From my mother
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Παρὰ τῆς μητρὸς τὸ θεοσεβὲς καὶ μεταδοτικὸν καὶ ἀφεκτικὸν οὐ μόνον τοῦ κακοποιεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ ἐπὶ ἐννοίας γίνεσθαι τοιαύτης· ἔτι δὲ τὸ λιτὸν κατὰ τὴν δίαιταν καὶ πόρρω τῆς πλουσιακῆς διαγωγῆς.
From my mother: reverence for the gods, generosity, and a self-restraint that held back not only from doing wrong but even from entertaining such a thought; and, further, simplicity in her way of living, far removed from the style of the rich.
From his mother, Domitia Lucilla, Marcus takes piety, generosity, and a plain way of living — and something rarer: to be kept even from the thought of doing wrong.
The mother's entry is the longest of the three and the most searching. Domitia Lucilla gives the expected virtues — τὸ θεοσεβές, reverence for the gods; τὸ μεταδοτικόν, an open-handed readiness to share — and a plain style of life set deliberately πόρρω, "far off," from the luxury her wealth could have afforded. Marcus, who will spend the book warning himself against the softness of the palace, marks that distance early.
The striking phrase is the one about restraint. It was not enough, he learned from her, to abstain from doing evil; the discipline reaches back to the ἔννοια, the very forming of the thought. This is already the inner program of the Meditations in miniature — the work of Stoic training happens not at the hand but at the mind, before an impulse can harden into a deed. A boy's memory of his mother turns out to name the book's whole method.
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