ENGLISH COMMENTARY
The effect here is a little spoiled by the verbal comment, which turns upon the use in both Greek and Latin of the word 'to love' in the sense 'to be usual'.
Chs. 22–3. This simple prescription for content, followed by the recognition, as in ch. 15, that change of place is no remedy for disquiet, seems to be a recall to prosaic duty after the enthusiastic words of ch. 21.
The word translated 'place of retreat' means literally 'farm' or 'country seat'. It is often used in the New Comedy for the country as a place of quiet and natural life in contrast with the town, a scene of bustle and unreal conventions.
Marcus uses it, as in iv. 3. 4, for 'retreat' in the spiritual sense, a meaning which may be derived from its use in Homer's Odyssey for the retirement of Laertes. The point is a favourite with the writers on exile and the satirists, namely, that change of scene does not bring change of temper.
The quotation from Plato's Theaetetus[1] seems to mean that the man who shuns his station and retires to solitude takes his selfish desires with him and lives on the mountain at the expense of his dependants. Plato had said that the ruler is only a herdsman on a grand scale, like a boorish farmer in the uplands. Marcus remembers the general notion only, using it to illustrate the point that solitude on a height may be uncultivated and selfish.
Ch. 24. From the mistaken search for solitude he returns to self-examination. The passage to be compared is v. 11, where also he regards the governing self as degraded to a lower level. The temptations to a divorce from neighbourly duty and to absorption in bodily emotions are again touched upon in xi. 19. There the latter fault is spoken of as subordination of the divine part to the mortal, quite in the manner of Plato; here the language is derived from the Epicurean image of smooth or impeded movements of the flesh, as in v. 26 and x. 8. 1.
Ch. 25. The rule of the lower self is enslavement to passions, like fear and grief and anger. To be subject to passion is to desert reason, which is embodied in Law. Such a man then is like a law-breaker, he deserves the severe usage which Roman custom meted out to a runaway slave or to a deserter (xi. 9) from the
- ↑ Pl. Tht. 174 d.
