TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
In the plain text version text in italics is enclosed by underscores
(_italics_) and small capitals are represented in upper case as in SMALL
CAPS.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated
variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used
has been kept.
Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.
The original cover art has been modified by the transcriber and is
granted to the public domain.
* * * * *
[Illustration: “He spoke to them of the vanity of life.”] _Page 98._
The Emperor Marcus Aurelius
A STUDY IN IDEALS
BY
JOHN C. JOY, S.J.
B. HERDER
17 SOUTH BROADWAY, ST. LOUIS, MO.
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY OF IRELAND
24 UPPER O’CONNELL STREET, DUBLIN
1913
μητρι
ὑπομνήσεως χάριν
ἀπαρχαί
_Printed by_ BROWNE AND NOLAN, LTD., _Dublin_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
PRELUDE 1
CHAPTER II
THE BOY STOIC 11
CHAPTER III
A PHILOSOPHER ON THE THRONE 30
CHAPTER IV
LIFE IN THE PALACE 44
CHAPTER V
ON THE DANUBE 55
CHAPTER VI
THE BOOK OF MEDITATIONS 68
CHAPTER VII
LAST DAYS IN ROME 81
CHAPTER VIII
“THE END OF THE OLD WORLD” 95
CHAPTER IX
THE MARTYRS OF CHRIST 106
CHAPTER X
THE PAGAN À KEMPIS 128
_Even in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell._
_Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master’s ken
Who rates us if we peer outside our pen--
Matched with a palace, is not this a hell?_
_Even in a palace! On his truth sincere
Who spake these words, no shadow ever came
And when my ill-schooled spirit is aflame._
_Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,
I’ll stop and say, “There were no succour here,
The aids to noble life are all within.”_
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
The Emperor Marcus Aurelius
CHAPTER I
PRELUDE
“Marcus Aurelius is perhaps the most beautiful figure in history. He
is one of those consoling and hope-inspiring marks which stand for
ever to remind our weak and easily discouraged race how high human
goodness and perseverance have once been carried and may be carried
again. The interest of mankind is peculiarly attracted by examples of
signal goodness in high places; for that testimony to the worth of
goodness is the most striking which is borne by those to whom all the
means of pleasure and self-indulgence lay open, by those who had at
their command the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Marcus
Aurelius was the ruler of the grandest of Empires and he was one of the
best of men. Besides him history presents one or two other sovereigns
eminent for their goodness, such as Saint Louis and Alfred. But Marcus
Aurelius has for us Moderns this great superiority of interest over
Saint Louis or Alfred, that he lived and acted in a state of society
modern by its essential characteristics, in an epoch akin to our own,
in a brilliant centre of civilisation. Trajan talks of ‘our enlightened
age’ just as glibly as The _Times_ talks of it. Marcus Aurelius thus
becomes for us a man like ourselves, a man in all things tempted as we
are. Saint Louis inhabits an atmosphere of medieval Catholicism which
the man of the nineteenth century may admire, indeed, and passionately
wish to inhabit, but which, strive as he will, he cannot really
inhabit. Alfred belongs to a state of society half barbarous. Neither
Alfred nor Saint Louis can be morally and intellectually as near to us
as Marcus Aurelius.”
These are the words of a writer in the highest degree representative
of modern thought--Matthew Arnold. As such they will serve as a text
for this study, and, I hope, as a justification for including it
amongst the publications of the Catholic Truth Society. They will be a
text since they touch on the points of greatest interest in the life
of Marcus Aurelius; his high natural ideals; his fidelity in great
part to those ideals; the contrast thus presented between him and his
surroundings. This quotation from such a writer will also perhaps
justify the appearance of this study in the good company of the C.T.S.
catalogue, since it proves the interest which this pagan Emperor of
Rome has for the men of our own time, whatever their opinions. For
Christians there is the additional interest afforded by the contrast
between his ideals and those of the martyrs--the ideals of nature and
those of grace. Incidentally, a study of his life and age shows, as Mr.
