Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

v MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS cxvii
in his attachments, he found time even as Emperor to
keep up personal correspondence 1 with the circle of his
friends. The fidelity of Antoninus to Hadrian earned
him the sobriquet of Pius ; but the official assiduity of
2
Marcus was yet more unrelaxed in its devotion ;
during
three-and-twenty years, we read, he absented himself for
two nights only from the side of Antoninus ; he never
missed a meeting of the Senate, or left before its close ;
he would give days to the hearing of a single case, and
extended the days of assize to 230 in the year. His
intellectual traits were love of reading, 3
taste for
antiquities and history, 4 addiction to philosophy, and
extreme docility of temperament ; in manhood as in
youth *
'
he never dropped attendance upon lectures ;
Emperor he sat at the feet of Sextus and of Apollonius ;
he visited the schools of Smyrna and of Alexandria ;
endowed chairs of all the philosophies 6 at Athens. At
Eleusis he underwent solitary initiation. Citizens and
soldiers believed in the efficacy of his prayers, 7 as the
sculptures of the Antonine column to this day bear
witness. His self-distrust declared itself in the misgivings
with which he entered on the Caesarship, and in the
became the shrine to which all the brides and bridegrooms of
Rome repaired to make their nuptial vows (Dio. Cass. 71, 31)
a more significant testimony than coins, or votive memorials, or
ceremonial apotheosis.
1 i. 12.
2 Cf. i. 16.
3 ii. 2, 3 ; xi. 7.
4 Cf. i. 14; iii. 14; iv. 32, 33; vii. i; viii. 3, 25, 31, 37;
x. 27, 37 ; xii. 27.
5 i. 8, 9, 17.
6 i. 12; ii. 10, 15; vii. 64; ix. 41: and various quotations
recognise non-Stoic schools. Cf. bfj.oda.ft.velv, ^77 o/j-odoy/JUTeiv, xi. 8.
7
vi. 23, 44 ; ix. 40 ; x. 36.
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5
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