Before we examine the book in detail we may briefly indicate the stages through which Marius passes. The first part traces his boyhood and school life, and shows him, so to speak, in the orthodox stage, accepting without question and with deep devotion the old native religion of his land; in his school days comes the mental awakening, and the birth of philosophical speculation. In the second part Marius takes his bearings, and becomes an intellectual Epicurean, of the Cyrenaic school. He goes to Rome, and joins the Imperial household as secretary to the Emperor Aurelius; and thus the Stoic position is brought before him in its most attractive form. In the third part Marius learns the inadequacy of his Cyrenaic philosophy, and begins to see that there is an isolation and a lack of sympathy in his position. He feels, too, the incompleteness of the Stoical system; and realises the need of a vital faith in some unseen and guiding power to preserve the serenity of mind which he desires. At the end of this part Marius is a Theist; at this point some unrecorded years are supposed to elapse. In the fourth part Marius is brought into direct contact with Christianity, but the appeal that it makes to him is mainly aesthetic; yet the faith in an unseen power comes nearer as the shadow of death begins to fall. The background, carefully selected by Pater for the story to enact itself in, is the time of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a skilfully chosen period, when philosophy was fashionable, and when a liberal toleration was extended to Christianity; so that the development of Marius’ philosophical and religious position takes place equably and naturally, without the severe strain which a period of barbarism or persecution might have put upon it. It may also be observed that the story, though in a sense romantic, is free from emotional incidents. Two friendships play their part in the development of Marius; but there is no hint from first to last of the distracting emotion of love. With the exception of the faint picture of his mother in the opening of the book, transitory glimpses of the Empress Faustina and of the Christian widow Cecilia, there is an entire absence of the feminine element.