No taste for luxury: his plain wardrobe
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οὐκ ἀωρὶ λούστης, οὐχὶ φιλοικοδόμος, οὐ περὶ τὰς ἐδωδὰς ἐπινοητής, οὐ περὶ ἐσθήτων ὑφὰς καὶ χρόας, οὐ περὶ σωμάτων ὥρας. ἡ ἀπὸ Λωρίου στολὴ ἀνάγουσα ἀπὸ τῆς κάτω ἐπαύλεως· χιτὼν ἐν Λανουβίῳ τὰ πολλά· τῷ φελώνῃ ἐν Τούσκλοις παραιτουμένῳ ὡς ἐχρήσατο καὶ πᾶς ὁ τοιοῦτος τρόπος.
No bathing at odd hours; no passion for building; no connoisseur of fine food, no fuss over the weave and color of his clothes, nor the bloom of young bodies. His robe came up to him from Lorium, from the estate below; his tunic, most of the time, came from Lanuvium; the cloak he wore at Tusculum he felt he had to apologize for — and every habit of his was of just that kind.
Continues the portrait of Antoninus Pius (1.16): after his indifference to baths, building, food, and fine clothes, three remembered garments — from Lorium, Lanuvium, and Tusculum — show the same plainness in practice.
This fragment continues the catalogue of Antoninus Pius's habits that runs through 1.16. After listing what he did not care about — bathing at odd hours, building, elaborate food, the weave and color of his clothes, the bloom of young bodies — Marcus turns to three remembered objects: a robe from the estate at Lorium, a tunic worn mostly at Lanuvium, and a heavy cloak at Tusculum that Antoninus felt he had to explain. The move from abstraction (οὐ περὶ...) to concrete place-names is characteristic of Book 1: virtue is not asserted but located, tied to a particular house, a particular garment, a specific occasion of scruple.
The detail about the cloak — that he excused himself for wearing it, ὡς ἐχρήσατο — signals a household anecdote rather than something Marcus witnessed himself; even a small lapse into ordinary comfort required, in Antoninus's own mind, some account of itself. That scruple over trifles anticipates a recurring theme in the later books, where character is read not from grand acts but from unreflective habit (compare the fuller portrait of the same man at 6.30); here, still early in the roll call of debts, the lesson is compressed into wardrobe and geography rather than doctrine.
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Meditations 1.16.8 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/meditations-greek/1.16.8/