men are as small in their eyes as they are said to be in the eyes of
their valets; and there are multitudes who, if they find

"Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
Innate themselves with some insane delight,
And judge all nature from her feet of clay,
Without the will to lift their eyes, and see
Her godlike head crown'd with spiritual fire,
And touching other worlds."

This I suppose is the reason why, failing to drag down Marcus Aurelius
from his moral elevation, some have attempted to assail his reputation
because of the supposed vileness of Faustina and the actual depravity of
Commodus. Of Faustina I have spoken already. Respecting Commodus, I
think it sufficient to ask with Solomon: "Who knoweth whether his son
shall be a wise man or a fool?" Commodus was but nineteen when his
father died; for the first three years of his reign he ruled respectably
and acceptably. Marcus Aurelius had left no effort untried to have him
trained aright by the first teachers and the wisest men whom the age
produced; and Herodian distinctly tells us that he had lived virtuously
up to the time of his father's death. Setting aside natural affection
altogether, and even assuming (as I should conjecture from one or two
passages of his _Meditations_) that Marcus had misgivings about his son,
would it have been easy, would it have been even possible, to set aside
on general grounds a son who had attained to years of maturity? However
this may be, if there are any who think it worth while to censure Marcus
because, after all, Commodus turned out to be but "a warped slip of
wilderness," their censure is hardly sufficiently discriminating to
deserve the trouble of refutation.