ENGLISH COMMENTARY
is recorded. Some editors substitute Maecianus for Marcianus, thinking that the jurist L. Volusius Maecianus, his law tutor, is meant. Such a reference would be inappropriate here; it was not until Marcus was Caesar that he studied under Maecianus. At that date he says to Fronto: 'I write this hurriedly because Maecianus is pressing. . . . I must remember that I ought to show as much reverence to my tutor as I bestow love on you, who are my friend.'[1]
Ch. 7. To carry on the subject of his philosophic education, Marcus introduces Q. Junius Rusticus out of chronological order. Rusticus was not a professional philosopher and has left no writings; he belongs to the tradition of Cato, Brutus, and Thrasea Paetus, Roman statesmen who modelled their lives on Stoic principles. Marcus made him consul a second time in a.d. 162 and Prefect of the City in a.d. 163, and it was as prefect that he condemned Justin Martyr to death, circa a.d. 165. He died perhaps in a.d. 168, the year in which he ceased to be Prefect. Dio Cassius says that he practised Zeno's precepts, and the biographer Capitolinus describes him as the intimate friend of Marcus. We can see from the correspondence with Fronto that his influence began when the young Caesar was about 25 years of age. Fronto struggled hard to resist his pupil's tendency to abandon Latin eloquence for the Stoic creed, warning Marcus of the danger a prince ran in deserting the study of language for the arid and formless disputes of philosophy. What Marcus says here about preciosity of speech refers to the elocutio novella, the elaborated diction, which Fronto laboured to inculcate. Notice the likeness of structure in this chapter and the preceding, with the enumeration side by side of grave and relatively trivial lessons. The object of the Stoic profession was to cover all sides of a man's life by its principles.
Ch. 8. Apollonius of Chalcedon, a Stoic philosopher, was summoned to Rome by Antoninus to instruct Marcus. The enthusiasm of the pupil is in curious contrast with the unfavourable impression of Apollonius which we get from Lucian and from the biographer. Lucian says that he saw him on his way to Rome, like a new Jason, sailing in quest of the Golden Fleece. The jest
- ↑ The Letters of M. Cornelius Fronto (translated by Haines in the Loeb classics), p. 61, Naber.
