V erily, since the creation of mankind and their endowment with speech let me be held the most eloquent of all men, since you, Marcus Aurelius, study my writings and esteem them, and do not think it useless or unprofitable to yourself in the midst of such great affairs to spend your valuable time in reading my speeches.
But if it is your love for me which makes you delight even in my abilities, most blest am I in that I am so dear to you as to seem even eloquent in your eyes; or if it is your real judgment and considered opinion that makes you so think, then shall I have every right to seem eloquent to myself since I seem so to you.
I am, however, not in the least surprised that you have found pleasure in reading the praises of your father, which I uttered in the Senate when consul designate and again when I had taken up the office.1 For you would listen even to the Parthians and Iberians in their own tongue, so they but praised your father, as if they were most consummate orators. It was not my speech you admired but your father's virtues,2 nor was it the words of the praiser but the deeds of the praised that you praised.
As to my praises of yourself, which I pronounced the same day in the Senate, I would have you look on them in this light, that you then shewed rare natural ability, but now a consummate excellence; that you were then as corn sprouting in a field, but are now as the harvest fully ripe and gathered in the garner. All was hope then, all is having now. Hope has turned to reality.
What you asked me, however, to send you, on receiving your letter . . . . . . . . men of Attica hard by chewing the cud of their native herbs and the wild thyme of Hymettus . . . . You could pluck either weighty thoughts from the speeches of the ancients or sweet thoughts from their poems, or splendid thoughts from history, or kindly ones from comedies, or courtly ones from the national drama, or witty and humorous ones from the Atellane farces . . . .
161 A.D.
To my master.