Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

vi MARCUS ANTONINUS
structure, and thought gain ease and freedom,
almost with each successive book. The first four
books abound in awkward and difficult Greek ; in
the last four stumbling - blocks are few. Yet
throughout the style is essentially the same. Its
'
physiognomy
'
is unmistakable ;
it wins insensibly
upon the reader, and becomes part of a familiar
personality ; the deliberateness, the restraint, the
struggle
between natural sentiment and Stoic
'
apathy,' are rich in suggestion and appeal ; the
words, as was said truly of St. Paul's, *
have hands
and feet.' The very sense of effort produces a
certain uncommonness of phrase, such as gives
interest and even distinction to an intelligent
foreigner using a tongue and idiom not wholly
familiar. Marcus hits off phrases and combina-
tions, which, if not quite felicitous,
strike the
mind and stick ; he never becomes rhetorical like
Seneca, or prolix like Epictetus, or glib like
Lucian ; and a certain choiceness of expression
lends impressiveness and charm. Throughout,
of sentiment
too, it may be said that the poetry
is in advance of the poetry of actual phrase. And
thus upon the whole the Thoughts may
bered among the books,
be num-
in which a translator