Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/480

464 wanting either guards or embroidered dresses, or torches and statues, and such-like show. It is, in fact, in such a man's power to bring himself very nearly to the fashion of a private person, without being for this reason either meaner in thought or more remiss in action with respect to the things which must be done for the public interest in a manner that befits a ruler. He doubtless received a forcible influence in this direction from his uncle, the emperor who preceded him, in regard to whom he says: "The things which conduce in any way to the commodity of life, and of which fortune gives an abundant supply, he used without annoyance, so that when he had them he enjoyed them without affectation, and, when he had them not, he did not want them."

He appears to have been himself at an early age a hard student, to have adopted a plain, coarse dress, and to have lived a laborious, abstemious life. He was of a winning nature, and had a great affection for his teachers, who were numerous, and all eminent in their several professions. His uncle and adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, a truly noble man, gave by his example the key-note to many points in the character and taste of Marcus. He studied law carefully to fit himself for the high place he was destined to fill, and of course learned the Roman discipline of arms. He abandoned the studies of poetry and rhetoric advisedly; not from any lack of appreciation, but partly because he was made aware that his gift did not lie in that direction, and partly because he found these studies too fascinating for a young man with the responsibilities before him that he expected to assume.

Although he began his reign a century and a half after the birth of Jesus, it is evident that he is unaware of any influence that has been brought to bear on his own mind that may be traced to this source. "A soul," he says, "should be ready at any moment to be separated from the body, to be extinguished, or to continue to exist; but this readiness should come from a man's own judgment, not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians."

There is, according to Leslie, sufficient evidence that he did not prevent, as he might have done by direct edict, a persecution of Attains and other Gallic Christians in the year 177. In his time the opposition between the old and the new belief was continually growing stronger, and the adherents of the heathen religion urged those in authority to a more regular resistance to the invasions of the Christian faith. It must of course be remembered that the Christians themselves maintained that all heathen religions were false, and openly opposed the heathen rites; thus making a declaration of hostility against the Roman Government, which tolerated all the various forms of superstitious worship that existed in the empire, and that could not consistently leave unrebuked an intolerant religion, which declared that all the rest were false. The rules against the Christians were