Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself; an English Translation with Introductory Study on Stoicism and the Last of the Stoics

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ...he bore the load of empire and the solitude of power. Nerves and digestion under long strain had quite worn out, so that he scarcely ate or slept. Theriac--a sedative drug--had, Galen tells us, become almost his food; and Julian introduces him among the Caesars, as 'very grave, his eyes and features drawn somewhat with hard toils, and his body luminous and transparent with abstemiousness from food.' 'Death is rest: ' 'depart then with serenity--serene as he who gives thee thy discharge.'5 The impressive pathos, which attaches to this convinced presentiment of death, is more than personal. The funeral notes, which culminate in the Nunc Dimittis 1 ii. 2, 3; iii. 14; iv. 30; and perhaps viii. 8. 2 ii. 1; v. 10; viii. 44; ix. 3, 27, 29, 30, 34; x. 1, 8, 9, 13, 36. 3 iii. 4; iv. 31; x. 15; xi. 16; xii. 3. 4 Subscription to Books I. and II. 6 vi. 28; xii. 36. of the closing book, are the knell of a dying age. Over the tomb of Marcus, too, the historian might fitly inscribe the mournful epitaph Last Of His Line.1 Last of Roman Stoics, he is also the last of Emperors in whom-the ancient stock of Roman virtue survived. He stood, but half unconsciously, at the outgoings of an age, filled with a sense of transitoriness in all things human, of epochs, empires, dynasties as well as individuals passing to dust and oblivion. The gloom of decadence haunted and oppressed him. Rome was in truth ialready bankrupt--bankrupt in purse, bankrupt in ', intellect, bankrupt in moral and even in animal vigour. 'Power centred more and more in the hands of the Chief of state, not because the Emperor strained after prerogative, --to which the whole bent of Marcus was opposed, --but because Senate and Patricians had lost the capacity and almost the ambition for rule. When