Seekers after God Part 14

The guardians of Marcus Aurelius had gathered around him all the most distinguished literary teachers of the age. Never had a prince a greater number of eminent instructors; never were any teachers made happy by a more grateful, a more humble, a more blameless, a more truly royal and glorious pupil. Long years after his education had ceased, during his campaign among the Quadi, he wrote a sketch of what he owed to them.

This sketch forms the first book of his _Meditations_, and is characterised throughout by the most unaffected simplicity and modesty.

The _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius were in fact his private diary, they are a n.o.ble soliloquy with his own heart, an honest examination of his own conscience; there is not the slightest trace of their having been intended for any eye but his own. In them he was acting on the principle of St. Augustine: "Go up into the tribunal of thy conscience, and set thyself before thyself." He was ever bearing about--

"A silent court of justice in himself, Himself the judge and jury, and himself The prisoner at the bar."

And writing amid all the cares and distractions of a war which he detested, he averted his eyes from the manifold wearinesses which daily vexed his soul, and calmly sat down to meditate on all the great qualities which he had observed, and all the good lessons that he might have learnt from those who had instructed his boyhood, and surrounded his manly years.

And what had he learnt?--learnt heartily to admire, and (_we_ may say) learnt to practise also? A sketch of his first book will show us. What he had gained from his immediate parents we have seen already, and we will make a brief abstract of his other obligations.

From "his governor"--to which of his teachers this name applies we are not sure--he had learnt to avoid factions at the races, to work hard, and to avoid listening to slander; from Diognetus, to despise frivolous superst.i.tions, and to practise self-denial; from Apollonius, undeviating steadiness of purpose, endurance of misfortune, and the reception of favours without being humbled by them; from s.e.xtus of Chaeronea (a grandson of the celebrated Plutarch), tolerance of the ignorant, gravity without affectation, and benevolence of heart; from Alexander, delicacy in correcting others; from Severus, "a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hope, and, to believe that I am beloved of my friends;" from Maximus, "sweetness and dignity, and to do what was set before me without complaining;" from Alexander the Platonic, "_not frequently to say to any one, nor to write in a letter, that I have no leisure_; nor continually to excuse the neglect of ordinary duties by alleging urgent occupations."

To one or two others his obligations were still more characteristic and important. From Rusticus, for instance, an excellent and able man, whose advice for years he was accustomed to respect, he had learnt to despise sophistry and display, to write with simplicity, to be easily pacified, to be accurate, and--an inestimable benefit this, and one which tinged the colour of his whole life--to become acquainted with the _Discourses_ of Epictetus. And from his adoptive father, the great Antoninus Pius, he had derived advantages still more considerable. In him he saw the example of a sovereign and statesman firm, self-controlled, modest, faithful, and even tempered; a man who despised flattery and hated meanness; who honoured the wise and distinguished the meritorious; who was indifferent to contemptable trifles, and indefatigable in earnest business; one, in short, "who had a perfect and invincible soul," who, like Socrates, "was able both to abstain from and to enjoy those things which many are too weak to abstain from and cannot enjoy without excess." [67] Piety, serenity, sweetness, disregard of empty fame, calmness, simplicity, patience, are virtues which he attributes to him in another full-length portrait (vi. 30) which he concludes with the words, "Imitate all this, that thou mayest have as good a conscience when thy last hour comes as he had."

[Footnote 67: My quotations from Marcus Aurelius will be made (by permission) from the forcible and admirably accurate translation of Mr.

Long. In thanking Mr. Long, I may be allowed to add that the English reader will find in his version the best means of becoming acquainted with the purest-and n.o.blest book of antiquity.]

