Marcus Aurelius

MARCUS AURELIUS

AND HIS TIMES

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 http://www.archive.org/details/marcusaureliushiOOIuci

MARCUS AURELIUS

AND HIS TIMES

The Transition from Paganism to Christianity Comprising

MARCUS AURELIUS: MEDITATIONS

lucian: hermotimus

ICAROMENIPPUS

JUSTIN MARTYR: DIALOGUE WITH TRYPHO

FIRST APOLOGY

WALTER PATER: MARIUS THE EPICUREAN

(SELECTIONS)

With an Introduction by Irwin Edman Published for the Classics Club ® by

WALTER J. BLACK, INC

• ROSLYN, N. Y.

By WALTER

J. BLACK, INC.

CONTENTS Preface vii Part I—Marcus Aurelius, Stoic Introduction, by Irwin Edman

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations i i Pater, Marius the Epicurean, Chapters XII and XIII

Part ll—Lucian of Samosata, Skeptic Introduction

Lucian, Hermotimus, or the Rival Philosophers

lucian, icaromenippus, an aerial expedition

Part III—Justin Martyr, Christian Introduction

Justin, Dialogue With Trypho, a Jew (Abridged)

Justin, Fd*st Apology (Abridged)

Anonymous, Martyrdom of the Holy Martyrs

Pater, Marius the Epicurean, Chapter XXIII

PREFACE The reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 a.d.) marked the close of the good period of the Antonine emperors, under whom Rome reached the height of her imperial dominion and administrative efficiency. He died fighting the restive barbarians on the Danube frontier and was buried not far from the camp on the site of what we now call Vienna. Under his son, the dissolute Commodus, the political decline set in that eventually ended in the collapse of the centuries-old imperial structure in the West and its replacement by the raw, unstable, barbaric kingdoms of Italy, Spain, France, and England.

Already, in the lifetime of Marcus Aurelius, the intellectual atmosphere in the magnificent capital of his empire was confused and clouded. The old confident assurance that prosperity and happiness lay in keeping faithful to the gods and the traditions of the ancestors was noticeably wavering. The stately ceremonies and customs handed down from the past were still punctiliously and lavishly performed in public, as signs of gratitude to whatever had formerly made Rome great and as a means of impressing the multitude. But few educated or thinking men now took them seriously. Their minds had been trained from youth in the schools of Greek philosophy, and Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoic Zeno, each had his following. But not even the illustrious philosophers received the unquestioning veneration that once they had had.

They spoke, after all, with too discordant voices and out of a past too long departed. The Skeptics, who doubted that any philosopher ever had or ever could fathom the world's mystery, attracted many who scornfully refused to imagine certainties where none existed. vii

viii Preface Other men were fatalistically accepting the astrological lore brought from the ancient East. If the eternal, all-seeing stars were the causes of everything that happened in this transitory scene below, what could anyone do but resign himself and submit? Others still were turning for comfort to a new type of religion, also brought from the East, the cults of Isis, of Mithras, and of Christ. These all in their several ways taught faith in a god of pity, repentance from sin, and hope i of a heavenly immortality. Outwardly Rome still stood, more resplendent and apparently more unshakeable than ever. Inwardly she was in a state of mental and spiritual flux. The old order was losing its hold on men's minds and the new order was yet far off.

This book contains the writings of three men of the period, each eminent in his own circle at Rome, which illustrate for us the conflict of beliefs that is a characteristic feature of the age. The Meditations of the emperor show how latter-day

Stoicism could still inspire a high-minded ruler to do his duty with fortitude and patience. The dialogues of Lucian, the rhetorician, are a Skeptic's devastating exposure of the weakness of all the old philosophies and beliefs. The works of Justin Martyr, the Christian, are full of the fervor and excitement of a convert from paganism, convinced he has a new and uniquely divine message to proclaim to mankind. With these selections we include three chapters from Walter Pater's famous book, Marius the Epicurean, for their vivid descriptions, first, of Marcus Aurelius and his environment, and, secondly, of a eucharistic service in a Christian house as the author fancies they may have appeared to a sensitive and cultured Roman gentleman.

PARTI Marcus Aurelius, Stoic

INTRODUCTION

Historians of philosophy have repeatedly pointed out the dramatic fact that the two leading Roman Stoics were Epictetus, a slave, and Marcus Aurelius, an emperor, and that the emperor was in his youth a pupil to the slave. Their themes and their doctrines were in large measure identical, though neither of them being a system maker can be said to have had a systematic doctrine at all. The tone, too, is to some extent the same. There is the same aspiration to serenity, though

Epictetus seems more nearly to have achieved it. There is the same counsel to live independent of the pleasures and pains of life, though Marcus Aurelius seems to have been more sensitive to both. There is the same adjuration of indifference to fame and friends, though Epictetus seems naturally more remote from both. There is in both writers an identical urging to conformity with the nature of things, assumed in each instance to be reasonable and good. But in Epictetus the conformity is that of obedience to a ruler. In Marcus, though there is still the language of obedience to Nature, the tone is that of a ruler who feels the burden and the obligation of duty to be done, the carrying on of administration for and among inferiors.

The difference between the two may almost be said to be the difference in tone of a professional teacher of philosophy, rather prosy and sententious, and that of a man deeply involved in the affairs of the world, trying to fortify his own spirit in the concerns both public and private which without the buttress of philosophic serenity might lead him to melancholy or despair. "Even in a palace," Marcus Aurelius wrote,

"it is possible to live well." Marcus is not a freed slave, he is not a popular professional teacher of philosophy giving in-

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