When Marcus was born the reigning Emperor was Hadrian. Hadrian was himself a Spaniard and inclined to favour those of Spanish descent. Thus the family of Annius Verus came into prominence; and before Marcus was yet more than eight years of age the Emperor took a special interest in him. The boy even at this early age was not quite as the other children who passed to and fro in the Imperial palace. All through life his health was imperfect; yet even as a child he had begun to practise the Stoic austerities. He slept on a plank bed and was abstemious at table, and only at his mother’s request did he relax these practices. His biographer tells us that “he was grave from his first infancy.” In later years he himself thanked the gods “that he had never been hurried into any offence against them,” though, with his wonted candour, he adds, that he “had the disposition, which, if opportunity had offered, might have led him to do something of the kind; but, through their favour, there never was such a concurrence of circumstances as put me to the trial.” The candour of the child was so transparent that Hadrian used to call him not _Verus_ (true) but _Verissimus_ (exceedingly true). It was not strange that Hadrian should have been interested in this grave, pensive, unworldly child. He was a keen observer of human nature, and regarded with curiosity and a certain reverence a character so superior to its surroundings and withal the very antithesis of his own. He himself was a strange mixture of the Greek and the Roman. Roman in his legislative and administrative ability, he was Greek and modern in his love of novelty, his eager curiosity, his frivolous attitude towards life’s greatest problems--the problems of God and the soul. This last aspect of his character is enshrined for ever in his dying address to his soul:-- Animula, vagula, blandula, Hospes comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca; Pallidula, rigida, nudula-- Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos? which Merivale thus translates, “Soul of mine, pretty one, flitting one, Guest and partner of my clay, Whither wilt thou hie away; Pallid one, rigid one, naked one-- Never to play again, never to play.” Candour, simplicity, purity, gravity: these were the old Roman virtues of the days of Cato; but they were little in fashion in the heyday of the Empire. However, they were interesting as antiquities; and Hadrian loved everything old because he was so modern himself: they had the charm of the _rus in urbe_, of innocence in high life, and were grateful to one who loved freshness; and so, while he was in Rome, Hadrian always had the boy near him. Hadrian and Marcus; the agnostic and the devotee; the lover of life and the boy Stoic; Greek frivolity and Roman _gravitas_: it is an interesting contrast.