From Apollonius
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Παρὰ Ἀπολλωνίου τὸ ἐλεύθερον καὶ ἀναμφιβόλως ἀκύβευτον καὶ πρὸς μηδὲν ἄλλο ἀποβλέπειν μηδὲ ἐπ’ ὀλίγον ἢ πρὸς τὸν λόγον· καὶ τὸ ἀεὶ ὅμοιον, ἐν ἀλγηδόσιν ὀξείαις, ἐν ἀποβολῇ τέκνου, ἐν μακραῖς νόσοις· καὶ τὸ ἐπὶ παραδείγματος ζῶντος ἰδεῖν ἐναργῶς ὅτι δύναται ὁ αὐτὸς σφοδρότατος εἶναι καὶ ἀνειμένος· καὶ τὸ ἐν ταῖς ἐξηγήσεσι μὴ δυσχεραντικόν· καὶ τὸ ἰδεῖν ἄνθρωπον σαφῶς ἐλάχιστον τῶν ἑαυτοῦ καλῶν ἡγούμενον τὴν ἐμπειρίαν καὶ τὴν ἐντρέχειαν τὴν περὶ τὸ παραδιδόναι τὰ θεωρήματα· καὶ τὸ μαθεῖν πῶς δεῖ λαμβάνειν τὰς δοκούσας χάριτας παρὰ φίλων, μήτε ἐξηττώμενον διὰ ταῦτα μήτε ἀναισθήτως παραπέμποντα.
From Apollonius: a free spirit, and, beyond all doubt, one never left to chance; to look toward nothing else, not even for a moment, but toward reason alone; and to stay always the same — amid sharp pains, in the loss of a child, through long illnesses. From him too: to see vividly, in a living example, that one and the same man can be utterly intense and yet wholly relaxed; and, in his lectures, never to be irritable; and to see a man who plainly reckoned his experience and his deftness in handing down his doctrines the least of his gifts. And to learn how one ought to receive the so-called favors of friends — neither made beholden by them nor letting them pass unfeelingly.
Continuing Book 1's catalog of formative debts, Marcus turns to Apollonius of Chalcedon, the Stoic teacher brought to Rome to instruct him, and names the qualities he modeled: an independence never left to chance, undivided attention to reason, and a hard-won ease in receiving as well as giving.
Apollonius of Chalcedon, the Stoic teacher brought to Rome to instruct Marcus, receives one of Book 1's longest tributes, and the portrait turns on a striking image: a freedom "not left to the dice" (ἀκύβευτον), a steadiness that was never a gamble. Marcus pairs this with the demand of undivided attention to λόγος — reason, the one fixed point amid everything else that might draw the eye — and with something harder to hold together: the same man could be σφοδρότατος, at full stretch, and ἀνειμένος, entirely let go, without contradiction. It reads like a working definition of Stoic tension (τόνος), the pitch that neither slackens into carelessness nor snaps under strain, tested here against sharp pain, the death of a child, and long illness — not abstractions but the worst cases.
The second half is quieter and more personal. What struck Marcus most was that Apollonius ranked his own gift for teaching — his ἐμπειρία and ἐντρέχεια in handing down his θεωρήματα, his doctrines — as the least of his good qualities rather than the proof of them, and stayed patient even while explaining the same things again. The closing note, on how to receive a favor from a friend without being made beholden by the debt or waving it off unfeelingly, belongs to the same undercurrent running through Book 1: gratitude correctly handled is itself a discipline, one Marcus is still practicing by writing this list at all.
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