With this wise and eminent prince, who was as amiable in his private relations as he was admirable in the discharge of his public duties, Marcus Aurelius spent the next twenty-three years of his life.  So close and intimate was their union, so completely did they regard each other as father and son, that during all that period Aurelius never slept more than twice away from the house of Antoninus.  There was not a shade of jealousy between them; each was the friend and adviser of the other, and, so far from regarding his destined heir with suspicion, the Emperor gave him the designation “Caesar,” and heaped upon him all the honours of the Roman Commonwealth.  It was in vain that the whisper of malignant tongues attempted to shake this mutual confidence.  Antoninus once saw the mother of Aurelius in earnest prayer before the statue of Apollo.  “What do you think she is praying for so intently?” asked a wretched mischief-maker of the name of Valerius Omulus:  “it is that you may die, and her son reign.”  This wicked suggestion might have driven a prince of meaner character into violence and disgust, but Antoninus passed it over with the silence of contempt.

It was the main delight of Antoninus to enjoy the quiet of his country villa.  Unlike Hadrian, who traversed immense regions of his vast dominion, Antoninus lived entirely either at Rome, or in his beautiful villa at Lorium, a little seacoast village about twelve miles from the capital.  In this villa he had been born, and here he died, surrounded by the reminiscences of his childhood.  In this his real home it was his special pleasure to lay aside the pomp and burden of his imperial rank.  “He did not,” says Marcus, “take the bath at unseasonable hours; he was not fond of building houses, nor curious about what he eat, nor about the texture and colour of his clothes, nor about the beauty of his slaves.”  Even the dress he wore was the work of the provincial artist in his little native place.  So far from checking the philosophic tastes of his adopted son he fostered them, and sent for Apollonius of Chalcis to be his teacher in the doctrines of Stoicism.  In one of his notes to Fronto, Marcus draws the picture of their simple country occupations and amusements.  Hunting, fishing, boxing, wrestling, occupied the leisure of the two princes, and they shared the rustic festivities of the vintage.  “I have dined,” he writes, “on a little bread....  We perspired a great deal, shouted a great deal, and left some gleanings of the vintage hanging on the trellis work....  When I got home I studied a little, but not to much advantage I had a long talk with my mother, who was lying on her couch.”  Who knows how much Aurelius and how much the world may have gained from such conversation as this with a mother from whom he had learnt to hate even the thought of evil?  Nor will any one despise the simplicity of heart which made him mingle with the peasants as an amateur vintager, unless he is so tasteless and so morose as to think with scorn of Scipio and Laelius as they gathered shells on the seashore, or of Henry IV. as he played at horses with his little boys on all-fours.  The capability of unbending thus, the genuine cheerfulness which enters at due times into simple amusements, has been found not rarely in the highest and purest minds.