The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

MARCUS AURELIUS 237
the most interesting of the record of his outward life is
that which the first book of this work supplies, where he
gives an account of his education, recites the names of
those to whom he is indebted for it, and enumerates his
obligations to each of them. It is a refreshing and
consoling picture, a priceless treasure for those, who,
sick of the wild and dreamlike trade of blood and guile,
which seems to be nearly the whole that history has to
offer to our view, seek eagerly for that substratum of
right thinking and well doing which in all ages must
surely have somewhere existed, for without it the con
tinued life of humanity would have been impossible.
From my mother I learnt piety and beneficence, and
abstinence not only from evil
deeds but even from evil
thoughts ; and further, simplicity in my way of living,
far removed from the habits of the rich. Let us remember
that, the next time we are reading the sixth satire of
Juvenal. From my tutor I learnt (hear it, ye tutors
of princes !)
endurance 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. The vices and foibles of the Greek sophist
or rhetorician the Grseculus esuriens are in everybody s
mind ;
but he who reads Marcus Aurelius s account of
his Greek teachers and masters, will understand how it
is that, in spite of the vices and foibles of individual
Grseculi, the education of the human race owes to Greece
a debt which can never be overrated. The vague and
colourless praise of history leaves on the mind hardly
any impression of Antoninus Pius ;
it is
only from the
private memoranda of his nephew that we learn what a
disciplined, hard-working, gentle, wise, virtuous man he
was ; a man who, perhaps, interests mankind less than
his immortal nephew only because he has left in writing
no record of his inner life caret quid vale sacro. Of the
outward life and circumstances of Marcus Aurelius, beyond