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Emperor, 1. 2.
Quintus Junius Rusticus, a Stoic philosopher, was consul for the second time in 162 and later urban prefect, in which office he condemned the Christian apologist Justin Martyr. Book I.17 names him twice more, among the teachers Marcus was glad to have known (§ 4) and as someone Marcus was often offended with (§ 6). The Digest passage quotes a rescript of Marcus and his co-emperor Lucius Verus that refers to him as “our friend, the urban prefect”; Capitolinus lists him among Marcus’s teachers as one “whom he both revered and followed”; Themistius is a Greek orator and philosopher of the 4th century; and the letter is by Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the orator who taught Marcus Latin rhetoric, and calls Rusticus a man “who would gladly surrender and sacrifice his life for your little finger.” Fronto’s correspondence with Marcus was rediscovered in the early 19th century and later translated by Haines himself.
- 14.λογάρια (ratiunculae). Compare Epictetus’s Discourses, i. 29. 55.
Logaria, a diminutive of logos: “petty arguments.” Ratiunculae is Haines’s Latin equivalent. Epictetus, a former slave who taught Stoic philosophy at Nicopolis in Greece, uses the same word in Discourses i. 29. 55, contrasting facility with such arguments with bearing witness to them in action; the Discourses are his pupil Arrian’s record of his teaching, and are probably the “Memoirs of Epictetus” that Rusticus lent Marcus.
- 15.i. 17, § 4. Compare Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Emperor, i. 2 (Naber’s edition p. 96); On Eloquence 3 (Naber’s edition p. 150). Dio’s Roman History (71. 35, § 1) says Marcus was ἀσκηθεὶς ἐν τοῖς ῥητορικοῖς λόγοις.
I.17 § 4 is Marcus’s thanks that he made no further progress in rhetoric and poetry. The two Fronto passages are cited by page in S. A. Naber’s 1867 edition of the correspondence; the historian Dio’s phrase, in translation: “trained in rhetorical speeches.”
- 16.As Marcus in the case of Herodes, see Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists ii. 12 (Kayser’s edition p. 243).
Herodes Atticus was a wealthy Athenian sophist, consul in 143, and Marcus’s tutor in Greek rhetoric. Philostratus, a Greek sophist of the early 3rd century, describes in his Lives of the Sophists (cited by page in Kayser’s edition) Herodes’ hearing before Marcus, at which Herodes spoke with open hostility and Marcus responded with restraint.
I.8¶From Apollonius,17 self-reliance and an unequivocal determination not to leave anything to chance; and to look to nothing else even for a moment save Reason alone; and to remain ever the same, in the throes of pain, on the loss of a child,18 during a lingering illness; and to see plainly from a living example that one and the same man can be very vehement and yet gentle: not to be impatient in instructing others; and to see in him a man who obviously counted as the least among his gifts his practical experience and facility in imparting philosophic truths; and to learn in accepting seeming favours from friends19 not to give up our independence for such things nor take them callously as a matter of course.
- 17.Compare Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Caesar, v. 36. Capitolinus (Life of Pius x. 4) and Lucian (Demonax 31) shew him in a different light, as ill-mannered and avaricious. He is mentioned as Ἀντωνίνου ἑταῖρος by Epiphanius.
Apollonius of Chalcedon was a Stoic philosopher whom Antoninus Pius summoned to Rome to teach Marcus. Capitolinus’s Life of Pius x. 4 records his refusal to come to the palace, and Pius’s remark that it was easier for Apollonius to travel from Chalcis (as the Historia Augusta gives his home) to Rome than from his house to the palace. Lucian, the 2nd-century Greek satirist, has the Cynic philosopher Demonax describe Apollonius leaving for Rome with his students as “Apollonius and his Argonauts”; Epiphanius calls him Antōninou hetairos, “companion of Antoninus.”
- 18.See the behaviour of Marcus on the death of M. Annius Verus, aged 7, at Praeneste in 169 (Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus xxi. 3), and on the death of his first-born son T. Aelius Antoninus soon after birth in 147 (Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, Boeckh 3176). Compare Dio’s Roman History 71. 34, § 5.
Capitolinus records that Marcus mourned his son Annius Verus, who died at Praeneste after an operation on a tumour below the ear, for no more than five days, and gave time to public business even during that period. August Boeckh’s Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, a 19th-century collection of Greek inscriptions, is cited by number for an inscription recording the death of Marcus’s first son.
- 19.Compare Fronto’s letter to Appian (Naber’s edition p. 246).
