One of his biographers, writing under the Emperor Diocletian, has this pious reflection on the story: “Such is the force of daily life in a good ruler, so great the power of his sanctity, gentleness, and piety, that no breath of slander or invidious suggestion from an acquaintance can avail to sully his memory. In short, to Antonine, immutable as the heavens in the tenor of his own life, and in the manifestations of his own moral temper, and who was not by possibility liable to any impulse or movement of change, on any alien suggestion, it was not eventually an injury that he was dishonoured by some of his connexions; on him, invulnerable in his own character, neither a harlot for his wife, nor a gladiator for his son, could inflict a wound. Then as now, O sacred lord Diocletian! he was reputed a god; not as others are reputed but specially and in a separate sense, and with a privilege to such worship from all men as is addressed to his memory by yourself, who often breathe a wish to heaven that you were or could be such in life and merciful disposition as was Marcus Aurelius.” We saw that even Marcus’ integrity could not shield his household from the taint of scandal, ever mingling with the divinity that doth hedge a king; yet the life of that household was of the simplest kind. The Emperor’s tastes were mostly domestic--philosophy, the fine arts and intercourse with the learned world around him. The palace was a museum of all the curious and choice things of every land gathered together by Hadrian and preceding Emperors; the precious and luxurious were strewn all around in Oriental magnificence; but not for long. The Emperor had learnt from Antoninus to be a king without the trappings; and in his later life he set an example truly Platonic to all future monarchs of private detachment for the sake of the public good. At that time distress became universal; the treasury was exhausted; and yet money was wanted for the wars in the North. In these circumstances, in order to avoid all further taxation, Marcus put all the treasures of his Roman palaces and country villas into the public market. Jewels, pictures, furniture of rare workmanship; dinner-services of gold and crystal; murrhine vases; the rich hangings and sumptuous apparel of the imperial household, including even the wardrobe of silken robes, interwoven with gold, which had been his wife’s before her death: all these objects, made sacred by long use in the home of the divine Cæsars, were put under the hammer and fetched fabulous prices. The auction lasted two months. The _novi homines_--the Roman equivalent for our _nouveaux riches_--were as keen as would be a group of Americans at an auction of the Vatican contents. Thus the historic palace of the Cæsars was despoiled; but Marcus was content while the neighbouring library in the temple of Apollo remained intact, with Fronto and Rusticus to come at morning and evening and walk with him amidst the