shows, the care of roads, the restoration of senatorial privileges, the
appointment of none but worthy magistrates--even the regulation of
street traffic--these and numberless other duties so completely absorbed
his attention that, in spite of indifferent health, they often kept him
at severe labour from early morning till long after midnight. His
position indeed often necessitated his presence at games and shows, but
on these occasions he occupied himself either in reading, or being read
to, or in writing notes. He was one of those who held that nothing
should be done hastily, and that few crimes were worse than the waste of
time. It is to such views and such habits that we owe the compositions
of his works. His _Meditations_ were written amid the painful
self-denial and distracting anxieties of his wars with the Quadi and the
Marcomanni, and he was the author of other works which unhappily have
perished. Perhaps of all the lost treasures of antiquity there are few
which we should feel a greater wish to recover than the lost
autobiography of this wisest of Emperors and holiest of Pagan men.

As for the external trappings of his rank,--those gorgeous adjuncts and
pompous circumstances which excite the wonder and envy of mankind,--no
man could have shown himself more indifferent to them. He recognized
indeed the necessity of maintaining the dignity of his high position.
"Every moment," he says, "think steadily as a Roman and a man _to do
what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity_, and affection,
and freedom, and justice" (ii. 5); and again, "Let the Deity which is in
thee be the guardian of a living being, _manly and of ripe age, and
engaged in matters political, and a Roman, and a ruler_, who has taken
his post like a man waiting for the signal which summons him from life"
(iii. 5). But he did _not_ think it necessary to accept the fulsome
honours and degrading adulations which were so dear to many of his
predecessors. He refused the pompous blasphemy of temples and altars,