Appian of Alexandria, the Greek historian of Rome’s wars, was a friend of Fronto. Their surviving exchange concerns gifts between friends: Appian offered Fronto a gift of slaves, and Fronto declined it.
I.9¶From Sextus,20 kindliness, and the example of a household patriarchally governed; and the conception of life in accordance with Nature; and dignity without affectation; and an intuitive consideration for friends; and a toleration of the unlearned and the unreasoning.
And his tactful treatment of all his friends, so that simply to be with him was more delightful than any flattery, while at the same time those who enjoyed this privilege looked up to him with the utmost reverence; and the grasp and method which he shewed in discovering and marshalling the essential axioms of life.
And never to exhibit any symptom of anger or any other passion, but to be at the same time utterly impervious to all passions and full of natural affection; and to praise without noisy obtrusiveness, and to possess great learning but make no parade of it.
- 20.Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus iii. 1. He was of Chaeronea and grandson of Plutarch; compare the Suda under his entry: “He was held in such honour by the Emperor as to act as his assessor on the bench.”
Sextus was a philosopher from Chaeronea in Boeotia and a relative of Plutarch, the Greek biographer and essayist from the same town. Capitolinus’s word for the relation, nepos, can mean either “grandson” or “nephew,” and ancient sources differ. The Suda is a 10th-century Byzantine Greek encyclopedia; an assessor was a legal adviser who sat with a magistrate hearing cases.
I.10¶From Alexander the Grammarian,21 not to be captious; nor in a carping spirit find fault with those who import into their conversation any expression which is barbarous or ungrammatical or mispronounced, but tactfully to bring in the very expression, that ought to have been used, by way of answer, or as it were in joint support of the assertion, or as a joint consideration of the thing itself and not of the language, or by some such graceful reminder.
- 21.Of Cotiaeum, see Aristides, Orations xii. 142 ff. (Jebb’s edition). He lived to a great age. He was in Rome in 145 (see the same oration, §159) and resided at the palace (§§ 148, 154). See above on i. 5.
Alexander of Cotiaeum, in Phrygia, was a grammarian, and Capitolinus lists him as Marcus’s teacher of Greek grammar. The Aristides oration is his funeral speech for Alexander; the cross-reference to I.5 is to Haines’s note there, where the same speech calls Alexander Marcus’s tropheus.
I.11¶From Fronto, to note the envy, the subtlety, and the dissimulation which are habitual to a tyrant; and that, as a general rule, those amongst us who rank as patricians are somewhat wanting in natural affection.22
- 22.See Fronto’s letter to Verus, ii. 7 (Naber’s edition, p. 135; compare p. 231). Marcus acknowledges greater debts to Fronto elsewhere, for example his letter to Marcus as Caesar, iii. 12: Verum dicere ex te disco. Ea re prorsum dis hominibusque ardua.
Marcus’s Greek word for “wanting in natural affection” is astorgoteroi, the negative of philostorgos, “affectionate”; in the letter to Lucius Verus, Fronto remarks that Latin has no word for philostorgia because no one at Rome truly feels it. The Latin quotation is from a letter of Marcus to Fronto: “From you I learn to speak the truth, a thing hard indeed for gods and men.”
I.12¶From Alexander the Platonist,23 not to say to anyone often or without necessity, nor write in a letter, I am too busy, nor in this fashion constantly plead urgent affairs as an excuse for evading the obligations entailed upon us by our relations towards those around us.
- 23.See Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists ii. 5, p. 247, Kayser’s edition. He was summoned by Marcus to Pannonia about 174 and made his Greek secretary.
Alexander was a sophist nicknamed Peloplaton, “Clay Plato.” As Greek secretary (ab epistulis Graecis) he handled the emperor’s correspondence in Greek; Pannonia was the Roman province on the middle Danube where Marcus spent much of the Marcomannic Wars.
I.13¶From Catulus,24 not to disregard a friend’s expostulation even when it is unreasonable, but to try to bring him back to his usual friendliness; and to speak with whole-hearted good-will of one’s teachers, as it is recorded that Domitius25 did of Athenodotus; and to be genuinely fond of one’s children.
- 24.A Stoic, see Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus iii. 2.
Cinna Catulus appears in Capitolinus’s list of Marcus’s Stoic teachers alongside Sextus, Rusticus, and Maximus.
- 25.Domitii were among the maternal ancestors of Marcus, and an Athenodotus was Fronto’s teacher (letter to Marcus as Caesar, iv. 12; Naber’s edition p. 73).
