Marcus Aurelius was born on April 26, A.D. 121.  His more correct designation would be Marcus Antoninus, but since he bore several different names at different periods of his life, and since at that age nothing was more common than a change of designation, it is hardly worth while to alter the name by which he is most popularly recognised.  His father, Annius Verus, who died in his Praetorship, drew his blood from a line of illustrious men who claimed descent from Numa, the second King of Rome.  His mother, Domitia Calvilla, was also a lady of consular and kingly race.  The character of both seems to have been worthy of their high dignity.  Of his father he can have known little, since Annius died when Aurelius was a mere infant; but in his Meditations he has left us a grateful memorial of both his parents.  He says that from his grandfather he learned (or, might have learned) good morals and the government of his temper; from the reputation and remembrance of his father, modesty and manliness; from his mother, piety, and beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and, further, simplicity of life far removed from the habits of the rich.

The childhood and boyhood of Aurelius fell during the reign of Hadrian.  The times were better than those which we have contemplated in the reigns of the Caesars.  After the suicide of Nero and the brief reigns of Galba and Otho, the Roman world had breathed more freely for a time under the rough good humour of Vespasian and the philosophic virtue of Titus.  The reign of Domitian, indeed, who succeeded his brother Titus, was scarcely less terrible and infamous than that of Caius or of Nero; but that prince, shortly before his murder, had dreamt that a golden neck had grown out of his own, and interpreted the dream to indicate that a better race of princes should follow him.  The dream was fulfilled.  Whatever may have been their other faults, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, were wise and kind-hearted rulers; Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius were among the very gentlest and noblest sovereigns whom the world has ever seen.

Hadrian, though an able, indefatigable, and, on the whole, beneficial Emperor, was a man whose character was stained with serious faults.  It is, however, greatly to his honour that he recognized in Aurelius, at the early age of six years, the germs of those extraordinary virtues which afterwards blessed the empire and elevated the sentiments of mankind.  “Hadrian’s bad and sinful habits left him,” says Niebuhr, “when he gazed on the sweetness of that innocent child.  Playing on the boy’s paternal name of Verus, he called him Verissimus, ‘the most true.’” It is interesting to find that this trait of character was so early developed in one who thought that all men “should speak as they think, with an accent of heroic verity.”