n I got home I studied a little, but
not to much advantage I had a long talk with my mother, who was lying on
her couch." Who knows how much Aurelius and how much the world may have
gained from such conversation as this with a mother from whom he had
learnt to hate even the thought of evil? Nor will any one despise the
simplicity of heart which made him mingle with the peasants as an
amateur vintager, unless he is so tasteless and so morose as to think
with scorn of Scipio and Laelius as they gathered shells on the
seashore, or of Henry IV. as he played at horses with his little boys on
all-fours. The capability of unbending thus, the genuine cheerfulness
which enters at due times into simple amusements, has been found not
rarely in the highest and purest minds.

For many years no incident of importance broke the even tenor of
Aurelius's life. He lived peaceful, happy, prosperous, and beloved,
watching without envy the increasing years of his adopted father. But in
the year 161, when Marcus was now forty years old, Antoninus Pius, who
had reached the age of seventy-five, caught a fever at Lorium. Feeling
that his end was near, he summoned his friends and the chief men of
Rome to his bedside, and there (without saying a word about his other
adopted son, who is generally known by the name of Lucius Verus)
solemnly recommended Marcus to them as his successor; and then, giving
to the captain of the guard the watchword of "Equanimity," as though his
earthly task was over he ordered to be transferred to the bedroom of
Marcus the little golden statue of Fortune, which was kept in the
private chamber of the Emperors as an omen of public prosperity.

The very first public act of the new Emperor was one of splendid
generosity, namely, the admission of his adoptive brother Lucius Verus
into the fullest participation of imperial honours, the Tribunitian and
proconsular powers, and the titles Caesar and Augustus. The admission of
Lucius Verus to a share of the empire was due to the innate modesty of
Marcus. As he was a devoted student, and cared less for manly exercises,
in which Verus excelled, he thought that his adoptive brother would be a
better and more useful general than himself, and that he could best
serve the State by retaining the civil administration, and entrusting to
his brother the management of war. Verus, however, as soon as he got
away from the immediate influence and ennobling society of Marcus, broke
loose from