ter so long a time I neither
embraced you nor spoke to you, though you visited the palace, and the
moment after I had left the prince my brother. I reproached my brother
severely for not recalling me; nor durst he deny the fault.' Fronto
again writes on one occasion: 'I have seen your daughter. It was like
seeing you and Faustina in infancy, so much that is charming her face
has taken from each of yours.' Or again, at a later date:(2) I have seen
your chicks, most delightful sight that ever I saw in my life, so like
you that nothing is more like than the likeness.... By the mercy of
Heaven they have a healthy colour and strong lungs. One held a piece of
white bread, like a little prince, the other a common piece, like a true
philosophers son.'

1 Ad Verum. Imp. Aur. Caes., i. 3.

2 Ad Ant. Imp i., 3.

Marcus, we know, was devoted to his children. They were delicate in
health, in spite of Fronto's assurance, and only one son survived the
father. We find echoes of this affection now and again in the letters.
'We have summer heat here still,' writes Marcus, 'but since my little
girls are pretty well, if I may say so, it is like the bracing climate
of spring to us.'(1) When little Faustina came back from the valley of
the shadow of death, her father at once writes to inform Fronto.(2)
The sympathy he asks he also gives, and as old age brings more and more
infirmity, Marcus becomes even more solicitous for his beloved teacher.
The poor old man suffered a heavy blow in the death of his grandson, on
which Marcus writes:(3) 'I have just heard of your misfortune. Feeling
grieved as I do when one of your joints gives you pain, what do you
think I feel, dear master, when you have pain of mind?' The old man's
reply, in spite of a certain self-consciousness, is full of pathos. He
recounts with pride the events of a long and upright life, in which he
has wronged no man, and lived in harmony with his friends and family.
His affectations fall away from him, as the cry of pain is forced from
his heart:--

(4)'Many such sorrows has fortune visited me with all my life long. To
pass by my other afflictions, I have lost five children under the most
pitiful conditions possible: for the five I lost one by one when each
was my only child, suffering these blows of bereavement in such a manner
that each child was born to one already bereaved. Thus I ever lost my
children without solace, and got them amidst fresh grief.....'

The