ENGLISH COMMENTARY
proverbial in Plato's day, means no more than we should imply by speaking of the Vale of Avalon or the Earthly Paradise.
Ch. 9. This appeal to the self to enjoy a true life in the present, with its recurrence to the theme of ch. 1, was perhaps suggested by the passing reference to the Islands of the Blest.
The fruit of philosophy is here and now; it rests upon sound doctrines and these depend on true reflection upon impressions and impulses.
Ch. 10. Once more his favourite thought that the crucial test of men, of great rulers, and even of a Socrates, is the doctrine which they hold and carry out in act.
He was himself called, for his victories in the North, Germanicus and Sarmaticus, the latter title being first conferred in a.d. 175 with Imperator VIII.
The closing moral 'Are they not robbers?' suggests that Marcus may have had in mind a traditional tale (which St. Augustine refers to[1]) about Alexander and a captured pirate. The latter told the king that the only difference between them was that Alexander's robbery was on a larger scale:
Right so bitwixe a titlelees tiraunt
And an outlawe or a theef erraunt,
The same I seye, ther is no difference;
To Alisaundre was told this sentence.[2]
Ch. 11. True magnanimity, as distinguished from the robber spirit of the last chapter, comes from realizing Nature's law of mutation (iii. 11. 2). A man's aim should be justice, resignation, contempt of vainglory, and to walk in the straight path of Nature. Marcus uses the third person, as he did in iii. 16, to avoid the suggestion that he claims to have reached this ideal.
The closing words allude to a splendid passage in the Laws of Plato:[3] 'God, holding the beginning and the end and the middle of all things that are, proceeds naturally in a circular course, straight to his purpose. And with him follows Right, to punish those who come short of Divine Law. He who would be happy holds fast to Right and follows in his train, humbly and orderly . . .' The image is drawn from the observed rotation of the starry
