From Alexander the Grammarian
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Παρὰ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ γραμματικοῦ τὸ ἀνεπίπληκτον καὶ τὸ μὴ ὀνειδιστικῶς ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι τῶν βάρβαρον ἢ σόλοικόν τι ἢ ἀπηχὲς προενεγκαμένων, ἀλλ’ ἐπιδεξίως αὐτὸ μόνον ἐκεῖνο ὃ ἔδει εἰρῆσθαι προφέρεσθαι ἐν τρόπῳ ἀποκρίσεως ἢ συνεπιμαρτυρήσεως ἢ συνδιαλήψεως περὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ πράγματος, οὐχὶ περὶ τοῦ ῥήματος, ἢ δι’ ἑτέρας τινὸς τοιαύτης ἐμμελοῦς παρυπομνήσεως.
From Alexander the grammarian: forbearance, and never to seize reproachfully on those who let slip some barbarism, solecism, or jarring phrase, but deftly to slip in just the word that ought to have been used — by way of a reply, an agreement, or a shared working-through of the matter itself, not the wording — or by some other such graceful prompting.
1.10 closes Marcus's opening catalogue of teachers with Alexander of Cotiaeum, his tutor in Greek language and literary style — remembered here not for any point of grammar but for the tact with which he corrected other people's mistakes.
Alexander of Cotiaeum was one of Marcus's Greek tutors, a scholar of language and literature attached to the imperial household (a different man from the Alexander named a few sections later at 1.12, the Platonist). What Marcus singles out here is not a lesson in grammar but a lesson in manner: Alexander never pounced on a barbarism or a solecism to shame the speaker. Instead of correcting directly, he supplied the right word himself, folded into the course of a reply, an agreement, or a shared working-through of the point — as though it had simply come up, not as a rebuke. The distinction Marcus draws, between πρᾶγμα (the matter under discussion) and ῥῆμα (the mere wording), carries weight: the correction stayed subordinate to the conversation's real business, never becoming a performance of superior knowledge.
This is a small case, but it belongs to the ethical current running through Book 1's catalogue of debts: character is transmitted less by precept than by the felt texture of how people handle each other's minor failures. The same instinct resurfaces later when Marcus reminds himself to correct others without contempt or display, gently and without turning the correction itself into a spectacle (his notes on tolerating others' faults recur throughout the book, e.g. 9.42, 11.18). A tutor who could fix an error without wounding the person who made it taught Marcus something more durable than syntax — a working model for how reason itself ought to meet another person's mistake.
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