Meditations VIII.31

The court of Augustus—wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, kinsfolk, household, friends, Areius,³¹ Maecenas, physicians, haruspices—dead, the whole court of them! Pass on then to other records and the death not of individuals but of a clan, as of the Pompeii. And that well-known epitaph, Last of his race—think over it and the anxiety shewn by the man’s ancestors that they might leave a successor. But after all some one must be the last of the line—here again the dearth of a whole race!

• 31.Domestic philosopher to Augustus, as Rusticus was to Marcus. See Themistius, Orations v. 63d; xiii. 173c; Seneca’s Consolation to Marcia, § 4.

  The court is Augustus’s own; the wife and daughter are Livia and Julia. Areius of Alexandria was a Stoic philosopher at the court of Augustus. Seneca’s Consolation to Marcia is addressed to a mother mourning her son; in it Seneca recounts Areius’s consolation of Augustus’s wife Livia on the death of her son Drusus.