Meditations 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.