A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

5IO Period of the Five Good Emperors
tertained by tragedies, comedies, and farces, as well as by
harp music, reading, and poetry. His villa at Tibur he
built with such wonderful art that one could find in it
representations of celebrated places, as the Lyceum, the
Academy, the Prytaneum, Canopus, Tempe,—and that
nothing might be wanting, an imitation of the realm of
death.
IV.
Some of the Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus
From his
parents and
teachers.
Marcus
Aurelius,
Meditations,
i. 2-9, 12, 14.
Harmony
with nature.
Meditations,
iii. 7.
76. iii. 13.
Ih. iv. 7.
lb. iv. 23.
From the reputation and remembrance of my father I
learned modesty and manliness.
From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence
not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; simplicity,
too, in my way of living, far removed from the
habits of the rich.
Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall
compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect,
to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite,
to desire anything which needs walls and curtains.
As physicians have always their instruments and knives
ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so do
thou have principles ready for the understanding of things
divine and human, and for doing everything, even the smallest,
with a recollection of the bond which unites the divine
and human to each other.
For neither wilt thou do anything
well which pertains to man without at the same time
having a reference to things divine; or the contrary.
Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the
complaint, "I have been harmed." Take away the complaint,
"I have been harmed," and the harm is taken away.
Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to
thee, Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late,