Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

cxiv INTRODUCTION SECT.
philosopher was king,' and the experience is recorded
for all time. Behind the mask of monarchy the man's
lineaments are disclosed ; we overhear the wistful affec-
tions and the lone regrets, the sense of personal short-
coming 1 and wasted endeavour, the bitterness of
aspirations baffled and protests unheeded, the confessions
of despondency and sometimes of disgust, 2 we
realise the exhausting tedium of 'life at Court lived
well,' 3 the profound ennui of autocracy in its enforced
companionship with intrigue and meanness and malice
and self-seeking, 4 the stern demands of duty hampered
by power and realised in renunciation, the pride and the
patience, the weakness and the strength, the busy loneli-
ness, 6 the mournful serenity, the daily death in life, of
the Imperial sage.
Throughout, the Thoughts are homogeneous, one of
the simplest and sincerest self-presentments ever penned,
'the most human' Renan calls them 'of all books.'
This results at once from the characteristic limitations
of ethical appeal and the wide comprehensiveness of
application. Tradition has preserved for us the figure
of the apostle of love, aged with labours, and in his
last days summarising the lore of life and holiness in
the reiterated charge, '
Little children, love one another.'
And there is something of the same insistence, the
same arresting monotony of note in the very different
message
of Marcus the recurrent reference of each
1
ii. 4, 6 ; v. 9 ; viii. I ; x. 8.
2 iv. 28; vii. 21, 36 ; viii. 20, 24 ; ix. 17, 24.
3 v. 16.
4 E.g. ii. I ; v. 10 ; ix. 3, 27, 29, 30, 34, 42 ; x. 8, 9, 13, 36.
5 ix. 29 ; x. 9, 13.