In many respects the character of Antoninus was more admirable than that of his successor, whose glory has eclipsed his. He was an abler ruler because he was not so good a Stoic. He had more of human sympathy and a more varied interest in life because he was not so much engrossed in the study of his own soul. He was simple, kind, and genial, whereas Marcus was cold, reserved, self-conscious. As Renan says: “Antoninus was a philosopher without boasting of it, almost without knowing it. Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher of admirable temperament and sincerity, but he was a philosopher by reflection.” Of the two, the more attractive is the philosopher by nature, who knows not that he is so. The philosopher by reflection is always a difficult person and on occasion may be terrible. Had Antoninus written a book of Meditations they would probably have shown a less thorough analysis of the human soul in all its varying moods, a less gnawing desire for perfection, but they would present a character more pleasing to and imitable by those whose ways are the ways of men and not of the abstraction of a man--which is what the Stoic “wise man” would be. Antoninus loved all the innocent pleasures of life. But most of all he loved the joys of rural life--the joys of sea and air and wood and blue Italian sky, the ardour of the chase and the mirth of the harvest home. He lived most of his life in this simple way at his villa at Lorium with his own household and Marcus Aurelius. The letters of Marcus to his tutor Fronto give us a vivid picture of this life. When the correspondence begins, Marcus was about eighteen years of age. He writes during the vintage season:--