The registry of the
citizens, the suppression of litigation, the elevation of public morals,
the restraining of consanguineous marriages, the care of minors, the
retrenchment of public expenses, the limitation of gladitorial games and
shows, the care of roads, the restoration of senatorial privileges, the
appointment of none but worthy magistrates--even the regulation of
street traffic--these and numberless other duties so completely absorbed
his attention that, in spite of indifferent health, they often kept him
at severe labour from early morning till long after midnight. His
position indeed often necessitated his presence at games and shows, but
on these occasions he occupied himself either in reading, or being read
to, or in writing notes. He was one of those who held that nothing
should be done hastily, and that few crimes were worse than the waste of
time. It is to such views and such habits that we owe the compositions
of his works. His _Meditations_ were written amid the painful
self-denial and distracting anxieties of his wars with the Quadi and the
Marcomanni, and he was the author of other works which unhappily have
perished.
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