Epictetus, whose living influence extended towards the end of the second century of the Christian era, was the great ornament of the Stoic school during the reigns of Domitian and Hadrian. He was born a slave, and was maimed in person, but obtained his manumission by excellence of conduct, and proved himself one of the best monitors of his age. Ten years later, the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus came forth the next in succession to this illustrious slave among the ornaments of the Stoic school. The reign of this victorious and philosophic monarch forms part of the happy period in which the vast extent of the Roman empire has been characterized as having "been governed by absolute power under the guidance of virtue and wisdom." Antoninus early profited by the lessons of severe wisdom, and honored them by an exemplary life. In his palace he preserved the systematic regularity of a general, and in his camp he composed a great part of those philosophical meditations which have cast so much renown on his name. The lives of Cato and Brutus also, the one more formal and severe, as of a person evidently aiming to support a character, the other more genial and free, like one who had really caught the spirit of the old republican time, were molded strongly by the same creed. Both were true utterances of Roman Stoicism, and have thrown a splendor around the doctrine which it could never have obtained either from its first teachers or from Seneca and the rhetoricians who perpetuated its vitiating existence down to the lowest point of feebleness. When Greek philosophy was introduced among the Romans, Stoicism was the most popular, but the creed of Epicurus was adopted by many distinguished men. The popular poem of Lucretius was a captivating recommendation of the system to many; and other writers, such as Horace and Atticus, Pliny the younger, and Lucian of Samosata, are known to have been of this school.