F. H. Myers well points out, how futile are the neo-pagan theories, so
much in fashion in our own times, of the self-sufficiency of nature;
and also, as Mr. Myers does not point out, how essential for heroic
virtue is the indwelling of the Spirit of God, the supernatural aid of
grace.
The life of Marcus Aurelius has had a fascination for those in all
ages who are interested in the strivings of human nature after the
ideal--and these are, I suppose, most men of culture (_humani_ the
Romans rightly called them). The early Christians took the same
interest in him which they took in all the nobler pagans, in Plato and
in Socrates, in Vergil, Seneca, and Epictetus; they praised his virtue
and found in it a spur to higher things. If unregenerate nature could
do so much, how ought not the regenerate blush for their tepidity?
This was the sentiment also of that Cardinal Barberini who translated
the Meditations which Marcus has left us. He dedicated the translation
to his own soul “in order to make it redder than his purple at the
sight of the virtues of this gentile.” Marcus’ contemporaries of all
shades of opinion--Christians no less than pagans--bore testimony to
the integrity of his life and, on the whole, the wisdom and justice
of his rule. Long after his death his bust might be found amongst
the household gods all over the Empire. In our own age when men are
losing hold of the supernatural and trying to live without it, the high
attainments of a mere pagan are held up for admiration. Dilettanti are
in love with a moral code which brings with it no shocking sanctions; a
generation sick unto death with scepticism seeks peace in an undogmatic
philosophy of life: but it is all oil and no wine; therefore it heals
not.
Yet honour where honour is due; we have no wish to detract from the
greatness of the good Emperor--a greatness which is only realised by
contrast with the surroundings in which he lived.
Rome, when Marcus came to rule over it, was the centre of a vast
Empire and no capital has ever surpassed it in immorality. It had all
the viciousness of Paris without its grace, the gross materialism of
London enhanced by a system of slavery which brutalised master as well
as slave, and all this joined to the superstition of Pekin. It had
not improved, but rather the reverse, since St. Paul saw it delivered
over to a reprobate sense. It was the spoiled child of its Empire. All
Europe except Germany and Russia owned its sway and ministered to its
desires; so did Asia Minor and Syria as far East as the Euphrates; so
too did Egypt and the whole northern part of Africa. The wealth of
all these provinces was borne by fleets of merchantmen to its port of
Ostia; and not of these alone but the wealth also of India and China.
But besides wealth they gave her something which she needed more: they
gave her life. She must long ago have perished of corruption, did not
the fresh pure blood of Britain, Gaul and Spain come throbbing through
the Empire to give health to its diseased heart. Only when the heart
itself became surcharged with corruption and poured its foulness back
into the system did the Empire decay. But this was not yet. More than
two centuries had to pass after the reign of Marcus Aurelius (A.D.
160-181) before the final rot set in: such was the strange vitality of
that Empire, the greatest the world has ever seen.
From time to time the Emperors made desperate efforts to stem the
rising tide of immorality. As practical men they recognised what
Napoleon and even Voltaire recognised, that there could be no morality
for the masses without religion; but they did not realise so clearly
that there could be religion, especially pagan religion, without
morality. This was indeed what came about in the second century,
especially during the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and his predecessor.
There was a great revival in religion but no corresponding improvement
in morals. Nor was this strange. The gods themselves were represented
as grossly immoral beings; religion was merely a business transaction
with them--a _quid pro quo_--and under the code of honour which too
often marks such transactions. Hence, if you safely could, it was quite
the thing to cheat the gods; you took your chance, but the probability
was that you would get the worst of it, since the gods were the more
dexterous sharpers.
Such were the old Græco-Roman gods; but just at this time there was new
and better blood introduced into the Pantheon. The gods of Egypt and
the East--Mithra and Isis--strange mystic deities, began to be in high
honour all over the Empire. In these new cults there was much that was
higher and nobler than the old Roman religion--in every religion, as
St. Augustine says, there is something good and true--but mixed with
this good there was gross immorality officially sanctioned.
