A PHILOSOPHICAL EMPEROR. 465 



made in the time of his predecessor, Trajan ; and his own powers 

 were, doubtless, limited by constitutional forms. 



Among his acknowledgments to his teachers and friends, he men- 

 tions that he learned from his governor to be neither of the green nor 

 the blue party at the games in the circus (showing that the feud was 

 in active force at the time) ; also endurance of labor, to want little, 

 to work with his own hands, not to meddle with other people's affairs, 

 and not to be ready to listen to slander, " From Rusticus," he says, 

 " I learned not to be led away to sophistic emulation, nor to be writ- 

 ing on speculative matters, nor to deliver little hortatory orations, 

 nor to be showing myself off as a man who practises much discipline." 

 From the same teacher he also learned not to walk about the house in 

 his out-door dress, and, as he says, " to write my letters with sim- 

 plicity, like the letter Rusticus himself wrote from Sinuessa to my 

 mother." 



He appears to have been a Stoic, and thanks one of his tutors for 

 introducing him to Epictetus ; but he had none of the harshness, in- 

 difference, or self-assertion, that has become associated with the idea 

 of Stoicism perhaps a little unjustly, although there is always some 

 ground for a good, -wholesome prejudice against such a representative 

 word. 



For his wife, Faustina, he expresses great admiration. Neither 

 she, however, nor her mother, who had the same name, succeeded in 

 preserving a character unspotted from attack by the historians ; and 

 if his wife deserves the criticisms that are extant (of second-rate au- 

 thority, however, Leslie says), even the Theodora that Prof. Lewis 

 has given us so vivid an account of was hardly more vicious m 

 taste, or reckless in practice. Swinburne has chosen her name as the 

 key-note for a tour de force^ and makes it the lay-figure on which to 

 drape forty verses, in each of which the second line rhymes with 

 Faustine. She seems in the poem to be closely related to Poe's Leo- 

 nore, who was eliminated (the author tells us) out of his personal con- 

 sciousness in accordance with the logical rules of imaginative and 

 rhythmic art. 



" You have the face that suits a woman for her soul's screen, 

 The sort of beauty that's called huinan in hell, Faustine. 

 You could do all things but be good or chaste of mien, 

 And that you would not if you could. We know Faustine." 



His individual view of domestic life must, however, count for 

 much, even in opposition to Swinburne. He says: " I thank the gods 

 that, though it was my mother's fate to die young, she spent the last 

 years of her life with me ; that I have such a wife, so obedient, so af- 

 fectionate, and so simple ; and that I had abundance of good nurture 

 for my children." 



It is, perhaps, fair enough for the teacher to say that faith is best 



VOL. XI. 30 



