Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

cxxvi INTRODUCTION SECT.
where in the Thoughts there sounds a ring of martial
exhilaration it is associated with the word *
Roman.' l
He not only gave its Golden Age to Rome, but pushed
the empire to its furthest geographical extension. He
'
triumphed ' 2 over Parthians in the East, over Germans
and Sarmatians in the North ; through fourteen stubborn
years
of war he held and secured the marches of the
Danube ; the Antonine Column is no vain or boastful
trophy,
it is the monument of victories that secured to
the two last centuries out of which the new
the Empire
order of the world, East and West, was born. Softened
and chastened though it is by his age and the circumstances
of life and upbringing, his character is Roman
to the core, Roman in resolution and repression,
Roman in civic nobility and pride, Roman in tenacity
of imperial aim, Roman in respect for law, Roman in
self-effacement for service of the State.
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
hae tibi erunt artes pacisque imponere morem,
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.
One other trait of temperament is Roman religiousness
of mind. For poetry and literature, Rome borrowed
her mythology from Greece ; but for life and conduct,
belief centred upon embodiments of the divine as numina,
powers and influences rather than persons, regulating
all actions and phenomena. In their impersonal ubiquity
1
iii. 5 ; cf. ii. 5.
2 The Parthian triumph the first for sixty years was in 166,
with titles Parthicus, Medicus, Pater Patriae ; the Marcomannic,
following titles Germanicus and Sarmaticus, in 176.