He concludes these reminiscenses of thankfulness with a summary of what he owed to the G.o.ds. And for what does he thanks the G.o.ds? for being wealthy, and n.o.ble, and an emperor? Nay, for no vulgar or dubious blessings such as these, but for the guidance which trained him in philosophy, and for the grace which kept him from sin. And here it is that his genuine modesty comes out. As the excellent divine used to say when he saw a criminal led past for execution, "There, but for the grace of G.o.d, goes John Bradford," so, after thanking the G.o.ds for the goodness of all his family and relatives, Aurelius says, "Further, I owe it to the G.o.ds that I was not hurried into any offence against any of them, _though I had a disposition which, if opportunity had offered_, might have led me to do something of this kind; but through their favour there never was such a concurrence of circ.u.mstances as put me to the trial. Further, that I was subjected to a ruler and father who took away all pride from me, and taught me that it was possible to live in a palace without guards, or embroidered dresses, or torches, and statues, and such-like show, but to live very near to the fashion of a private person, without being either mean in thought or remiss in action; that after having fallen into amatory pa.s.sions I was cured; that though it was my mother's fate to die young, she spent the last years of her life with me; that whenever I wished to help any man, I was never told that I had not the means of doing it;--that I had abundance of good masters for my children: for all these thing require the help of the G.o.ds and fortune."

The whole of the Emperor's _Meditations_ deserve the profound study of this age. The self-denial which they display is a rebuke to our ever-growing luxury; their generosity contrasts favourably with the increasing bitterness of our cynicism; their contented acquiescence in G.o.d's will rebukes our incessant restlessness; above all, their constant elevation shames that mult.i.tude of little vices, and little meannesses, which lie like a scurf over the conventionality of modern life. But this earlier chapter has also a special value for the young. It offers a picture which it would indeed be better for them and for us if they could be induced to study. If even under

"That fierce light that beats upon the throne,"

the life of Marcus Aurelius shows no moral stain, it is still more remarkable that the free and beautiful boyhood of this Roman prince had early learnt to recognise only the excellences of his teachers, their patience and firmness, their benevolence and sweetness, their integrity and virtue. Amid the frightful universality of moral corruption he preserved a stainless conscience and a most pure soul; he thanked G.o.d in language which breathes the most crystalline delicacy of sentiment and language, that he had preserved uninjured the flower of his early life, and that under the calm influences of his home in the country, and the studies of philosophy, he had learnt to value chast.i.ty as the sacred girdle of youth, to be retained and honoured to his latest years.

"Surely," says Mr. Carlyle, "a day is coming when it will be known again what virtue is in purity and continence of life; how divine is the blush of young human cheeks; how high, beneficent, sternly inexorable is the duty laid on every creature in regard to these particulars. Well, if such a day never come, then I perceive much else will never come.

Magnanimity and depth of insight will never come; heroic purity of heart and of eye; n.o.ble pious valour to amend us and the age of bronze and lacquers, how can they ever come? The scandalous bronze-lacquer age of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies, and mendacities will have to run its course till the pit swallow it."

CHAPTER II.

THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS.

On the death of Hadrian in A. D. 138, Antoninus Pius succeeded to the throne, and, in accordance with the late Emperor's conditions, adopted Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Commodus. Marcus had been betrothed at the age of fifteen to the sister of Lucius Commodus, but the new Emperor broke off the engagement, and betrothed him instead to his daughter Faustina. The marriage, however, was not celebrated till seven years afterwards, A.D. 146.

The long reign of Antoninus Pius is one of those happy periods that have no history. An almost unbroken peace reigned at home and abroad. Taxes were lightened, calamities relieved, informers discouraged; confiscation were rare, plots and executions were almost unknown. Throughout the whole extent of his vast domain the people loved and valued their Emperor, and the Emperor's one aim was to further, the happiness of his people. He, too, like Aurelius, had learnt that what was good for the bee was good for the hive. He strove to live as the civil administrator, of an unaggressive and united republic; he disliked war, did not value the military t.i.tle of Imperator, and never deigned to accept a triumph.

With this wise and eminent prince, who was as amiable in his private relations as he was admirable in the discharge of his public duties, Marcus Aurelius spent the next twenty-three years of his life. So close and intimate was their union, so completely did they regard each other as father and son, that during all that period Aurelius never slept more than twice away from the house of Antoninus. There was not a shade of jealousy between them; each was the friend and adviser of the other, and, so far from regarding his destined heir with suspicion, the Emperor gave him the designation "Caesar," and heaped upon him all the honours of the Roman Commonwealth. It was in vain that the whisper of malignant tongues attempted to shake this mutual confidence. Antoninus once saw the mother of Aurelius in earnest prayer before the statue of Apollo.

