their faculties without overstraining them; it enabled them to
disregard the burden of present trials, not by vainly attempting to deny
their bitterness or ignore their weight, but in the high certainty that
they are the brief and necessary prelude to "a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory."



MARCUS AURELIUS.





CHAPTER I.

THE EDUCATION OF AN EMPEROR.

The life of the noblest of Pagan Emperors may well follow that of the
noblest of Pagan slaves. Their glory shines the purer and brighter from
the midst of a corrupt and deplorable society. Epictetus showed that a
Phrygian slave could live a life of the loftiest exaltation; Aurelius
proved that a Roman Emperor could live a life of the deepest humility.
The one--a foreigner, feeble, deformed, ignorant, born in squalor, bred
in degradation, the despised chattel of a despicable freedman,
surrounded by every depressing, ignoble, and pitiable circumstance of
life--showed how one who seemed born to be a wretch could win noble
happiness and immortal memory; the other--a Roman, a patrician, strong,
of heavenly beauty, of noble ancestors, almost born to the purple, the
favourite of Emperors, the greatest conquerer, the greatest philosopher,