Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome) [71]
36. You’ve lived as a citizen in a great city. Five years or a hundred—what’s the difference? The laws make no distinction.
And to be sent away from it, not by a tyrant or a dishonest judge, but by Nature, who first invited you in—why is that so terrible?
Like the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor:
“But I’ve only gotten through three acts . . . !”
Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine.
So make your exit with grace—the same grace shown to you.
Notes
1.1 My grandfather Verus: Verus (1).
1.2 My father: Verus (2).
1.3 My mother: Lucilla.
1.4 My great-grandfather: Severus (1).
To avoid the public schools: Roman aristocrats normally preferred to have their sons educated by private tutors (often specially trained household slaves) who were considered safer and more reliable than the professional schoolmasters who taught all comers for a fee.
1.5 My first teacher: Not named and most likely a slave.
Not to support this side or that: Literally, “not to be a Green or a Blue; not to support the parmularius [a gladiator with a small shield] or the scutarius [who carried a larger shield].”
1.6 the camp-bed and the cloak: Symbols of an ascetic lifestyle. Marcus’s sleeping arrangements are recorded by the Historia Augusta: “He used to sleep on the ground, and his mother had a hard time convincing him to sleep on a cot spread with skins.”
1.7 his own copy: It is unclear whether this refers to Arrian’s Discourses of Epictetus or to a set of unpublished notes, perhaps taken by Rusticus himself.
1.13 Domitius and Athenodotus: The anecdote Marcus refers to is unknown.
1.14 My brother: Probably a copyist’s error based on confusion between the names Verus and Severus.
Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato: For the significance of these three figures as Stoic exemplars see the Introduction.
1.16 My adopted father: Antoninus Pius. The sketch here seems to be a development and expansion of the briefer assessment in 6.30.
Putting a stop to the pursuit of boys: This may be meant as a critique of Antoninus’s predecessor, Hadrian (2), whose love affair with the youth Antinoüs was notorious. Alternatively it might refer to legal restrictions on pederasty (which was common in upper-class Greek and Roman society), or to Antoninus’s own self-restraint.
The robe . . . the customs agent’s apology: These examples of Antoninus’s modesty are too compressed and allusive to be intelligible to anyone but Marcus himself.
as they say of Socrates: Marcus may be recalling a similar comment by Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.3.14; Socrates’ ability to drink heavily without any apparent effect is celebrated in Plato’s Symposium (179c, 220a).
Maximus’s illness: For Maximus see the Index of Persons; nothing is known of his illness.
1.17 someone: Antoninus.
the kind of brother: Verus (3).
the honors they seemed to want: Marcus may be thinking of Herodes Atticus and Fronto, both of whom held consulships in 143, soon after Marcus became the heir apparent. Perhaps also of Rusticus, who held a second consulship in 162.
I never laid a finger: Household slaves were often exposed to sexual abuse at the hands of their owners.
That I have the wife I do: Faustina.
at Caieta: A seaport on the west coast of Italy. The Greek text adds an unintelligible phrase, which some scholars interpret as a reference to “an oracle.”
“we need the help . . .”: Apparently a quotation, but not from any surviving work.
2. On the River Gran, Among the Quadi: The notation is transmitted at the end of Book 1, but is more likely to belong here. The Gran (or Hron) is a tributary of the Danube flowing through modern-day Slovakia. The Quadi were a Suebian tribe in the Morava River valley, subdued during the Marcomannic Wars of the early 170s.
2.2 Throw away . . . right now: These words are deleted or transposed elsewhere by some editors.
2.10 the ones committed out of desire are worse: Strictly speaking, this assessment is in