"What do you think she is praying for so intently?" asked a wretched mischief-maker of the name of Valerius Omulus: "it is that you may die, and her son reign." This wicked suggestion might have driven a prince of meaner character into violence and disgust, but Antoninus pa.s.sed it over with the silence of contempt.

It was the main delight of Antoninus to enjoy the quiet of his country villa. Unlike Hadrian, who traversed immense regions of his vast dominion, Antoninus lived entirely either at Rome, or in his beautiful villa at Lorium, a little seacoast village about twelve miles from the capital. In this villa he had been born, and here he died, surrounded by the reminiscences of his childhood. In this his real home it was his special pleasure to lay aside the pomp and burden of his imperial rank.

"He did not," says Marcus, "take the bath at unseasonable hours; he was not fond of building houses, nor curious about what he eat, nor about the texture and colour of his clothes, nor about the beauty of his slaves." Even the dress he wore was the work of the provincial artist in his little native place. So far from checking the philosophic tastes of his adopted son he fostered them, and sent for Apollonius of Chalcis to be his teacher in the doctrines of Stoicism. In one of his notes to Fronto, Marcus draws the picture of their simple country occupations and amus.e.m.e.nts. Hunting, fishing, boxing, wrestling, occupied the leisure of the two princes, and they shared the rustic festivities of the vintage.

"I have dined," he writes, "on a little bread.... We perspired a great deal, shouted a great deal, and left some gleanings of the vintage hanging on the trellis work.... When 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 sh.e.l.ls on the seash.o.r.e, 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 amus.e.m.e.nts, 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 partic.i.p.ation of imperial honours, the Tribunitian and proconsular powers, and the t.i.tles 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 enn.o.bling society of Marcus, broke loose from all decency, and showed himself to be a weak and worthless personage, as unfit for war as he was for all the n.o.bler duties of peace, and capable of nothing but enormous gluttony and disgraceful self-indulence. Two things only can be said in his favour; the one, that, though depraved, he was wholly free from cruelty; and the other, that he had the good sense to submit himself entirely to his brother, and to treat him with the grat.i.tude and deference which were his due.

Marcus had a large family by Faustina, and in the first year of his reign his wife bore twins, of whom the one who survived became the wicked and detested Emperor Commodus. As though the birth of such a child were in itself an omen of ruin, a storm of calamity began at once to burst over the long tranquil State. An inundation of the Tiber flung down houses and streets over a great part of Rome, swept away mult.i.tudes of cattle, spoiled the harvests, devastated the fields, and caused a distress which ended in wide-spread famine. Men's minds were terrified by earthquakes, by the burning of cities, and by plagues or noxious insects. To these miseries, which the Emperors did their best to alleviate, was added the horrors of wars and rumours of wars. The Partians, under their king Vologeses, defeated and all but destroyed a Roman army, and devastated with impunity the Roman province of Syria.

The wild tribes of the Catti burst over Germany with fire and sword; and the news from Britain was full of insurrection and tumult. Such were the elements of trouble and discord which overshadowed the reign of Marcus Aurelius from its very beginning down to its weary close.

As the Partian war was the most important of the three, Verus was sent to quell it, and but for the ability of his generals--the greatest of whom was Avidius Ca.s.sius--would have ruined irretrievably the fortunes of the Empire. These generals, however, vindicated the majesty of the Roman name, and Verus returned in triumph, bringing back with him from the East the seeds of a terrible pestilence which devastated the whole Empire and by which, on the outbreak of fresh wars, Verus himself was carried off at Aquileia.

Worthless as he was, Marcus, who in his lifetime had so often pardoned and concealed his faults, paid him the highest honours of sepulcre, and interred his ashes in the mausoleum of Hadrian. There were not wanting some who charged him with the guilt of fratricide, a.s.serting that the death of Verus had been hastened by his means!

I have only one reason for alluding to atrocious and contemptible calumnies like these, and that is because--since no doubt such whispers reached his ears--they help to account for that deep unutterable melancholy which breathes through the little golden book of the Emperor's _Meditations_. We find, for instance, among them this isolated fragment:--

"A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, b.e.s.t.i.a.l, childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent, tyrannical."

