ENGLISH COMMENTARY
succeeded M. Annius Verus in the City Prefecture and was consul a second time. Hadrian removed him from office in a.d. 138, as a rival of Antoninus whom he had decided to adopt as his successor. Severus belonged to the younger Pliny's cultured circle, and what Marcus says of his care for his own education confirms the impression of him we get from Pliny's letters as a cultured lover of learning. There is a tradition that before his adoption by his grandfather Marcus bore the names Catilius Severus.
Ch. 5. The name of this good man, who was probably a slave, is not known. We learn from the biographer[1] that Marcus was moved to tears at his death, and was rebuked by the court attendants for his display of feeling, but that Antoninus said: 'Allow him to be human: for neither philosophy nor a throne are bars to affection.'
Ch. 6. Diognetus was his painting master. In view of the remarks about exorcism of evil spirits, the question whether this Diognetus is the man to whom the celebrated Letter to Diognetus, with its defence of the Christians, was addressed is interesting. Westcott thought the identification chronologically possible, dating the letter about a.d. 117. Recent writers follow Harnack, who puts the letter as late as the third century.
Cock-fighting, especially with quails, was a favourite pastime of the upper-class youth at Athens, as at Rome. Plato's brother Glauco was a fancier, and the quail has an amusing role in one of Babrius' Fables. The objection to the sport was not so much its cruelty as the low company into which it led young gentlemen:
Thus we poor Cocks exert our skill and bravery
For idle Gulls and Kites, that trade in knavery.
What Marcus says of Greek training is illustrated in a passage by the biographer: 'on entering his twelfth year he adopted the dress of a philosopher and the consequent ascetic habit of living, he studied in the Greek gown and slept on the bare ground. Only at his mother's request he took to a pallet covered with skins.' Of the three lecturers, presumably in philosophy, nothing
- ↑ I refer throughout these introductions to the writers of the various biographies in the Historia Augusta as 'the biographer', since they are composite writings, of uncertain origin and date.
