CHAPTER I.

THE EDUCATION OF AN EMPEROR.

The life of the noblest of Pagan Emperors may well follow that of the noblest of Pagan slaves. Their glory shines the purer and brighter from the midst of a corrupt and deplorable society. Epictetus showed that a Phrygian slave could live a life of the loftiest exaltation; Aurelius proved that a Roman Emperor could live a life of the deepest humility. The one--a foreigner, feeble, deformed, ignorant, born in squalor, bred in degradation, the despised chattel of a despicable freedman, surrounded by every depressing, ignoble, and pitiable circumstance of life--showed how one who seemed born to be a wretch could win noble happiness and immortal memory; the other--a Roman, a patrician, strong, of heavenly beauty, of noble ancestors, almost born to the purple, the favourite of Emperors, the greatest conquerer, the greatest philosopher, the greatest ruler of his time-proved for ever that it is possible to be virtuous, and tender, and holy, and contented in the midst of sadness, even on an irresponsible and imperial throne. Strange that, of the two, the Emperor is even sweeter, more simple, more admirable, more humbly and touchingly resigned, than the slave. In him, Stoicism loses all its haughty self-assertion, all its impracticable paradox, for a manly melancholy which at once troubles and charms the heart. "It seems," says M. Martha, "that in him the philosophy of heathendom grows less proud, draws nearer and nearer to a Christianity which it ignored or which it despised, and is ready to fling itself into the arms of the 'Unknown God.' In the sad Meditations of Aurelius we find a pure serenity, sweetness, and docility to the commands of God, which before him were unknown, and which Christian grace has alone surpassed. If he has not yet attained to charity in all that fulness of meaning which Christianity has given to the word he has already gained its unction, and one cannot read his book, unique in the history of Pagan philosophy, without thinking of the sadness of Pascal and the gentleness of Fénélon. We must pause before this soul, so lofty and so pure, to contemplate ancient virtue in its softest brilliancy, to see the moral delicacy to which profane doctrines have attained--how they laid down their pride, and how penetrating a grace they have found in their new simplicity. To make the example yet more striking, Providence, which, according to the Stoics, does nothing by chance, determined that the example of these simple virtues should bloom in the midst of all human grandeur--that charity should be taught by the successor of blood stained Caesars, and humbleness of heart by an Emperor."

Aurelius has always exercised a powerful fascination over the minds of eminent men "If you set aside, for a moment, the contemplation of the Christian verities," says the eloquent and thoughtful Montesquieu, "search throughout all nature, and you will not find a grander object than the Antonines.... One feels a secret pleasure in speaking of this Emperor; one cannot read his life without a softening feeling of emotion. He produces such an effect upon our minds that we think better of ourselves, because he inspires us with a better opinion of mankind." "It is more delightful," says the great historian Niebuhr, "to speak of Marcus Aurelius than of any man in history; for if there is any sublime human virtue it is his. He was certainly the noblest character of his time, and I know no other man who combined such unaffected kindness, mildness, and humility, with such conscientiousness and severity towards himself. We possess innumerable busts of him, for every Roman of his time was anxious to possess his portrait, and if there is anywhere an expression of virtue it is in the heavenly features of Marcus Aurelius."

Marcus Aurelius was born on April 26, A.D. 121. His more correct designation would be Marcus Antoninus, but since he bore several different names at different periods of his life, and since at that age nothing was more common than a change of designation, it is hardly worth while to alter the name by which he is most popularly recognised. His father, Annius Verus, who died in his Praetorship, drew his blood from a line of illustrious men who claimed descent from Numa, the second King of Rome. His mother, Domitia Calvilla, was also a lady of consular and kingly race. The character of both seems to have been worthy of their high dignity. Of his father he can have known little, since Annius died when Aurelius was a mere infant; but in his Meditations he has left us a grateful memorial of both his parents. He says that from his grandfather he learned (or, might have learned) good morals and the government of his temper; from the reputation and remembrance of his father, modesty and manliness; from his mother, piety, and beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and, further, simplicity of life far removed from the habits of the rich.