Marcus’s mother was Domitia Lucilla, hence Haines’s suggestion that the Domitius here belongs to her family; neither Domitius nor Athenodotus can be identified with certainty.
I.14¶From my ‘brother’ Severus,26 love of family, love of truth, love of justice, and (thanks to him!) to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, Brutus; and the conception of a state with one law for all, based upon individual equality and freedom of speech, and of a sovranty which prizes above all things the liberty of the subject; and furthermore from him also to set a well-balanced and unvarying value on philosophy; and readiness to do others a kindness, and eager generosity, and optimism, and confidence in the love of friends; and perfect openness in the case of those that came in for his censure; and the absence of any need for his friends to surmise what he did or did not wish, so plain was it.
- 26.See Index II. He was father of the son-in-law of Marcus.
Haines’s index identifies Severus as probably the father of the Claudius Severus who married one of Marcus’s daughters, and possibly the Peripatetic philosopher Severus whom Capitolinus lists among Marcus’s teachers. The five names Severus introduced to Marcus are figures remembered for opposing tyranny: Cato the Younger and Brutus, opponents of Julius Caesar; Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus, Stoic senators under Nero and Vespasian; and Dion, generally taken to be Dion of Syracuse, opponent of the tyrant Dionysius II, though Haines’s index suggests Dio Chrysostom as the better match.
I.15¶From Maximus,27 self-mastery and stability of purpose; and cheeriness in sickness as well as in all other circumstances; and a character justly proportioned of sweetness and gravity; and to perform without grumbling the task that lies to one’s hand.
And the confidence of every one in him that what he said was also what he thought, and that what he did was done with no ill intent. And not to shew surprise, and not to be daunted; never to be hurried, or hold back, or be at a loss, or downcast, or smile a forced smile, or, again, be ill-tempered or suspicious.
And beneficence28 and placability and veracity; and to give the impression of a man who cannot deviate from the right way rather than of one who is kept in it29; and that no one could have thought himself looked down upon by him, or could go so far as to imagine himself a better man than he; and to keep pleasantry within due bounds.
- 27.i. 16, § 9; viii. 25. See Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus iii. 2; Index II.
Maximus is Claudius Maximus, a Stoic philosopher and senator. I.16 § 9 cites Maximus’s illness as an instance of “a perfect and indomitable soul,” and VIII.25 records his death and that of his wife Secunda; Capitolinus, Life of Marcus iii. 2, lists him among Marcus’s Stoic teachers, and Index II is Haines’s Index of Proper Names. Haines’s index identifies him with the proconsul of Africa before whom Apuleius was tried for magic, praised as vir sanctissimus, “a most upright man,” in Apuleius’s Apology.
- 28.Marcus raised a temple to Εὐεργεσία, a new deity. See Dio’s Roman History 71. 34, § 3.
Euergesia is Greek for “beneficence,” the quality named in Marcus’s text at this point, here personified as a goddess.
- 29.Compare iii. 5.
I.16¶From my Father,30 mildness, and an unshakable adherence to decisions deliberately come to; and no empty vanity in respect to so-called honours; and a love of work and thoroughness; and a readiness to hear any suggestions for the common good; and an inflexible determination to give every man his due; and to know by experience when is the time to insist and when to desist; and to suppress all passion for boys.31
And his public spirit, and his not requiring his friends at all to sup with him or necessarily attend him abroad,32 and their always finding him the same when any urgent affairs had kept them away; and the spirit of thorough investigation which he shewed in the meetings of his Council, and his perseverance; nay his never desisting prematurely from an enquiry on the strength of off-hand impressions; and his faculty for keeping his friends and never being bored with them or infatuated about them; and his self-reliance in every emergency, and his good humour; and his habit of looking ahead and making provision for the smallest details without any heroics.
And his restricting in his reign public acclamations and every sort of adulation; and his unsleeping attention to the needs of the empire, and his wise stewardship of its resources, and his patient tolerance of the censure that all this entailed; and his freedom from superstition with respect to the Gods and from hunting for popularity with respect to men by pandering to their desires or by courting the mob: yea his soberness in all things33 and stedfastness; and the absence in him of all vulgar tastes and any craze for novelty.
And the example that he gave of utilizing without pride, and at the same without any apology, all the lavish gifts of Fortune that contribute towards the comfort of life, so as to enjoy them when present as a matter of course, and, when absent, not to miss them and no one could charge him with sophistry, flippancy,34 or pedantry; but he was a man mature, complete,35 deaf to flattery, able to preside over his own affairs and those of others.
