men cannot be brought to the same opinions in morals and
religion, it is at least worth while to give them good reasons for as
much as they can be persuaded to accept.

[A] J. Smith in his Select Discourses on "the Excellency and
Nobleness of True Religion" (c. vi.) has remarked on this
Stoical arrogance. He finds it in Seneca and others. In Seneca
certainly, and perhaps something of it in Epictetus; but it is
not in Antoninus.

THE THOUGHTS

OF

MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONIUS.

I.

From my grandfather Verus[A] [I learned] good morals and the government
of my temper.

2. From the reputation and remembrance of my father,[B] modesty and a
manly character.

3. From my mother,[C] piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only
from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in
my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.

4. From my great-grandfather,[D] not to have frequented public schools,
and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a
man should spend liberally.

[A] Annius Verus was his grandfather's name. There is no verb
in this section connected with the word "from," nor in the
following sections of this book; and it is not quite certain
what verb should be supplied. What I have added may express the
meaning here, though there are sections which it will not fit.
If he does not mean to say that he learned all these good
things from the several persons whom he mentions, he means that
he observed certain good qualities in them, or received certain
benefits from them, and it is implied that he was the better
for it, or at least might have been: for it would be a mistake
to understand Marcus as saying that he possessed all the
virtues which he observed in his kinsmen and teachers.

[B] His father's name was Annius Verus.

[C] His mother was Domitia Calvilla, named also Lucilla.

[D] Perhaps his mother's grandfather, Catilius Severus.

5. From my governor, to be neither of the green nor of the blue party at
the games in the Circus, nor a partisan either of the Parmularius or the
Scutarius at the gladiators' fights; from him too I learned endurance of
labor, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to
meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to
slander.

6. From Diognetus,[A] not to busy myself about trifling thi