The childhood and boyhood of Aurelius fell during the reign of Hadrian. The times were better than those which we have contemplated in the reigns of the Caesars. After the suicide of Nero and the brief reigns of Galba and Otho, the Roman world had breathed more freely for a time under the rough good humour of Vespasian and the philosophic virtue of Titus. The reign of Domitian, indeed, who succeeded his brother Titus, was scarcely less terrible and infamous than that of Caius or of Nero; but that prince, shortly before his murder, had dreamt that a golden neck had grown out of his own, and interpreted the dream to indicate that a better race of princes should follow him. The dream was fulfilled. Whatever may have been their other faults, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, were wise and kind-hearted rulers; Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius were among the very gentlest and noblest sovereigns whom the world has ever seen.

Hadrian, though an able, indefatigable, and, on the whole, beneficial Emperor, was a man whose character was stained with serious faults. It is, however, greatly to his honour that he recognized in Aurelius, at the early age of six years, the germs of those extraordinary virtues which afterwards blessed the empire and elevated the sentiments of mankind. "Hadrian's bad and sinful habits left him," says Niebuhr, "when he gazed on the sweetness of that innocent child. Playing on the boy's paternal name of Verus, he called him Verissimus, 'the most true.'" It is interesting to find that this trait of character was so early developed in one who thought that all men "should speak as they think, with an accent of heroic verity."

Toward the end of his long reign, worn out with disease and weariness, Hadrian, being childless, had adopted as his son L. Ceionius Commodus, a man who had few recommendations but his personal beauty. Upon his death, which took place a year afterwards, Hadrian, assembling the senators round his sick bed, adopted and presented to them as their future Emperor Arrius Antoninus, better known by the surname of Pius, which he won by his gratitude to the memory of his predecessor. Had Aurelius been older--he was then but seventeen--it is known that Hadrian would have chosen him, and not Antoninus, for his heir. The latter, indeed, who was then fifty-two years old, was only selected on the express condition that he should in turn adopt both Marcus Aurelius and the son of the deceased Ceionius. Thus, at the age of seventeen, Aurelius, who, even from his infancy, had been loaded with conspicuous distinctions, saw himself the acknowledged heir to the empire of the world.

We are happily able, mainly from his own writings, to give some sketch of the influences and the education which had formed him for this exalted station.

He was brought up in the house of his grandfather, a man who had been three times consul. He makes it a matter of congratulation, and thankfulness to the gods, that he had not been sent to any public school, where he would have run the risk of being tainted by that frightful corruption into which, for many years, the Roman youth had fallen. He expresses a sense of obligation to his great-grandfather for having supplied him with good teachers at home, and for the conviction that on such things a man should spend liberally. There was nothing jealous, barren, or illiberal, in the training he received. He was fond of boxing, wrestling, running; he was an admirable player at ball, and he was fond of the perilous excitement of hunting the wild boar. Thus, his healthy sports, his serious studies, his moral instruction, his public dignities and duties, all contributed to form his character in a beautiful and manly mould. There are, however, three respects in which his education seems especially worthy of notice;--I mean the diligence, the gratitude, and the hardiness in which he was encouraged by others, and which he practised with all the ardour of generous conviction.

1. In the best sense of the word, Aurelius was diligent. He alludes more than once in his Meditations to the inestimable value of time, and to his ardent desire to gain more leisure for intellectual pursuits. He flung himself with his usual undeviating stedfastness of purpose into every branch of study, and though he deliberately abandoned rhetoric, he toiled hard at philosophy, at the discipline of arms, at the administration of business, and at the difficult study of Roman jurisprudence. One of the acquisitions for which he expresses gratitude to his tutor Rusticus, is that of reading carefully, and not being satisfied with the superficial understanding of a book. In fact, so strenuous was his labour, and so great his abstemiousness, that his health suffered by the combination of the two.

