These are the words of a writer in the highest degree representative of modern thought--Matthew Arnold. As such they will serve as a text for this study, and, I hope, as a justification for including it amongst the publications of the Catholic Truth Society. They will be a text since they touch on the points of greatest interest in the life of Marcus Aurelius; his high natural ideals; his fidelity in great part to those ideals; the contrast thus presented between him and his surroundings. This quotation from such a writer will also perhaps justify the appearance of this study in the good company of the C.T.S. catalogue, since it proves the interest which this pagan Emperor of Rome has for the men of our own time, whatever their opinions. For Christians there is the additional interest afforded by the contrast between his ideals and those of the martyrs--the ideals of nature and those of grace. Incidentally, a study of his life and age shows, as Mr. F. H. Myers well points out, how futile are the neo-pagan theories, so much in fashion in our own times, of the self-sufficiency of nature; and also, as Mr. Myers does not point out, how essential for heroic virtue is the indwelling of the Spirit of God, the supernatural aid of grace. The life of Marcus Aurelius has had a fascination for those in all ages who are interested in the strivings of human nature after the ideal--and these are, I suppose, most men of culture (_humani_ the Romans rightly called them). The early Christians took the same interest in him which they took in all the nobler pagans, in Plato and in Socrates, in Vergil, Seneca, and Epictetus; they praised his virtue and found in it a spur to higher things. If unregenerate nature could do so much, how ought not the regenerate blush for their tepidity? This was the sentiment also of that Cardinal Barberini who translated the Meditations which Marcus has left us. He dedicated the translation to his own soul “in order to make it redder than his purple at the sight of the virtues of this gentile.” Marcus’ contemporaries of all shades of opinion--Christians no less than pagans--bore testimony to the integrity of his life and, on the whole, the wisdom and justice of his rule. Long after his death his bust might be found amongst the household gods all over the Empire. In our own age when men are losing hold of the supernatural and trying to live without it, the high attainments of a mere pagan are held up for admiration. Dilettanti are in love with a moral code which brings with it no shocking sanctions; a generation sick unto death with scepticism seeks peace in an undogmatic philosophy of life: but it is all oil and no wine; therefore it heals not. Yet honour where honour is due; we have no wish to detract from the greatness of the good Emperor--a greatness which is only realised by contrast with the surroundings in which he lived.