MARCUS AURELIUS
Cephisia,[1] attended by young men from every quarter, who travelled to Athens from a desire to hear his oratory.
Wishing to make trial whether Marcus was angry with him owing to what had occurred at the trial,[2] he sent him a letter not containing excuses but a complaint, for he said that "he wondered for what reason Marcus no longer wrote to him, though in times past he wrote so often that on one occasion three letter-carriers reached him on a single day, one treading on the heels of another."
And the Emperor at greater length and on greater subjects, and putting a wonderful amount of character into the letter, sent an answer to Herodes, from which I will extract what bears upon my present subject and quote it. The letter opened with the words "Hail, my dear Herodes"; and after speaking of his winter quarters after the war, in which he was at the time, and lamenting the wife whom he had lately lost,[3] and saying something also about his bodily weakness, he went on as follows: "But for you I pray that you may have good health, and may think of me as your well-wisher and not consider yourself wronged because, detecting some of your household in wrong-doings, I punished them in the mildest way possible. Be not angry with me on this account, but, if I have done you, or am doing you, any injury, ask satisfaction of me in the temple of Athena-in-the-City[4] during the Mysteries. For I
- ↑ See Aul. Gellius. i. 2; xviii. 10.
- ↑ See reference in note 3, p. 295.
- ↑ At Halalae in Asia Minor, during the winter of 175–6.
- ↑ At Athens.
