L6 Marcus Aurelius And His Times
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la parole pour la parole, as the French say—despairs, in presence of Fronto's rhetorical perfection.
Like the modern visitor to the Capitoline and some other museums, Fronto had been struck, pleasantly struck, by the family likeness among the Antonines; and it was part of his friendship to make much of it, in the case of the children of Faustina. "Well!
I have seen the little ones," he writes to Aurelius, then, apparently, absent from them: "I have seen the little ones—the pleasantest sight of my life; for they are as like yourself as could possibly be. It has well repaid me for my journey over that slippery road, and up those steep rocks; for I beheld you, not simply face to face before me, but, more generously, whichever way I turned, to my right and my left. For the rest, I found them, Heaven be thanked! with healthy cheeks and lusty voices. One was holding a slice of white bread, like a king's son; the other a crust of brown bread, as becomes the offspring of a philosopher. I pray the gods to have both the sower and the seed in their keeping; to watch over this field wherein the ears of corn are so kindly alike. Ah! I heard too their pretty voices, so sweet that in the childish prattle of one and the other I seemed somehow to be listening—yes! in that chirping of your pretty chickens—to the limpid and harmonious notes of your own oratory. Take care! you will find me growing independent, having those I could love in your place—love, on the surety of my eyes and ears."
"Magistro meo salutem!" replies the Emperor, "I too have seen my little ones in your sight of them; as, also, I saw yourself in reading your letter. It is that charming letter forces me to write thus:" with reiterations of affection, that is, which are continual in these letters, on both sides, and which may strike a modern reader perhaps as fulsome; or, again, as having something in common with the old Judaic unction of friendship. They were certainly sincere.
To one of those children Fronto had now brought the
Pater: Marius the Epicurean {Chap. XIII)
birthday gift of the silver trumpet, upon which he ventured to blow softly now and again, turning away with eyes delighted at the sound, when he thought the old man was not listening.
It was the well-worn, valetudinarian subject of sleep, on which Fronto and Aurelius were talking together.
Aurelius always feeling it a burden, Fronto a thing of magic capacities, so that he had written an encomium in its praise, and often by ingenious arguments recommends his imperial pupil not to be sparing of it. Today, with his younger listeners in mind, he had a story to tell about it:
"They say that our father Jupiter, when he ordered the world at the beginning, divided time into two parts exactly equal: the one part he clothed with light, the other with darkness: he called them Day and Night; and he assigned rest to the night and to day the work of life. At that time Sleep was not yet born and men passed the whole of their lives awake; only, the quiet of the night was ordained for them, instead of sleep. But it came to pass, little by little, being that the minds of men are restless, that they carried on their business alike by night as by day, and gave no part at all to repose. And Jupiter, when he perceived that even in the nighttime they ceased not from trouble and disputation, and that even the courts of law remained open (it was the pride of Aurelius, as Fronto knew, to be assiduous in those courts till far into the night) resolved to appoint one of his brothers to be the overseer of the night and have authority over man's rest. But Neptune pleaded in excuse the gravity of his constant charge of the seas, and Father Dis the difficulty of keeping in subjection the spirits below; and Jupiter, having taken counsel with the other gods, perceived that the practice of nightly vigils was somewhat in favor. It was then, for the most part, that Juno gave birth to her children: Minerva, the mistress of all art and craft, loved the midnight lamp: Mars delighted in the darkness for his plots and sallies; and the favor of Venus and Bacchus was with those who roused by night. Then it was that Jupiter
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formed the design of creating Sleep; and he added him to the number of the gods, and gave him the charge over night and rest, putting into his hands the keys of human eyes. With his own hands he mingled the juices wherewith Sleep should soothe the hearts of mortals—herb of Enjoyment and herb of Safety, gathered from a grove in Heaven; and, from the meadows of Acheron, the herb of Death: expressing from it one single drop only, no bigger than a tear one might hide.
