If they
cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live as
men do." (x. 15.)
Such were some of the thoughts which Marcus Aurelius wrote in his diary
after days of battle with the Quadi, and the Marcomanni, and the
Sarmatae. Isolated from others no less by moral grandeur than by the
supremacy of his sovereign rank, he sought the society of his own noble
soul. I sometimes imagine that I see him seated on the borders of some
gloomy Pannonian forest or Hungarian marsh; through the darkness the
watchfires of the enemy gleam in the distance; but both among them, and
in the camp around him, every sound is hushed, except the tread of the
sentinel outside the imperial tent; and in that tent long after midnight
sits the patient Emperor by the light of his solitary lamp, and ever and
anon, amid his lonely musings, he pauses to write down the pure and holy
thoughts which shall better enable him, even in a Roman palace, even on
barbarian battlefields, daily to tolerate the meanness and the
malignity of the men around him; daily to amend his own shortcomings,
and, as the sun of earthly life begins to set, daily to draw nearer and
nearer to the Eternal Light.
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