Besides this also was his high appreciation of all true philosophers without any upbraiding of the others, and at the same time without any undue subservience to them; then again his easiness of access and his graciousness that yet had nothing fulsome about it; and his reasonable attention to his bodily requirements, not as one too fond of life, or vain of his outward appearance,36 nor yet as one who neglected it, but so as by his own carefulness to need but very seldom the skill of the leech or medicines and outward applications.
But most of all a readiness to acknowledge without jealousy the claims of those who were endowed with any especial gift, such as eloquence or knowledge of law or ethics or any other subject, and to give them active support, that each might gain the honour to which his individual eminence entitled him and his loyalty to constitutional precedent without any parade of the fact that it was according to precedent.
Furthermore he was not prone to change or vacillation, but attached to the same places and the same things; and after his spasms of violent headache he would come back at once to his usual employments with renewed vigour; and his secrets were not many but very few and at very rare intervals, and then only political secrets; and he shewed good sense and moderation in his management of public spectacles, and in the construction of public works, and in congiaria37 and the like, as a man who had an eye to what had to be done and not to the credit to be gained thereby.
He did not bathe at all hours; he did not build for the love of building; he gave no thought to his food, or to the texture and colour of his clothes, or the comeliness of his slaves. His robe came up from Lorium, his country-seat in the plains, and Lanuvium supplied his wants for the most part. Think of how he dealt with the customs’ officer at Tusculum when the latter apologized, and it was a type of his usual conduct.
There was nothing rude in him, nor yet overbearing or violent nor carried, as the phrase goes, “to the sweating state”; but everything was considered separately, as by a man of ample leisure, calmly, methodically, manfully, consistently. One might apply to him what is told of Socrates,38 that he was able to abstain from or enjoy those things that many are not strong enough to refrain from and too much inclined to enjoy. But to have the strength to persist in the one case and be abstemious in the other39 is characteristic of a man who has a perfect and indomitable soul, as was seen in the illness of Maximus.
- 30.Here Pius, his adoptive father, is meant, not as above (i. 2) his father Verus. For a first sketch of this eulogy of Pius see below vi. 30.
Antoninus Pius was emperor from 138 to 161; at Hadrian’s direction he adopted Marcus in 138, and Marcus succeeded him. The distinction Haines draws is marked in the Greek, where I.2 has ho gennēsas, “the one who begot me,” and this section ho patēr, “the father.” VI.30 is a shorter portrait of Pius, in which Marcus urges himself to act in everything as Antoninus’s disciple.
- 31.It is not quite clear whether this means that Pius had put away this vice from himself or others, but the active verb seems rather to favour the latter view. Capitolinus’s Life of Pius ii. 1 calls him clarus moribus (compare also Aurelius Victor’s On the Caesars xv.), but Julian says he was σώφρων οὐ τὰ ἐς Ἀφροδίτην.
Capitolinus calls Pius clarus moribus, “distinguished in character.” Aurelius Victor was a Latin historian whose On the Caesars is a short history of the emperors. Julian, emperor from 361 to 363, wrote the satire The Caesars, in which the gods judge past emperors; there he calls Pius sōphrōn ou ta es Aphroditēn, “temperate, but not in matters of love.”
- 32.Compare Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Caesar, iii. 20; v. 44.
- 33.Compare St. Paul, 2 Timothy iv. 5.
In 2 Timothy 4:5 Paul tells Timothy to “watch thou in all things” (King James); the Greek verb is nēphe, literally “be sober,” the phrase Haines uses here in translating Marcus.
- 34.Literally, that he was a “home-bred slave,” that is, impudent.
Marcus’s word is ouernaklos, a Greek spelling of the Latin vernaculus, from verna, a slave born in the household.
- 35.Julian calls Marcus τετράγωνος—“a man foursquare.”
Marcus’s own word here is teleios, which Haines renders “complete.” The parallel is from Julian’s The Caesars, where Dionysus describes Marcus, quoting the poet Simonides, as “four-square and made without a flaw”; Julian’s word is tetragōnos, literally “four-cornered.”
- 36.Capitolinus (Life of Pius xiii. 1) says he wore stays to keep himself upright in old age.
Capitolinus, Life of Pius xiii. 1, says that Pius, tall and stooping in old age, had splints of lime-wood bound to his chest so that he could walk upright.
