Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

cxliv INTRODUCTION SECT.
/The funeral notes, which culminate in the Nunc Dimittis
\of the closing book, are the knell of a dying age. Over
the tomb of Marcus, too, the historian might fitly inscribe
the mournful epitaph LAST OF HIS LINE. 1
Last of
Roman Stoics, he is also the last of Emperors in whom
the ancient stock of Roman virtue survived. He stood,
but half unconsciously, at the outgoings of an age, filled
with a sense of transitoriness in all things human, of
epochs, empires, dynasties as well as individuals passing
to dust and oblivion. The gloom of decadence
haunted and oppressed him. Rome was in truth
already bankrupt bankrupt in purse, bankrupt in
intellect, bankrupt in moral and even in animal vigour.
Power centred more and more in the hands of the
Chief of state, not because the Emperor strained after
prerogative, to which the whole bent of Marcus was
opposed, but because Senate and Patricians had lost
the capacity and almost the ambition for rule. When
the barbarian invaders knocked at the gates of Aquileia
the Emperor had to sell the imperial personalities to
raise funds for war; ravaged by plague, Italy could
not recruit her legions except from slaves and gladiators ;
the procreation of children seemed to fail ; and from
this time forth the face of the Campagna began to
assume the desolation of a place of tombs. Though
outwardly 'the Eternal City' stood in plenitude of
world -wide power, signs of the times declared the
beginning of the end. The golden pause of the
Antonine age is the moment of equilibrium before the
quickening acceleration of ' The Decline and Fall '
: its