Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

v MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS cxxxix
it contemplates the comprehending unity, the thought
clothes itself in noble phraseology, and summons man,
'
'
to become the peer and fellow-citizen of god
as man,
and the sharer of his law and franchise. 1
Clearly this thought
'
of world-citizenship '
transcends )
political relationships of any narrower kind ; but yet the
political circumstances of his age and the personal
position from which the Emperor applied philosophy to
life, contributed to invest the formula with new con-
viction and reality. The realisation of a confederate
'world-city,' of a Civitas Dei upon earth coextensive
with the sway and genius of Rome, floats before the
vision of the Emperor as a consummation of worldhistory.
'
'
Rome, in the Golden Age of the Antonines, \
stood for Law and Order from the Euphrates to the
Atlantic, from the Northumbrian wall of Antoninus to /
Mount Atlas and the Tropic of Cancer. Already in the
hands of the great jurists, whose labours began to shape
the Perpetual Edict, the lex naturae^ which stands above
human caprice or national vicissitude, was becoming
formulated as ius naturale natural right, which Stoic
influences helped to secure as the moral basis of
Imperial
code law.
'
Cosmopolitanism,
the dream of
philosophers in the downfall of Greek independence,
becomes at last upon the throne of Roman Caesars a
proud self-consciousness of Rome's historic mission.'
This large recognition of the social tie makes Stoicism \
humane and catholic, redeeming it from the dryness, j
which resulted from the too exclusive emphasis on]
reason, and from the intolerance consequent on a purely/
i - *
1 vni. 2 ; x. I.