letters extant showing the great affection of the pupil for the master,
and the master's great hopes of his industrious pupil.

When he was eleven years old he assumed the dress of philosophers,
something plain and coarse, became a hard student, and lived a most
laborious, abstemious life, even so far as to injure his health. He
abandoned poetry and rhetoric for philosophy, and attached himself to the
sect of the Stoics. But he did not neglect the study of law, which was a
useful preparation for the high place which he was designed to fill. We
must suppose that he learned the Roman discipline of arms, which was a
necessary part of the education of a man who afterwards led his troops to
battle against a warlike race.

Antoninus has recorded in his first book the names of his teachers, and
the obligations which he owed to each of them. The way in which he speaks
of what he learned from them might seem to savor of vanity or self-
praise, if we look carelessly at the way in which he has expressed
himself; but if anyone draws this conclusion, he will be mistaken.
Antoninus means to commemorate the merits of his several teachers, what
they taught, and what a pupil might learn from them. Besides, this book,
like the eleven other books, was for his own use; and if we may trust the
note at the end of the first book, it was written during one of M.
Antoninus' campaigns against the Quadi, at a time when the commemoration
of the virtues of his illustrious teachers might remind him of their
lessons and the practical uses which he might derive from them.

Among his teachers of philosophy was Sextus of Chaeroneia, a grandson of
Plutarch. What he learned from this excellent man is told by himself (I.
9). His favorite teacher was Rusticus (I. 7), a philosopher, and also a
man of practical good sense in public affairs. Rusticus was the adviser