- 37.Literally, “distributions.” Compare Capitolinus’s Life of Pius iv. 9; viii. 11.
A congiarium (from congius, a liquid measure) was a distribution of money or goods by the emperor to the people of Rome.
- 38.Xenophon’s Memorabilia I. 3, § 15. πολλοὶ would here seem = οἱ πολλοί.
Xenophon’s Memorabilia (4th century BC) is his collection of recollections of Socrates. Haines’s Greek note reads polloi, “many,” here as equivalent to hoi polloi, “the many,” that is, most people.
- 39.The Greek may also mean “To be strong and to persist without excess in each case is characteristic,” and ἑκατέρῳ suits this better.
I.17¶From the Gods, to have good grandfathers,40 good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good companions, kinsmen, friends—nearly all of them; and that I fell into no trespass against any of them, and yet I had a disposition that way inclined, such as might have led me into something of the sort,41 had it so chanced; but by the grace of God there was no such coincidence of circumstances as was likely to put me to the test.
And that I was not brought up any longer with my grandfather’s42 concubine, and that I kept unstained the flower of my youth; and that I did not make trial of my manhood before the due time, but even postponed it.
That I was subordinated to a ruler and a father capable of ridding me of all conceit, and of bringing me to recognize that it is possible to live in a Court and yet do without body-guards and gorgeous garments and linkmen and statues and the like pomp; and that it is in such a man’s power to reduce himself very nearly to the condition of a private individual and yet not on this account to be more paltry or more remiss in dealing with what the interests of the state require to be done in imperial fashion.
That it was my lot to have such a brother,43 capable by his character of stimulating me to watchful care over myself, and at the same time delighting me by his deference44 and affection: that my children have not been devoid of intelligence nor physically deformed. That I did not make more progress in rhetoric45 and poetry46 and my other studies, in which I should perhaps have been engrossed, had I felt myself making good way in them. That I lost no time in promoting my tutors to such posts of honour47 as they seemed to desire, and that I did not put them off with the hope that I would do this later on since they were still young. That I got to know Apollonius, Rusticus, Maximus.
That I had clear and frequent conceptions as to the true meaning of a life according to Nature,48 so that as far as the Gods were concerned and their blessings and assistance and intention, there was nothing to prevent me from beginning at once to live in accordance with Nature, though I still come short of this ideal by my own fault, and by not attending to the reminders, nay, almost the instructions, of the Gods.
That my body holds out so long in such a life as mine49; that I did not touch Benedicta or Theodotus, but that even afterwards, when I did give way to amatory passions, I was cured of them; that, though often offended with Rusticus, I never went so far as to do anything for which I should have been sorry; that my mother,50 though she was to die young, yet spent her last years with me.
That as often as I had the inclination to help anyone, who was in pecuniary distress or needing any other assistance, I was never told that there was no money available for the purpose; and that I was never under any similar need of accepting help from another. That I have been blessed with a wife so docile,51 so affectionate, so unaffected;52 that I had no lack of suitable tutors for my children.
That by the agency of dreams53 I was given antidotes both of other kinds and against the spitting of blood and vertigo; and there is that response also at Caieta, “as thou shalt use it.” And that, when I had set my heart on philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of a sophist, nor sat down at the author’s desk, or became a solver of syllogisms, nor busied myself with physical phenomena. For all the above the Gods as helpers and good fortune need. Written among the Quadi on the Gran.54
- 40.That is, M. Annius Verus, three times consul (Dio’s Roman History 69. 21, § 1) and urban prefect (Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus i. 2), who died 138, and P. Calvisius Tullus, suffect consul 109. See Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus i. 3; Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Caesar, iii. 2.
Publius Calvisius Tullus was Marcus’s maternal grandfather, the father of Domitia Lucilla; the paternal grandfather, Annius Verus, is the “Grandfather Verus” of I.1. A suffect consul was one appointed to replace an ordinary consul partway through the year.
- 41.Compare i. 17, § 6; xi. 18, § 4.
- 42.Compare ix. 21. After his father’s death Marcus was brought up at his grandfather’s house (Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus i. 7). Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus (v. 3) says he migrated de maternis hortis much against his will to the imperial palace when adopted by Hadrian. It is possible but not likely that “grandfather” here means Hadrian.
Capitolinus’s de maternis hortis, “from his mother’s gardens,” refers to the family estate where Marcus had been living. Strictly, the adoption was by Antoninus Pius, at Hadrian’s direction, in 138.
