From Sextus
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Παρὰ Σέξτου τὸ εὐμενές· καὶ τὸ παράδειγμα τοῦ οἴκου τοῦ πατρονομουμένου· καὶ τὴν ἔννοιαν τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ζῆν· καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν ἀπλάστως· καὶ τὸ στοχαστικὸν τῶν φίλων κηδεμονικῶς· καὶ τὸ ἀνεκτικὸν τῶν ἰδιωτῶν καὶ τὸ ἀθεώρητον οἰομένων· καὶ τὸ πρὸς πάντας εὐάρμοστον, ὥστε κολακείας μὲν πάσης προσηνεστέραν εἶναι τὴν ὁμιλίαν αὐτοῦ, αἰδεσιμώτατον δὲ αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις παρ’ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρὸν εἶναι· καὶ τὸ καταληπτικῶς καὶ ὁδῷ ἐξευρετικόν τε καὶ τακτικὸν τῶν εἰς βίον ἀναγκαίων δογμάτων· καὶ τὸ μηδὲ ἔμφασίν ποτε ὀργῆς ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς πάθους παρασχεῖν, ἀλλὰ ἅμα μὲν ἀπαθέστατον εἶναι, ἅμα δὲ φιλοστοργότατον· καὶ τὸ εὔφημον ἀψοφητὶ καὶ τὸ πολυμαθὲς ἀνεπιφάντως.
From Sextus: graciousness; the model of a household governed as a father governs it; the idea of living in accord with nature; a dignity worn without affectation; an attentive care for friends, watchful of their good; forbearance toward the unlearned and toward those who form their opinions without reflection; an ease with all men, so that his company was gentler than any flattery, and yet, in that very hour, held by those same men in the deepest reverence; a sure and methodical power to discover and marshal the principles life requires; never once betraying a trace of anger or any other passion, but being at the same time wholly free of passion and most full of affection; a speech that blessed without clamor, and a vast learning that made no display.
The ninth entry in Book 1's roll call of debts, honoring Sextus of Chaeronea (a grandson of Plutarch) for a cluster of virtues both domestic and intellectual — patience, warmth, systematic thinking, and learning worn without show.
Sextus of Chaeronea, a Stoic-leaning philosopher and kinsman of Plutarch, receives one of the longest entries in Book 1's catalogue, and the list moves the way memory does: from a felt quality (graciousness) to a lived structure (a household run as though by a father) to an abstraction (the idea of living according to nature) and back to manner (dignity without affectation). Two threads keep recurring — patience toward the untrained and the merely credulous, and a public warmth that outdid flattery without ever surrendering its gravity in the moment, καιρός. The passage treats virtue as both feeling and household management, in keeping with the ancient conviction that ethics begins at domestic scale, in how a man governs his house and receives his guests.
The climax gathers three technical terms in sequence — καταληπτικῶς, cognate with the "cognitive" impression of Stoic epistemology; δόγμα, the settled principle by which one lives; and πάθος, the disturbing passion Stoic training aims to still — and credits Sextus with the discipline that binds them: knowledge organized for living, held without a flicker of anger, alongside an undiminished tenderness (φιλοστοργότατον). The final touch, learning worn ἀνεπιφάντως, without display, answers a suspicion that runs through Marcus's debts in this book (compare the plain manner he praises in Rusticus at 1.7): erudition, for him, is something practiced, never performed.
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