The fame of Marcus Aurelius rests, as it has been said, on his philosophical reflections, as his “Meditations” attest.  This remarkable book has come down to us, while most of the annals of the age have perished; so that even Niebuhr confesses that he knows less of the reign of Marcus Aurelius than of the early kings of Rome.  Perhaps that is one reason why Gibbon begins his history with later emperors.  But the “Meditations” of the good emperor survive, like the writings of Epictetus, St. Augustine, and Thomas a Kempis:  one of the few immortal books,—­immortal, in this case, not for artistic excellence, like the writings of Thucydides and Tacitus, but for the loftiness of thoughts alone; so precious that the saints of the Middle Ages secretly preserved them as in accord with their own experiences.  It is from these “Meditations” that we derive our best knowledge of Marcus Aurelius.  They reveal the man,—­and a man of sorrows, as the truly great are apt to be, when brought in contact with a world of wickedness, as were Alfred and Dante.

In these “Meditations” there is a striking resemblance to the discourses of Epictetus, which alike reveal the lofty and yet sorrowful soul, and are among the most valuable fragments which have come down from Pagan antiquity; and this is remarkable, since Epictetus was a Phrygian slave, of the lowest parentage.  He belonged to the secretary and companion of Nero, whose name was Epaphroditus, and who treated this poor Phrygian with great cruelty.  And yet, what is very singular, the master caused the slave to be indoctrinated in the Stoical philosophy, on account of a rare intelligence which commanded respect.  He was finally manumitted, but lived all his life in the deepest poverty, to which he attached no more importance than Socrates did at Athens.  In his miserable cottage he had no other furniture than a straw pallet and an iron lamp, which last somebody stole.  His sole remark on the loss of the only property he possessed was, that when the thief came again he would be disappointed to find only an earthen lamp instead of an iron one.  This earthen lamp was subsequently purchased by a hero-worshipper for three thousand drachmas ($150).  Epictetus, much as he despised riches and display and luxury and hypocrisy and pedantry and all phariseeism, living in the depths of poverty, was yet admired by eminent men, among whom was the Emperor Hadrian himself; and he found a disciple in Arrian, who was to him what Xenophon was to Socrates, committing his precious thoughts to writing; and these thoughts were to antiquity what the “Imitation of Christ” was to the Middle Ages,—­accepted by Christians as well as by pagans, and even to-day regarded as one of the most beautiful treatises on morals ever composed by man.  The great peculiarity of the “Manual” and the “Discourses” is the elevation of the soul over external evils, the duty of resignation to whatever God sends, and the obligation to do right because it is right.