Works and Other Worthy Writings (Aldine Edition)

Now Marcus, an old man, broken not only by age but by many labors and cares, was suddenly struck by a most serious illness while he was in Pannonia. Therefore, when he felt his health was completely despaired of, he was, as is evident, anxious that his son, who had then just entered his first youth, might, whether through the excessive fervor of his age or through some supreme license that he would have in his orphanhood, leave aside good arts and studies and give himself over to drunkenness and gluttony—for, indeed, the minds of youths easily slip from correct and honorable discipline into luxury and pleasures. Furthermore, it terrified the man, who was not at all inexperienced, [to recall] the memory of many princes who had assumed the empire as youths, such as Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, whose intemperance of diet was so great that he bestowed the highest rewards upon the inventors of new pleasures; and, likewise, those who succeeded Alexander. For they reigned so contumeliously and violently that they brought grave disgrace upon his empire. Indeed, Ptolemy had fallen to such a level of turpitude that, against the laws of the Macedonians and indeed of all the Greeks, he was even entangled in incestuous loves. Antigonus, however, in order to represent his father as a free man, was accustomed to encircle his head with ivy for the causia and the Macedonian diadem, and to carry a thyrsus instead of a scepter. The recent examples also troubled the mind of the old man, such as that of Nero himself, who did not even refrain from the slaughter of his mother, and who offered himself as a ridiculous spectacle to the people; and likewise of Domitian, who left nothing undone in the way of extreme cruelty. Contemplating, therefore, these images of tyrannies in his mind, he was agitated between hope and fear. Furthermore, the neighboring tribe of Germany, which he had not yet completely subdued, but had partly brought into alliance and partly overcome with arms and war, terrified him. Some also of these had escaped, and were contained for the present by fear of the prince. Therefore, he feared that they, seeing his son’s youth, would soon take up arms again. For it is the custom of barbarians to be driven by even the slightest impulses or causes. Boiling, therefore, with these waves of care, he orders all his friends and relatives, as many as were present, to be summoned. When they had gathered, having set his youthful son in their sight and lifting himself up a little from his couch, he held a speech of this kind.

dThat you grieve and are distressed when you observe me so affected is not at all to be wondered at, for it is human to lament human calamities, and those things which we behold with our eyes provoke compassion all the more. But our relationship with you is peculiar. For from the conscience of my own affection toward you, I hope for mutual benevolence from you, as if by my own right. But now this situation has arisen, when I must also pass judgment, whether I have in vain honored you for so long