'With this juice,' he said, 'pour slumber upon the eyelids of mortals. So soon as it hath touched them they will lay themselves down motionless, under thy power. But be not afraid: they shall revive, and in a while stand up again upon their feet.' Thereafter, Jupiter gave wings to Sleep, attached, not, like Mercury's, to his heels, but to his shoulders, like the wings of Love. For he said, 'It becomes thee not to approach men's eyes as with the noise of chariots, and the rushing of a swift courser, but in placid and merciful flight, as upon the wings of a swallow—nay! with not so much as the flutter of the dove.' Besides all this, that he might be yet pleasanter to men, he committed to him also a multitude of blissful dreams, according to every man's desire. One watched his favorite actor; another listened to the flute, or guided a charioteer in the race: in his dream, the soldier was victorious, the general was borne in triumph, the wanderer returned home. Yes!—and sometimes those dreams come true!"
Just then Aurelius was summoned to make the birthday offerings to his household gods. A heavy curtain of tapestry was drawn back; and beyond it Marius gazed for a few moments into the Lararium, or imperial chapel. A patrician youth, in white habit, was in waiting, with a little chest in his hand containing incense for the use of the altar. On richly carved consoles, or sideboards, around this narrow chamber, were arranged the rich apparatus of worship and the golden or gilded images, adorned today with fresh flowers, among them that image of Fortune from the apartment of Antoninus
Pater: Marius the Epicurean (Chap. XIII)
Phis, and such of the emperor's own teachers as were gone to their rest. A dim fresco on the wall commemorated the ancient piety of Lucius Albinius, who in flight from Rome on the morrow of a great disaster, overtaking certain priests on foot with their sacred utensils, descended from the wagon in which he rode and yielded it to the ministers of the gods. As he ascended into the chapel the emperor paused, and with a grave but friendly look at his young visitor, delivered a parting sentence, audible to him alone: Imitation is the most acceptable part of worship: the gods had much rather mankind should resemble than flatter them. Make sure that those to ivhom you come nearest be the happier by your presence!
It was the very spirit of the scene and the hour—the hour Marius had spent in the imperial house. How temperate, how tranquilizing! what humanity!
Yet, as he left the eminent company concerning whose ways of life at home he had been so youthfully curious, and sought, after his manner, to determine the main trait in all this, he had to confess that it was a sentiment of mediocrity, though of a mediocrity for once really golden.
PART II Lucian of Samosata, Skeptic
INTRODUCTION
The satirist Lucian was born about the year 125 a.d. in Samosata, an Oriental town on the Euphrates, in the northeastern corner of Syria, then a province of the Roman Empire. In this eastern end of the Empire had arisen many diverse sects and philosophies. Lucian grew to maturity in the midst of a veritable hotbed of clashing cults and spent the greater portion of his adult life satirizing them and the society which supported them, with such vigor and wit that his words are stingingly alive today. Like other arch-skeptics with whom he is often compared—Swift, Voltaire and Rabelais—he could not endure the pretensions of those who claimed that their philosophies or their beliefs represented the only truth. And like those three fellow-spirits of later centuries, he attained a literary skill that places him among the great masters of literature. In his development of the dialogue as a literary form, he is in the direct Socratic line, and like Socrates, used this instrument to stimulate straight thinking on numerous aspects of contemporary life. Like Socrates too, he held up for laughter many permanent weaknesses of humankind. In one of his
Letters to Dead Authors, Andrew Lang addresses him thus:
"Yes, Lucian, we are the same vain creatures of doubt and dread, of unbelief and credulity, of avarice and pretense that you knew, at whom you smile." Lucian indeed makes us feel ourselves akin to the Romans and the people they were governing in the second century after Christ.
The period was one of great intellectual flux, of restless probing. Side by side in Rome—as well as in the cultural centers of Greece and Asia Minor—there lived sincere and devout pagans, such as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius; skeptics, who neglected the old schools of philosophy and the old religions,