- 43.L. Verus, whose character was more of a warning than an example, as Lucian’s Nigrinus 19 calls Rome for its wickedness γυμνάσιον ἀρετῆς; see Epictetus’s Discourses, iii. 20, § 11. Marcus seems to have been genuinely fond of him; see Fronto’s letter to Verus, ii. 1; letter to Marcus as Caesar, ii. 17; and compare Aristides, Panegyric at Cyzicus § 425 (Jebb).
Lucius Verus was Marcus’s adoptive brother and co-emperor from 161 to 169. Lucian’s Nigrinus 19 calls Rome gymnasion aretēs, “a training-ground for virtue,” because of its temptations, and Epictetus iii. 20 makes a similar point; the two Fronto letters and Aristides’ Panegyric at Cyzicus, cited by section in Jebb’s edition, are Haines’s evidence for Marcus’s affection for Verus.
- 44.Capitolinus’s Life of Verus viii. 5.
Capitolinus’s example of that deference: at the triumph the two emperors celebrated together, Verus shared with Marcus the titles that had been granted to him.
- 45.See i. 7.
- 46.I. 7. Compare Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Caesar, i. 8; letter to Marcus as Emperor, i. 2 (Naber’s edition p. 96); On Eloquence 3 (Naber’s edition p. 150).
- 47.For example, Rusticus, consul for the second time in 162, and urban prefect; Proculus, see Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus ii. 5.
Rusticus is the teacher of I.7. Capitolinus names Eutychius Proculus of Sicca among Marcus’s teachers of Latin grammar and says Marcus advanced him to a proconsulship.
- 48.See i. 9.
- 49.Dio’s Roman History 71. 36, § 3.
The historian Cassius Dio says that Marcus “was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles throughout practically his entire reign.”
- 50.Domitia Lucilla, daughter of P. Calvisius Tullus. She died in 156, aged about 50. For her see above i. 3; viii. 25; Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Caesar, iv. 6; Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus vi. 9. Her head appears on a coin of Nicaea in Bithynia.
Domitia Lucilla was Marcus’s mother, praised earlier at I.3; VIII.25 lists her among the dead in one of Marcus’s catalogues of mortality. The year of her death is not firmly attested.
- 51.Compare Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Caesar, v. 11.
- 52.Compare Fronto’s letter to Pius, 2, near the end, for Pius’ opinion of his daughter. The coiffure of the younger Faustina as seen on coins is much simpler than that of her mother. She was with Marcus in Pannonia for a time at least.
The younger Faustina, daughter of Antoninus Pius, was Marcus’s wife.
- 53.Compare Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Caesar, iii. 9, and below, ix. 27. Marcus himself became a dream-giver after his death; see Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus xviii. 7. Dreams were the recognised method by which the God of healing communicated his prescriptions. Belief in them was universal, and shared by the atheist Pliny, the sceptic Lucian, Aristides the devotee, Galen the scientist, Dio the historian and man of affairs. It is not unknown to Christians. Yet there have been found writers to gird at Marcus for his “superstitious” belief in dreams!
Capitolinus xviii. 7 records that after his death people claimed Marcus had foretold many things to them in dreams, which is Haines’s “dream-giver”; IX.27 is Marcus’s remark that the gods aid people “by dreams and oracles.” The god of healing is Asclepius, whose patients slept in his temples to receive prescriptions in dreams. Of the figures Haines lists, Pliny is Pliny the Elder, author of the Natural History; Galen was the leading physician of the age and attended Marcus; and Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales is an extended record of his own dream-cures.
- 54.These words may be intended either to conclude the first book or, more likely, head the second. In the former case, as Gataker points out, τάδε would have been usual, not τά.
The line, “Written among the Quadi on the Gran,” is a place-heading; Haines gives the river its German name, Gran, where the Greek has Granoua (Granua), the modern Hron, a northern tributary of the Danube in Slovakia. The Quadi were a Germanic people living north of the middle Danube, in what is now Slovakia and Moravia, and one of Rome’s principal opponents in the Marcomannic Wars (c. 166–180), which Marcus directed in person from the frontier for most of the 170s. Book II ends, in Haines’s text, with a similar heading, “Written at Carnuntum,” the Roman legionary base on the Danube in Pannonia. Haines’s footnote concerns which book the line belongs to: Thomas Gataker, the English scholar whose 1652 edition of the Meditations included a Latin translation and commentary, noted that a closing subscription would normally read tade, “these things,” rather than the bare article ta.