ENGLISH COMMENTARY
Ch. 11. From his Greek master Marcus passes to his close friend, M. Cornelius Fronto, an orator from Cirta in Africa, the leader of the Roman bar in Hadrian's closing years. Fronto's correspondence throws a remarkable light upon his relations with Marcus and his colleague Lucius Verus, but its recovery destroyed his own reputation as a second Cicero. He was the leader of an antiquarian revival, encouraged by Hadrian, back to the Latin writers of the pre-Augustan period, and to the speech of the people. He laboured with all his might to teach Marcus one of the essentials of style, the exact choice of word and phrase. We can trace his influence in the language of the Meditations. His pupil, however, is here concerned with moral lessons; he dwells in retrospect upon his tutor's affectionate nature, and especially upon the natural, impulsive humanity which clearly underlies the exaggerated warmth of expression of the letters. Fronto's influence may well have softened the austerity of the Stoic creed, and helped to give the Meditations their notable accent of human kindness. What Marcus here says about the Roman aristocrats' lack of true human affection, as it appeared to his tutor, is exactly illustrated by a letter of Fronto, in which he uses the same Greek word: 'Affection is not, I think, a Roman quality: in my whole life in Rome I have found anything rather than a sincerely affectionate man, so that I believe that it is because no one in Rome is in fact affectionate that there is no Roman name for this human excellence.'
Ch. 12. This Alexander is probably a rhetorician from Seleucia, whom Marcus appointed to be his Greek secretary, when his head-quarters were in Pannonia. The epithet 'Platonist' is perhaps chosen because Alexander's nickname among his contemporaries was 'the Plato of clay'. The mention of letter-writing may also help to confirm the identification.
Ch. 13. Cinna Catulus, a Stoic philosopher, of whom nothing more is known. His emphasis upon the duty of commending one's teachers leads Marcus to refer to Athenodotus, Fronto's master, and so to Domitius Afer, the orator (mentioned in Ch. 3 introduction), who may well have taught Athenodotus. Fronto himself refers to the latter as 'my master and my parent'.
Ch. 14. Severus is generally understood to be Claudius Severus,
