Meditations V.5
Sharpness of wit men cannot praise thee for.7 Granted! Yet there are many other qualities of which thou canst not say: I had not that by nature.8 Well then, display those which are wholly in thy power, sterling sincerity, dignity, endurance of toil,9 abstinence from pleasure.10 Grumble not at thy lot, be content with little,11 be kindly, independent, frugal, serious, high-minded.12 Seest thou not how many virtues it is in thy power to display now, in respect of which thou canst plead no natural incapacity or incompatibility, and yet thou art. content still with a lower standard? Or art thou forced to be discontented, to be grasping, to flatter, to inveigh against the body, to play the toady and the braggart, and to be so unstable in thy soul, because forsooth thou hast no natural gifts? By the Gods, No! but long ere now couldest thou have shaken thyself free from all this and have lain under the imputation only, if it must be so, of being somewhat slow and dull of apprehension. And this too thou must amend with training and not ignore thy dulness or be in love with it.
- 7.vii. 67; compare Fronto’s letter to Marcus as Emperor, i. 2.
- 8.Compare Horace’s Epistles i. 1. 28–32.
Horace was the Roman lyric poet and satirist of the age of Augustus. In the lines cited from the first book of his Epistles he argues that inability to reach perfection is no reason to neglect what progress one can make: a man who cannot see as far as Lynceus should still treat his sore eyes.
- 9.Compare i. 5.
- 10.Compare Aristides, To the King § 114 (Jebb’s edition), of Marcus: οὐδεμίας ἡδονῆς ἡττημένος; and Fronto’s On the Holidays at Alsium, Naber’s edition p. 225: volpem facilius quis tibi quam voluptatem conciliaverit.
Aristides’ Greek, in translation: “overcome by no pleasure.” Fronto’s Latin plays on volpem, “fox,” and voluptatem, “pleasure”; in translation: “anyone could sooner make a fox your friend than pleasure.”
- 11.Compare i. 5; Julian’s The Caesars 427.
- 12.Or humble, if we read ἀμεγαλεῖον, but compare v. 9.