Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

xcvi INTRODUCTION SECT.
expelling the philosophers and laying all goodness under
ban, honour would nowhere any more rise and look
them in the face.' It was no wonder that, when
happier days dawned, a virtual monopoly of moral
education fell to a school whose doctrines were certified
thus.
Upon the material side the age of the Antonines
presents a picture of unsurpassed prosperity. Under
Hadrian Rome touched its zenith of material pomp and
affluence. The Forum was a blaze of temples, porticoes,
basilicas ; the Caesars' palaces crowned the Palatine ;
the Golden House of Nero had been superseded by the
yet more stupendous circles of the Colosseum ; the
Mausoleum of Hadrian rose in marble under the eyes
of the boy Marcus , forums, baths, theatres, aqueducts,
vied with each other in architectural magnificence.
Among all the remains of Pagan opulence, there is
none which so overpowers the imagination with sense of
profusion of scale as Hadrian's suburban villa,
still in
its ruins covering some eight square miles, with its maze
of triclinia, audience chambers, baths, and colonnades,
paved with mosaic, ceiled and enriched with scroll or
tracery or arabesque, its fountains of porphyry,
its fish-
ponds and lakes, its mimic landscapes reproducing
nature's choicest handiwork vales of Tempe, ravines of
Styx, harbours of Canopus and everywhere the niches
and pedestals provided for the unexhausted creations of
the sculptor's skill. Though
with the accession of the
Antonines outlay on public buildings and extravagance
in spectacles was much reduced, and imperial residences
dismantled to meet necessities of state, yet the Antonine