INTRODUCTION
doubtful indications that a philosophic treatise by Marcus Aurelius was known to the world, something a little more definite than the loose phrases of his biographer, writing so many years later, indicate.
Thus Herodian, a writer of the third century, who opens his history[1] with the accession of Commodus, notices the old-fashioned mannerism of Marcus,[2] and in the epitome of the history of Dio Cassius, who wrote under the Severi, we meet an occasional phrase in the speeches put into Marcus' mouth, which attempts to give verisimilitude by the use of words which recall the Emperor's writings. For example, in a speech read to the troops, a kind of Order of the Day, on the occasion of the ill-timed revolt of Avidius Cassius, Marcus is made to say: 'how has faith perished, how have expectations of honour perished'.[3] This seems an echo of 'Faith and Reverence and Justice and Truth have gone to Olympus from the wide-paved earth'.[4] The oration ends: 'if only I might make this gain out of the present evils, if I might but settle the matter happily and show to all the world that a right use may be made even of civil wars.'[5] Here the proverbial saying, 'to settle the matter happily', is an echo from the Meditations. There are other touches of this kind, but the ground is difficult and doubtful, and opinions will vary about the value of such evidence.
In Julian, who was Emperor a.d. 361–63, I can find no certain verbal reminiscence of Marcus' work, such as you
- ↑ τῆς μετὰ Μάρκον βασιλείς ἱστορίαι in eight Books, covering the period a.d. 180–238.
- ↑ λόγων τε ἀρχαιότητος ἦν ἐραστής . . . δηλοῖ δὲ ὄσα καὶ εἰς ἡμᾶς ἦλθεν ἢ λεχθέντα πρὸς αὐτοῡ ἢ γραφέντα Herod, i. 2. 3.
- ↑ πῶς δ᾽ οὐκ ἀπόλωλε μὲν πίστις, ἀπόλωλε δὲ ἐλπὶς ἀγαθή; Dio. Cass. Epit. lxxi. 24. 2
- ↑ Πίστις δὲ καὶ Αἰδὼς καὶ Δίκη καὶ Άλήθεια,
'πρὸς Ὄλυμπον ἀπὸ χθονὸς εὐρυαδείης' (Hes. Op. 197) M. Ant. v. 33. - ↑ ὦς ἔγωγε τοῡτ' ἂν μόνον ἐκ τῶν παρόντων κακῶν κερδάναιμι, εἰ δυνηθείην καλῶς θέσθαι τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ δεῖξαι πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, ὄτι καὶ ἐμφυλίοις πολέμοις ἔστιν ὀρθῶς χρήσασθαι Dio. Cass. l.c. 26. 4; cf. ἀρκεῖ οὖν καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτης τὸ παρὸν εὖ θέσθαι M. Ant. vi. 2.
