he released his friends from all obligation to sup with him or to attend him of necessity when he went abroad, and those who had failed to accompany him, by reason of any great circumstances, always found him the same. I observed too his habit of careful inquiry in all matters of deliberation, and his persistency, and that he never stopped his investigation through being satisfied with appearances which first present themselves; and that his disposition was to keep his friends, and not to be soon tired of them, nor yet to be extravagant in his affection; and to be satisfied on all occasions, and cheerful; and to foresee things a long way off, and to provide for the smallest without display; and to check immediately popular applause and all flattery; and to be ever watchful over the things which were necessary for the administration of the empire, and to be a good manager of the expenditure, and patiently to endure the blame which he got for such conduct; and he was neither superstitious with respect to the gods, nor did he court men by gifts or by trying to please them, or by flattering the populace; but he showed sobriety in all things and firmness, and never any mean thoughts or action, nor love of novelty. And the things which conduce in any way to the commodity of life, and of which fortune gives an abundant supply, he used without arrogance and without excusing himself, so that when he had them he enjoyed them without affectation, and when he had them not he did not want them. No one could ever say of him that he was either a sophist, or a (home-bred) flippant slave, or a pedant; but every one acknowledged him to be a man ripe, perfect, above flattery, able to manage his own and other men's affairs. Besides this, he honored those who were true philosophers, and he did not reproach those who pretended to be philosophers, nor yet was he easily led by them. He was also easy in conversation, and he made himself agreeable without any offensive affectation. He took a reasonable care of his body's health, not as one who was greatly attached to life, nor out of regard to personal appearance, nor yet in a careless way, but so that through his own attention he very seldom stood in need of the physician's art or of medicine or external applications. He was most ready to give way without envy to those who possessed any particular faculty, such as that of eloquence or knowledge of the law or of morals, or of anything else; and he gave them his help, that each might enjoy reputation according to his deserts; and he always acted comformably to the institutions of his country, without showing any affectation of doing so. Further, he was not fond of change, nor unsteady, but he loved to stay in the same places, and to employ himself about the same things; and after his paroxysms of headache he came immediately fresh and vigorous to his usual occupations. His secrets were not many, but very few and very rare, and these only about public matters; and he showed prudence and economy ins the exhibition of the public spectacles and the construction of public buildings, his donations to the people, and in such things, for he was a man who looked to what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts. He did not take the bath at unseasonable hours; he was not fond of building houses, nor curious about what he ate, nor about the texture and color of his clothes, nor about the beauty of his slaves. His dress came from Lorium, his villa on the coast, and from Lanuvium1 generally. We know how he behaved to the toll-collector at Tusculum who asked his pardon; and such was all his behavior. There was in him nothing harsh, nor implacable, nor violent, nor, as one may say, anything carried to the sweating point; but he examined all things severally, as if he had abundance of time, and without confusion, in an orderly way, vigorously and consistently. And that might be applied to him which is recorded of Socrates,2 that he was able both to abstain from and to enjoy those things which many are too weak to abstain from and cannot enjoy without excess. But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul, such as he showed in the illness of Maximus. 17. To the gods I am indebted for having good grand- Religious fathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good and moral training. associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly every thing good. Further, I owe it to the gods that I was not hurried 1 A villa on the coast north of Rome. Antoninus was brought up there. 2 Xenophon, Memorabilia, I., 3, 15. His grati blessings conferred by the gods. into any offence against any of them, though I had a disposition which, if opportunity had offered, might have led me to do something of this kind; but through their favor there never was such a concurrence of circumstances as put me to the trial. Further, I am thankful to the gods that I was not longer brought up with my grandfather's concubine, . . . and that I was subjected to a ruler and a father who was able to take away all pride from me, and to bring me to the knowledge that it is possible for a man to live in a palace without wanting either guards or embroidered dresses, or torches and statues, and such-like show; but that it is in such a man's power to bring himself very near to the fashion of a private person, without being for this reason either meaner in thought or more remiss in action with respect to the things which must be done for the public interest in a manner that befits a ruler. I tude for the thank the gods for giving me such a brother, who was able by his moral character to rouse me to vigilance over myself, and who at the same time pleased me by his respect and affection; that my children have not been stupid nor deformed in body; that I did not make more proficiency in rhetoric, poetry, and the other studies, in which I should perhaps have been completely engaged if I had seen that I was making progress in them; that I made haste to place those who brought me up in the station of honor which they seemed to desire, without putting them off with hope of my doing it some time after, because they were then still young; that I knew Apollonius, Rusticus, Maximus; that I received clear and frequent impressions about living according to nature, and what kind of a life that is, so that so far as depended on the gods, and their gifts, and help, and inspirations, nothing hindered me from forthwith living according to nature, though I still fall short of it through my own fault and through not observing the admonitions of the gods, and I may almost say, their direct instructions; that my body has held out so long in such kind of life; that I never touched either Benedicta or Theodotus, and that after having fallen into amatory passions I was cured; and, though I was often out of humor with Rusticus, I never did any thing of which I had occasion to repent; that though it was my mother's fate to die young, she spent the last years of her life with me; that whenever I wished to help any man in his need, or on any other occasion, I was never told that I had not the means of doing it; and that to myself the same necessity never happened to receive any thing from another; that I have such a wife, so obedient, and so affectionate, and so simple; that I had abundance of good masters for my children; and that remedies have been shown to me by dreams, both others, and against bloodspitting and giddiness;1. . . and that when I had an inclination to philoso+ Escape from phy I did not fall into the hands of any sophists, and that a literary I did not waste my time on writers (of histories), or in the resolution of syllogisms, or occupy myself about the investigation of appearances in the heavens; for all these things require the help of the gods and fortune. Among the Quadi at the Granua.2 1 Probably written during the war with the Quadi. They lived in what is now the southern part of Bohemia. The Granua flows into the Danube. 2 Text is corrupt. education. V. THE THIRD PERIOD: THE HELLENIZED ROMAN EDUCATION The Period in which the Hellenized education dominated without causing a complete extinction of the old Roman virility, includes the last century of the Republic and the first century and a half or two centuries of the Empire. Within that period profound changes occurred, though education had not yet become a purely artificial and lifeless affair, nor Roman stability and morality, a thing of the past. This period comprises the Ciceronian, the Augustan, and the "Silver Age" of Latin literature. During this period the Romans attained to whatever merits they possessed of literary and artistic character. It covers that time wherein their great genius for assimilation and organization was directed into purely intellectual channels. During this time Grecian educational ideas and practices were modified to fit Roman conditions, and a characteristic education resulted. This differed in content from the Grecian, for the Romans were too practical to be able to obtain liberalizing results from music and gymnastic, and too sedate to tolerate much that was thoroughly characteristic of the Greek. Education though much better organized and systematized than with the Greek, was in its method less thoroughly rationalized; for with the Romans education remained essentially a training process. The sources given in this section are all drawn from the literature of the early im |