Meditations 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.”