The three immediately preceding citations, from 'A Select
Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the
Christian Church, First Series,' are reprinted by permission
of the Christian Literature Company, New York.




MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS

(121-180 A.D.)

BY JAMES FRASER GLUCK


Marcus Aurelius, one of the most illustrious emperors of Rome, and,
according to Canon Farrar, "the noblest of pagan emperors", was born at
Rome April 20th, A.D. 121, and died at Vindobona--the modern
Vienna--March 17th, A.D. 180, in the twentieth year of his reign and the
fifty-ninth year of his age.

His right to an honored place in literature depends upon a small volume
written in Greek, and usually called 'The Meditations of Marcus
Aurelius.' The work consists of mere memoranda, notes, disconnected
reflections and confessions, and also of excerpts from the Emperor's
favorite authors. It was evidently a mere private diary or note-book
written in great haste, which readily accounts for its repetitions, its
occasional obscurity, and its frequently elliptical style of expression.
In its pages the Emperor gives his aspirations, and his sorrow for his
inability to realize them in his daily life; he expresses his tentative