[89] ‘L’empereur avait pour principe de maintenir les anciennes maximes romaines dans leur intégrité.’ (Renan’s Marc-Aurèle, p. 54.) The authority given by M. Renan is Dion Cass., LXXI., xxxiv.; where, however, there is nothing of the kind stated. Capitolinus says (Anton. Phil., cap. xi.): ‘Jus autem magis vetus restituit quam novum fecit.’
[90] Renan, p. 30; Capitolinus, Anton. Phil., xii.; Dion Cass., Epit., LXXI., xxix., 3.
[91] Antoninus, Comm., VI., 46; X., 8.
[92] The expressions used by M. Ernest Renan when treating of this subject are somewhat conflicting. In reference to the penal enactments against Christianity under Marcus Aurelius, he first states that, however objectionable they may have been, ‘en tout cas dans l’application la mansuétude du bon empereur fut à l’abri de tout reproche’ (Marc-Aurèle, p. 58.) Further on, however we are told that when the martyrs of Lyons appealed to Rome, ‘la réponse impériale arriva en fin. Elle était dure et cruelle.’ (p. 329.) And subsequently M. Renan makes the Emperor personally responsible for the atrocities practised on that occasion by observing, ‘Si Marc-Aurèle, au lieu d’employer les lions et la chaise rougie,’ &c. (p. 345.) But perhaps such inconsistencies are to be expected in a writer who has elevated the necessity of perpetual self-contradiction into a principle.
[93] Epictêtus, Diss., III., xxiv.
[94] Seneca, De Irâ, I., xiv., 2; De Clement., I., vi., 2.
[95] Diog., VII., 91. Ziegler (Gesch. d. Ethik, Bonn, 1882, I., 174) holds, in opposition to Zeller, that originally every Stoic, as such, was assumed to be a perfect sage, and that the question was only whether the ideal had ever been realised outside the school. This, however, goes against the evidence of Plutarch, who tells as (De Stoic. Repug., xxxi., 5) that Chrysippus neither professed to be good himself nor supposed that any of his friends or teachers or disciples was good.
[96] Seneca, Epp., cxvi., 4. It must be borne in mind that Panaetius was speaking at a time when the object of passion would at best be either another man’s wife or a member of the demi-monde.
[97] Comm., VII., 26; XII., 16.
[98] See especially Antoninus, Comm., IX., 1.