2. His opening remarks show that he remembered all his teachers--even the most insignificant--with sincere gratitude. He regarded each one of them as a man from whom something could be learnt, and from whom he actually did learn that something. Hence the honourable respect--a respect as honourable to himself as to them--which he paid to Fronto, to Rusticus, to Julius Proculus, and others whom his noble and conscientious gratitude raised to the highest dignities of the State. He even thanks the gods that "he made haste to place those who brought him up in the station of honour which they seemed to desire, without putting them off with mere hopes of his doing it some time after, because they were then still young." He was far the superior of these men, not only socially but even morally and intellectually; yet from the height of his exalted rank and character he delighted to associate with them on the most friendly terms, and to treat them, even till his death, with affection and honour, to place their likenesses among his household gods, and visit their sepulchres with wreaths and victims.

3. His hardiness and self-denial were perhaps still more remarkable. I wish that those boys of our day, who think it undignified to travel second-class, who dress in the extreme of fashion, wear roses in their buttonholes, and spend upon ices and strawberries what would maintain a poor man for a year, would learn how infinitely more noble was the abstinence of this young Roman, who though born in the midst of splendour and luxury, learnt from the first to loathe the petty vice of gluttony, and to despise the unmanliness of self-indulgence. Very early in life he joined the glorious fellowship of those who esteem it not only a duty but a pleasure

"To scorn delights, and live laborious days,"

and had learnt "endurance of labour, and to want little, and to work with his own hands." In his eleventh year he became acquainted with Diognetus, who first introduced him to the Stoic philosophy, and in his twelfth year he assumed the Stoic dress. This philosophy taught him "to prefer a plank bed and skin, and whatever else of the kind belongs to the Grecian discipline." It is said that "the skin" was a concession to the entreaties of his mother, and that the young philosopher himself would have chosen to sleep on the bare boards or on the ground. Yet he acted thus without self-assertion and without ostentation. His friends found him always cheerful; and his calm features,--in which a dignity and thoughtfulness of spirit contrasted with the bloom and beauty of a pure and honourable boyhood,--were never overshadowed with ill-temper or with gloom.

The guardians of Marcus Aurelius had gathered around him all the most distinguished literary teachers of the age. Never had a prince a greater number of eminent instructors; never were any teachers made happy by a more grateful, a more humble, a more blameless, a more truly royal and glorious pupil. Long years after his education had ceased, during his campaign among the Quadi, he wrote a sketch of what he owed to them. This sketch forms the first book of his Meditations, and is characterised throughout by the most unaffected simplicity and modesty.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were in fact his private diary, they are a noble soliloquy with his own heart, an honest examination of his own conscience; there is not the slightest trace of their having been intended for any eye but his own. In them he was acting on the principle of St. Augustine: "Go up into the tribunal of thy conscience, and set thyself before thyself." He was ever bearing about--

"A silent court of justice in himself,
Himself the judge and jury, and himself
The prisoner at the bar."

And writing amid all the cares and distractions of a war which he detested, he averted his eyes from the manifold wearinesses which daily vexed his soul, and calmly sat down to meditate on all the great qualities which he had observed, and all the good lessons that he might have learnt from those who had instructed his boyhood, and surrounded his manly years.

And what had he learnt?--learnt heartily to admire, and (we may say) learnt to practise also? A sketch of his first book will show us. What he had gained from his immediate parents we have seen already, and we will make a brief abstract of his other obligations.

From "his governor"--to which of his teachers this name applies we are not sure--he had learnt to avoid factions at the races, to work hard, and to avoid listening to slander; from Diognetus, to despise frivolous superstitions, and to practise self-denial; from Apollonius, undeviating steadiness of purpose, endurance of misfortune, and the reception of favours without being humbled by them; from Sextus of Chaeronea (a grandson of the celebrated Plutarch), tolerance of the ignorant, gravity without affectation, and benevolence of heart; from Alexander, delicacy in correcting others; from Severus, "a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hope, and, to believe that I am beloved of my friends;" from Maximus, "sweetness and dignity, and to do what was set before me without complaining;" from Alexander the Platonic, "not frequently to say to any one, nor to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of ordinary duties by alleging urgent occupations."

