.'" Among the many statues
of Marcus extant is one representing him at the tender age of eight
years offering sacrifice. He was even then a priest of Mars. It was the
hand of Marcus alone that threw the crown so carefully and skillfully
that it invariably alighted upon the head of the statue of the god. The
entire ritual he knew by heart. The great Emperor Antoninus Pius lived
in the most simple and unostentatious manner; yet even this did not
satisfy the exacting, lofty spirit of Marcus. At twelve years of age he
began to practice all the austerities of Stoicism. He became a veritable
ascetic. He ate most sparingly; slept little, and when he did so it was
upon a bed of boards. Only the repeated entreaties of his mother induced
him to spread a few skins upon his couch. His health was seriously
affected for a time; and it was, perhaps, to this extreme privation that
his subsequent feebleness was largely due. His education was of the
highest order of excellence. His tutors, like Nero's, were the most
distinguished teachers of the age; but unlike Nero, the lad was in every
way worthy of his instructors. His letters to his dearly beloved teacher
Fronto are still extant, and in a very striking and charming way they
illustrate the extreme simplicity of life in the imperial household in
the villa of Antoninus Pius at Lorium by the sea. They also indicate the
lad's deep devotion to his studies and the sincerity of his love for his
relatives and friends.

When his predecessor and adoptive father Antoninus felt the approach of
death, he gave to the tribune who asked him for the watchword for the
night the reply "Equanimity," directed that the golden statue of Fortune
that always stood in the Emperor's chamber be transferred to that of
Marcus Aurelius, and then turned his face and passed away as peacefully
as if he had fallen asleep. The watchword of the father became the
life-word of the son, who pronounced upon that father in the
'Meditations' one of the noblest eulogies ever written. "We should,"
says Renan, "have known nothing of Antoninus if Marcus Aurelius had not
handed down to us that exquisite portrait of his adopted father, in
which he seems, by reason of humility, to have applied himself to paint
an image superior to what he himself was. Antoninus resembled a Christ
who would not have had an evangel; Marcus Aurelius a Christ who would
have written his own."

* * * * *

It would be impos