Marcus Aurelius: A Biography Told as Much as May Be by Letters, Together With Some Account of the Stoic Religion and an Exposition of the Roman Government's Attempt to Suppress Christianity During Marcus's Reign
by . New Haven: Yale University Press. 1921. 8vo, 309 pp. Portrait. $2.75. THE Emperor Marcus Aurelius is great in history and in philosophy; for two thousand years the world has known him as a ruler and a teacher of men; but as a human creature, a modest learner, and an affectionate friend, he is familiar to only a few. It is little more than a century since his correspondence with Fronlo. his early tutor and lifelong friend, was brought to light and published; and on this we chiefly depend for knowledge of his private character. The author has made the fullest use of it, setting out the letters in an admirable translation which is pleasanter reading than the originals; for the letters of the Emperor and his Master are not good literature: there is more mutual admiration and fine writing in them than is attractive at a first glance; but they abound in happy touches of domestic kindness and sympathy, family interest, and good advice. Mr. Sedgwick has done well to let his story be told, according to the promise of his title-page, as much as may be by letters.
This, however, is but a part of what the title promises and the book performs. I’he facts ol the Emperor’s life are related as hilly as scanty sources will allow; and the scraps of information have been collected with a diligence as remarkable as the skill with which they are combined into a connected and harmonious whole.
In the early chapters we have an account of the Stole philosophy. — or religion, — its founders, its meaning, and its progress, down to tlie time of Marcus Aurelius, when ’no doubt the letter of the Stoic doctrine remained very much the same, but all the time the contents of that creed had been changing.’ So we are shown how and from what grew the Meditations, the complete and final development of a great system of thought and morals.
Not less necessary is it, fora right understanding of the Emperor, to know of his surroundings and education; what the society was like in which he was brought up, what it did and what it talked about. The following chapters show this in a lively picture. From this point torwaril the letters become of the first importance to the biography; and so the life is carried on to its close.
The last chapters are a thoughtful discussion of the Roman attitude to Christianity, and the sufferings of the Christians under Marcus Aurelius. In the beieginning the early Christians were
mostly Jews and shared in the unpopularity of that race. (Something of the sort may be the case with the present-day Bolsheviki.) To the Roman the Christian belief seemed merely absurd; and popular slander, everywhere believed, described their pract ices as wicked and infamous. But what was also believed, and what was true, was that they defied the law. The magistrate’s lirst duty is to enforce the law; and Marcus did no more; he took the law as he found it, and enforced it by orderly procedure against those who. bv their own confession, could be regarded only as law-breakers. To do otherwise, he must have been either an unfit ruler or a believing Christ ian; and because be was neither, he cannot rightly be described as a persecutor. All that Mr. Sedgwick says on this subject deserves attentive reading and should command unprejudiced assent.
The book is addressed by its Preface to those people for whom the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius contain a deep religious meaning; but it will probably find still more readers who are Stoics neither in principle nor in practice, but can enjoy a good biography by a competent scholar.
RUSSELL GRAY.