To one or two others his obligations were still more characteristic and important. From Rusticus, for instance, an excellent and able man, whose advice for years he was accustomed to respect, he had learnt to despise sophistry and display, to write with simplicity, to be easily pacified, to be accurate, and--an inestimable benefit this, and one which tinged the colour of his whole life--to become acquainted with the Discourses of Epictetus. And from his adoptive father, the great Antoninus Pius, he had derived advantages still more considerable. In him he saw the example of a sovereign and statesman firm, self-controlled, modest, faithful, and even tempered; a man who despised flattery and hated meanness; who honoured the wise and distinguished the meritorious; who was indifferent to contemptable trifles, and indefatigable in earnest business; one, in short, "who had a perfect and invincible soul," who, like Socrates, "was able both to abstain from and to enjoy those things which many are too weak to abstain from and cannot enjoy without excess." [67] Piety, serenity, sweetness, disregard of empty fame, calmness, simplicity, patience, are virtues which he attributes to him in another full-length portrait (vi. 30) which he concludes with the words, "Imitate all this, that thou mayest have as good a conscience when thy last hour comes as he had."

[67] My quotations from Marcus Aurelius will be made (by permission) from the forcible and admirably accurate translation of Mr. Long. In thanking Mr. Long, I may be allowed to add that the English reader will find in his version the best means of becoming acquainted with the purest-and noblest book of antiquity.

He concludes these reminiscenses of thankfulness with a summary of what he owed to the gods. And for what does he thanks the gods? for being wealthy, and noble, and an emperor? Nay, for no vulgar or dubious blessings such as these, but for the guidance which trained him in philosophy, and for the grace which kept him from sin. And here it is that his genuine modesty comes out. As the excellent divine used to say when he saw a criminal led past for execution, "There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford," so, after thanking the gods for the goodness of all his family and relatives, Aurelius says, "Further, I owe it to the gods that I was not hurried 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 favour there never was such a concurrence of circumstances as put me to the trial. Further, that I was subjected to a ruler and father who took away all pride from me, and taught me that it was possible to live in a palace without guards, or embroidered dresses, or torches, and statues, and such-like show, but to live very near to the fashion of a private person, without being either mean in thought or remiss in action; that after having fallen into amatory passions I was cured; 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, I was never told that I had not the means of doing it;--that I had abundance of good masters for my children: for all these thing require the help of the gods and fortune."

The whole of the Emperor's Meditations deserve the profound study of this age. The self-denial which they display is a rebuke to our ever-growing luxury; their generosity contrasts favourably with the increasing bitterness of our cynicism; their contented acquiescence in God's will rebukes our incessant restlessness; above all, their constant elevation shames that multitude of little vices, and little meannesses, which lie like a scurf over the conventionality of modern life. But this earlier chapter has also a special value for the young. It offers a picture which it would indeed be better for them and for us if they could be induced to study. If even under

"That fierce light that beats upon the throne,"

the life of Marcus Aurelius shows no moral stain, it is still more remarkable that the free and beautiful boyhood of this Roman prince had early learnt to recognise only the excellences of his teachers, their patience and firmness, their benevolence and sweetness, their integrity and virtue. Amid the frightful universality of moral corruption he preserved a stainless conscience and a most pure soul; he thanked God in language which breathes the most crystalline delicacy of sentiment and language, that he had preserved uninjured the flower of his early life, and that under the calm influences of his home in the country, and the studies of philosophy, he had learnt to value chastity as the sacred girdle of youth, to be retained and honoured to his latest years. "Surely," says Mr. Carlyle, "a day is coming when it will be known again what virtue is in purity and continence of life; how divine is the blush of young human cheeks; how high, beneficent, sternly inexorable is the duty laid on every creature in regard to these particulars. Well, if such a day never come, then I perceive much else will never come. Magnanimity and depth of insight will never come; heroic purity of heart and of eye; noble pious valour to amend us and the age of bronze and lacquers, how can they ever come? The scandalous bronze-lacquer age of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies, and mendacities will have to run its course till the pit swallow it."