It is strange to think of Marcus as a devotee of all these
superstitions; yet such he was. The intellectual and the cultured
usually were sceptical about the tales of the gods; but few of them
forbore paying them the customary homage. They looked on religion as
a political and social duty and went through its functions as such.
Marcus took the ceremonies more seriously than did the usual Roman of
high rank; but even his faith in the old myths wavered. He was content,
however, not to pry into high matters, and adopted the Stoic attitude
towards them. These philosophers interpreted the legends, often by
Procrustean methods, to suit their own doctrine, but in reality thought
their truth or falsehood of little practical importance. For them
the chief thing was to live a life of virtue, relying on one’s own
strength. He who lived such a life they held to be better than the
gods; and in fact many of them did lead admirable lives, as far as we
can judge. Their virtue, if mingled most frequently with an unlovely
and repellant pride, was at all events a relief amidst the universal
corruption of pagan Rome.
When we consider his pagan surroundings we marvel at the virtue of
Marcus Aurelius; but, great as this was, Rome had now something greater
far. There were at this time many silent figures who passed with
downcast eyes and modest mien through her polluted streets; they met
in strange places and celebrated strange rites; they did good to all;
and all about them breathed a purer air, a fragrance of Heaven unknown
before. These were they beside whose God-given strength of soul the
strugglings of the Stoic Emperor were but the feeble gropings of an
infant. Christianity was fast spreading over the Empire. Already the
Catacombs were extending in a maze of net-work beside Rome. All was
ready for the greatest persecution the Church had yet endured; this
time it was to come from the hands of the well-meaning but narrow and
unfortunate Marcus. In Rome itself the Christians were multiplying
fast; converts were made amongst the nobility; long before they had
penetrated even into “Cæsar’s household.” It was about this time that
Tertullian wrote his well-known words: “We are but of yesterday and yet
we fill every place--your cities, your houses, your fortresses, your
_municipia_, councils, camps, tribes, decurias, palace, senate, forum;
we leave you your temples.” And he adds, in words in which we must
allow for rhetorical exaggeration: “Were we to detach ourselves from
you, you would be scared by your solitude and by the silence, which
would be like that of a dead world.”
Though Marcus must have known from the police authorities the great
numbers of the Christians, he understood little of their ideals. It is
the tragedy of his noble life. To quote Arnold again: “What an affinity
for Christianity had this persecutor of the Christians! The effusion
of Christianity, its relieving tears, its happy self-sacrifice, were
the very element one feels for which his spirit longed; they were near
him, he touched them, he passed them by.... What would he have said
to the Sermon on the Mount? ... What would have become of his notions
of the _exitiabilis superstitio_ (the deadly superstition), of ‘the
obstinacy of the Christians’? Vain question! Yet the greatest charm
of Marcus Aurelius is that he makes us ask it. We see him wise, just,
self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless; yet with all this agitated,
stretching out his arms for something beyond, _tendentemque manus ripae
ulterioris amore_.”
Of the details of the external life of Marcus Aurelius we know very
little. It is his internal life which interests us most, and that is
recorded for us by his own hand in his book of Meditations. They are
notes, meant probably for no eyes but his own, of his efforts after
virtue--the record of his soul. That the ruler of the Roman Empire
should have thought such thoughts and, in great part, lived up to them;
that at the same time he, who represented the best that paganism could
produce, should have fallen far short of the heroism shown by Christian
slave-girls; that his life and meditations prove in the concrete how
vast is the gulf between the natural and the supernatural: in these
facts lie the various fascinations which the Emperor Marcus Aurelius
has had for Pagan and Christian, for Atheist and Theist, for the
Positivist, who would fain be rid of the supernatural, and the Mystic
for whom the supernatural is everything.
_The author desires once for all to acknowledge his debt to numerous
writers dealing with the life and period of Marcus Aurelius. It is
hardly necessary to mention the names of Dill, Pater, and Renan._