Meditations 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.