We know not of whom he was thinking--perhaps of Nero, perhaps of Caligula, but undoubtedly also of men whom he had seen and known, and whose very existence darkened his soul. The same sad spirit breathes also through the following pa.s.sages:--

"Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name, or not even a name; but name is sound and echo. And the things which are much valued in life are empty, and rotten, and trifling, and _little dogs biting one another, and little children quarrelling, laughing, and then straightway weeping. But fidelity, and modesty, and justice, and truth are fled_

"'Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.'"

(v. 33.)

"It would be a man's happiest lot to depart from mankind without having had a taste of lying, and hypocrisy, and luxury, and pride. However to _breathe out one's life when a man has had enough of those things_ is the next best voyage, as the saying is." (ix. 2.)

"_Enough of this wretched life, and murmuring, and apish trifles._ Why art thou thus disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles thee?... Towards the G.o.ds, then, now become at last more simple and better." (ix. 37.) The thought is like that which dominates through the Penitential Psalms of David,--that we may take refuge from men, their malignity and their meanness, and find rest for our souls in G.o.d. From men David has _no_ hope; mockery, treachery, injustice, are all that he expects from them,--the bitterness of his enemies, the far-off indifference of his friends. Nor does this greatly trouble him, so long as he does not wholly lose the light of _G.o.d's_ countenance. "I had no place to flee unto, and no man cared for my soul. I cried unto thee, O Lord, and said, _Thou_ art my hope, and my portion in the land of the living." "Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me."

But whatever may have been his impulse at times to give up in despair all attempt to improve the "little breed" of men around him, Marcus had schooled his gentle spirit to live continually in far other feelings.

Were men contemptible? It was all the more reason why he should himself be n.o.ble. Were men petty, and malignant, and pa.s.sionate and unjust? In that proportion were they all the more marked out for pity and tenderness, and in that proportion was he bound to the utmost of his ability to show himself great, and forgiving, and calm, and true. Thus Marcus turns his very bitterest experience to gold, and from the vilenesses of others, which depressed his lonely life, so far from suffering himself to be embittered as well as saddened, he only draws fresh lessons of humanity and love.

He says, for instance, "Begin the morning by saying to thyself, _I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil_. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him that does wrong that is akin to me,... and that it partakes of the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. _For we are made for co-operation,_ like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and _it_ is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away." (ii. 1.) Another of his rules, and an eminently wise one, was to fix his thoughts as much as possible on the virtues of others, rather than on their vices. "When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the _virtues_ of those who live with thee--the activity of one, the modesty of another, the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth." What a rebuke to the contemptuous cynicism which we are daily tempted to display! "An infinite being comes before us," says Robertson, "with a whole eternity wrapt up in his mind and soul, and we _proceed to cla.s.sify him, put a label upon him, as we would upon a jar, saying, This is rice, that is jelly, and this pomatum_; and then we think we have saved ourselves the necessity of taking off the cover, How differently our Lord treated the people who came to Him!... consequently, at His touch each one gave out his peculiar spark of light."

Here, again, is a singularly pithy, comprehensive, and beautiful piece of advice:--

"Men exist for the sake of one another. _Teach them or bear with them_"

(viii. 59.)

And again: "The best way of revenging thyself is not to become like the wrong doer."

And again, "If any man has done wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps he has not done wrong." (ix. 38.)

Most remarkable, however, are the nine rules which he drew up for himself, as subjects for reflection when any one had offended him, viz.--

1. That men were made for each other: even the inferior for the sake of the superior, and these for the sake of one another.

2. The invincible influences that act upon men, and mould their opinions and their acts.

3. That sin is mainly error and ignorance,--an involuntary slavery.

4. That we are ourselves feeble, and by no means immaculate; and that often our very abstinence from faults is due more to cowardice and a care for our reputation than to any freedom from the disposition to commit them.

5. That our judgments are apt to be very rash and premature. "And in short a man must learn a great deal to enable him to pa.s.s a correct judgment on another man's acts."

6. When thou art much vexed or grieved, consider that man's life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead.