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Updated: May 19, 2025
If it stopped raining, the Senator would come to the house of the lawyer Aurelius Lucanus that evening, after sundown, accompanied by the notary. Then he summoned Sahira. "Thou wilt clothe the Lady Virgilia in her most costly garments. Thou wilt bind jewels in her hair and hang strings of pearls about her neck. Her fingers, too, shall be laden with rings.
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority. Caesar was very perfect, but his perfection travelled by too dangerous a road. Marcus Aurelius was the perfect man, says Renan. Yes; the great emperor was a perfect man. But how intolerable were the endless claims upon him! He staggered under the burden of the empire.
Yet a depraved sense of duty, perhaps the residue of what such writers as Marcus Aurelius have done for me, refuses to allow every volume to be jettisoned. It imposes, as a hair shirt, several new and serious books which there has been no time to examine. They are books that require a close focus, a long and steady concentration, a silent immobility hardly distinguishable from sleep.
We have seen that the aged pastor of Smyrna suffered in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; and that A.D. 169 is the earliest period to which we can refer the martyrdom, inasmuch as that was the first year in which Marcus Aurelius was sole emperor. All the reliable chronological indications point to this as the more correct reckoning.
But Marcus Aurelius, on the throne of the civilized world, was modest, virtuous, affable, accessible, considerate, gentle, studious, contemplative, stained by novices, a model of human virtue. Hence he is one of the favorite characters of history. No Roman emperor was so revered and loved as he, and of no one have so many monuments been preserved. Everybody had his picture or statue in his house.
In the whole tenor of his life and character he was thought to resemble Numa. A thoughtful Roman would have been apt to exclaim, This is too good to last, upon finding so admirable a ruler succeeded by one still more admirable in the person of Marcus Aurelius.
A shudder passed over him when he saw the Magician cross over into the circle of the light and wave his wand. In a moment Aurelius forgot all about the Magician and his own fear, for he and his brother saw before them the edge of a forest with a park stretching from the trees far, far away. The sun shone, and the branches waved a little in the breeze. In the park the brothers saw herds of deer.
In the long sands and flats of Roman realism the stream of Greek inspiration is lost for ever. Before the death of Marcus Aurelius, Europe was as weary of materialism as England before the death of Victoria. But what power was to destroy a machine that had enslaved men so completely that they dared not conceive an alternative?
"Life," said Marcus Aurelius, "is more like wrestling than dancing." When we get that point of view we may see that some attitudes that are not graceful may be quite effective. It is a fine thing to say, "Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone, Dare to have a purpose true And dare to make it known."
I leave Rome before sunset and shall not return until I may return without danger to you." Aurelius looked at Brinnaria. "Caius," she said, "I forgive you. I trust that you will win promotion and honor where you are going and I am sure that you will do your duty to the Empire. May the blessing of all the gods be on you and may you return to me safe and well."
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