at least in thought, his ideal city. But just because Aurelius had
passed beyond Plato, in the scope of the gracious charities he pre-
supposed there, he had been unable really to track his way about it.
Ah! after all, according to Plato himself, all vision was but
reminiscence, and this, his heart's desire, no place his soul could
ever have visited in any region of the old world's achievements. He
had but divined, by a kind of generosity of spirit, the void place,
which another experience than his must fill.

Yet Marius noted the wonderful expression of peace, of quiet
pleasure, on the countenance of Aurelius, as he received from him the
rolls of fine clear manuscript, fancying the thoughts of the emperor
occupied at the moment with the famous prospect towards the Alban
hills, from those lofty windows.

NOTES

37. +Transliteration: en oligistois keitai. Definition "it lies in
the fewest [things]."



CHAPTER XVIII: "THE CEREMONY OF THE DART"

[41] THE ideas of Stoicism, so precious to Marcus Aurelius, ideas of
large generalisation, have sometimes induced, in those over whose
intellects they have had real power, a coldness of heart. It was the
distinction of Aurelius that he was able to harmonise them with the
kindness, one might almost say the amenities, of a humourist, as also
with the popular religion and its many gods. Those vasty conceptions