Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

iv STOICISM IN HISTORY xcvii
Column and the sculptures of the Triumphal Arch show
that traditions of good workmanship still lingered on.
Upon the intellectual side this huge material splendour
leans wholly on the past. It is an age of culture
and of decadence, not of production. The last Latin
writers Statius and Martial in verse, the Plinies,
Tacitus, Quintilian, Columella in prose belong to the
preceding period, and after them Latin literature sinks
to its lowest depths. Throughout the western world
for the first time it may be said for a thousand years
poetry ceased to exist. History sinks to the levels
of Suetonius and then expires; rhetoric decays into
the conceits of Fronto ; while the new literature of
Christianity is only in its cradle. The best work is
done by Greeks, and is mainly exegetical or scientific ;
though Plutarch, Lucian, and others, redeem the age
from total literary barrenness. But, on the other hand,
it is, beyond precedent, an age of schools and universi-
ties, of recitations and praelections, of hospitals and
orphanages; education,
for the first time treated as a
science by Quintilian, is on the moral side entrusted to
the philosopher, on the intellectual to the grammarian
and rhetorician.
The Stoic in his extremer form a Cynic every-
where predominates. He is the standing target for the
spleen of the Satirist or the mirth of the jester. He
was to be found in all places of public resort, in the
pulpit, in the drawing-room, and at Court. He is
not limited to the role of schoolmaster or pro-
fessor, but as private tutor, as secretary, and as ethical
adviser, becomes a familiar figure in the households of