Meditations 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.