His brother's example; sound children; not lost to rhetoric
Read the full text in our reader
τὸ ἀδελφοῦ τοιούτου τυχεῖν, δυναμένου μὲν διὰ ἤθους ἐπεγεῖραί με πρὸς ἐπιμέλειαν ἐμαυτοῦ, ἅμα δὲ καὶ τιμῇ καὶ στοργῇ εὐφραίνοντός με; τὸ παιδία μοι ἀφυῆ μὴ γενέσθαι μηδὲ κατὰ τὸ σωμάτιον διάστροφα. τὸ μὴ ἐπὶ πλέον με προκόψαι ἐν ῥητορικῇ καὶ ποιητικῇ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπιτηδεύμασιν, ἐν οἷς ἴσως ἂν κατεσχέθην, εἰ ᾐσθόμην ἐμαυτὸν εὐόδως προιόντα.
That I chanced on such a brother — one whose character could rouse me to care for my own self, while at the same time gladdening me by his respect and affection; that my children were not born without talent, nor deformed in body; and that I made no great progress in rhetoric, poetry, and the other such pursuits, in which I might well have been caught fast, had I felt myself getting on in them with ease.
A further fragment of the closing thanksgiving to the gods (1.17), continuing straight on from the tribute to Antoninus Pius in 1.16: Marcus gives thanks for a brother whose character spurred him to self-care, for children born without defect, and for never advancing far enough into rhetoric and poetry to be trapped by them.
The brother is usually taken to be Lucius Verus, Marcus's adoptive sibling under Antoninus and later his co-emperor, though the Greek names no one and commentators disagree; what matters to Marcus is the function, not the person — someone whose ἦθος, his settled character, could rouse him toward ἐπιμέλεια ἑαυτοῦ, care of himself. The thanksgiving then narrows to his own children, spared both want of natural gift and physical deformity. Marcus states it as flatly as any other item on the list, without sentiment, in keeping with the notebook's habit of treating even the intimate as material for gratitude rather than display.
The final clause is the sharper one: thanks that he did not advance too far, ἐπὶ πλέον, in rhetoric, poetry, and similar ἐπιτηδεύματα — pursuits he suspects would have held him fast had he sensed himself succeeding at them. It echoes the debt to Rusticus recorded earlier in Book 1, who steered the young Marcus away from declamation and sophistic display toward plain speech and philosophy; here the same turn is recast as a stroke of luck rather than a teacher's correction. The verb behind "advance," προκόπτω, is the ordinary Stoic word for moral progress — Marcus is glad, with a touch of dry irony, that he progressed too slowly in the wrong direction to be trapped by it.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Meditations 1.17.4 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Meditations — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Meditations 1.17.4 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/meditations-greek/1.17.4/