ENGLISH COMMENTARY
'by the contempt of fame, virtue is contemned'[1]; and Fronto, Marcus' rhetoric tutor, writes to him: 'it is true that he who ignores the reputation of virtue, ignores also virtue itself.[2] Among the grain and chaff of the biographer of Marcus there is the tradition that 'he was very curious of his reputation, and required exact information of what was said of him, correcting what he thought justly criticized', and again: 'either in writing or in speech he answered malicious critics'. Further there is a recorded saying: 'it is fairer for me to follow the advice of so many and such good friends, than for my many and good friends to obey my single wishes.'[3] There is no grave inconsistency between this tradition and what Marcus says here, where he is writing for his own private guidance. Milton says[4]
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies.
And so Socrates says to Crito:[5] 'We must not, my good friend, entertain a thought of what the multitude will say of us, but only of what he who knows about justice and injustice will say, and Truth herself.'
Ch. 5. This chapter comes closer to the writer's everyday task of government. In ii. 5 there is the same insistence on the Emperor's proud inheritance of the name Roman. Here he further reminds himself that he is Rome's magistrate, a constitutional ruler. Renan[6] writes: 'La tradition romaine est un dogme pour Marc-Aurèle . . . Les préjugés du stoicien se doublèrent ainsi de ceux du patrioter.' Another French critic[7] says: 'Ce juste orgueil que ressent une âme aussi indépendante et aussi désintéressée que celle de l'Empereur philosophe, est de toutes les nations et de tous les temps. . . . C'est comme une religion, qui a aussi ses indomptables martyrs.' Of his father-in-law, Antoninus Pius, Marcus says: 'he did everything according to the tradition of his fatherland, but he did not attempt to seem to others to be observing tradition' (i. 16. 6), that is, he did what he did to
