(vi. 36.)

And to Marcus too, no less than to Shakespeare, it seemed that--

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;"

for he writes these remarkable words:--

"_The idle business of show, plays on the stage, flocks of sheep, herds,
exercises with spears, a bone cast to little dogs, a bit of bread in
fishponds, labourings of ants, and burden-carrying runnings about of
frightened little mice, puppets pulled by strings_--this is what life
resembles. It is thy duty then in the midst of such things to show good
humour, and not a proud air; to understand however that _every man is
worth just so much as the things are worth about which he
busies himself_."

In fact, the Court was to Marcus a burden; he tells us himself that
Philosophy was his mother, Empire only his stepmother; it was only his
repose in the one that rendered even tolerable to him the burdens of the
other. Emperor as he was, he thanked the gods for having enabled him to
enter into the souls of a Thrasea, an Helvidius, a Cato, a Brutus. Above
all, he seems to have had a horror of ever becoming like some of his
predecessors; he writes:--

"Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar;[68] take care thou art
not dyed with this dye. Keep thyself then simple, good, pure, serious,
free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods,
kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. Reverence the gods and