2.  His opening remarks show that he remembered all his teachers—­even the most insignificant—­with sincere gratitude.  He regarded each one of them as a man from whom something could be learnt, and from whom he actually did learn that something.  Hence the honourable respect—­a respect as honourable to himself as to them—­which he paid to Fronto, to Rusticus, to Julius Proculus, and others whom his noble and conscientious gratitude raised to the highest dignities of the State.  He even thanks the gods that “he made haste to place those who brought him up in the station of honour which they seemed to desire, without putting them off with mere hopes of his doing it some time after, because they were then still young.”  He was far the superior of these men, not only socially but even morally and intellectually; yet from the height of his exalted rank and character he delighted to associate with them on the most friendly terms, and to treat them, even till his death, with affection and honour, to place their likenesses among his household gods, and visit their sepulchres with wreaths and victims.

3.  His hardiness and self-denial were perhaps still more remarkable.  I wish that those boys of our day, who think it undignified to travel second-class, who dress in the extreme of fashion, wear roses in their buttonholes, and spend upon ices and strawberries what would maintain a poor man for a year, would learn how infinitely more noble was the abstinence of this young Roman, who though born in the midst of splendour and luxury, learnt from the first to loathe the petty vice of gluttony, and to despise the unmanliness of self-indulgence.  Very early in life he joined the glorious fellowship of those who esteem it not only a duty but a pleasure

     “To scorn delights, and live laborious days,”

and had learnt “endurance of labour, and to want little, and to work with his own hands.”  In his eleventh year he became acquainted with Diognetus, who first introduced him to the Stoic philosophy, and in his twelfth year he assumed the Stoic dress.  This philosophy taught him “to prefer a plank bed and skin, and whatever else of the kind belongs to the Grecian discipline.”  It is said that “the skin” was a concession to the entreaties of his mother, and that the young philosopher himself would have chosen to sleep on the bare boards or on the ground.  Yet he acted thus without self-assertion and without ostentation.  His friends found him always cheerful; and his calm features,—­in which a dignity and thoughtfulness of spirit contrasted with the bloom and beauty of a pure and honourable boyhood,—­were never overshadowed with ill-temper or with gloom.

The guardians of Marcus Aurelius had gathered around him all the most distinguished literary teachers of the age.  Never had a prince a greater number of eminent instructors; never were any teachers made happy by a more grateful, a more humble, a more blameless, a more truly royal and glorious pupil.  Long years after his education had ceased, during his campaign among the Quadi, he wrote a sketch of what he owed to them.  This sketch forms the first book of his Meditations, and is characterised throughout by the most unaffected simplicity and modesty.