Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

HIS EDUCATION. 61
His teachers were numerous and able, and his gratitude to
them was warm and profound. But there were too many of
them, and they helped to overweight his life. From
my grand
father Verus, he says, I learned good morals and the govern
ment of my temper. From the reputation and remembrance
of my father, modesty and a manly character. From my
mother piety and beneficence, and abstinence not only from
evil deeds but from evil thoughts, and, further, simplicity in
my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.
Then he goes on to give a long list of his instructors and a
very methodical, a too methodical, account of what he learned
from each. There was his great grandfather ;
there was his
governor from whom among other things he learned endur
ance of labour, and to want little, and to work with my own
hands, and not to meddle with other people s affairs, and not
to be ready to listen to slander. 1 Then follow Diognetus,
Bacchius, Tandasis, and Marcianus, who were his chief in
structors in Philosophy. Then from Kusticus he learned that
his character required improvement and discipline, and many
other things, among them, happily, to abstain from fine
writing ;
and he made him acquainted with the writings or
rather Memorials of Epictetus.
taught him freedom of will and undeviating
Then follows Apollonius who
steadiness of
purpose, and to look to nothing else, not even for a moment,
except to reason Sextus
; taught him a benevolent disposition ;
Alexander the grammarian to abstain from fault finding. From
Fronto he learnt that those who are called Patricians are
rather deficient in paternal affection much as amongst us
those who are called Christians are often sadly deficient in
Christianity then follow Alexander the Platonist, and Catulus,
;
and his brother Severus, with Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion,
and Brutus, from whose lives and recorded words he learned
idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity
1
Meditations, I. 15.
the