Genre and place in the book. The second entry in the catalogue of debts, this one to Marcus's father, M. Annius Verus the younger (see the PERSONcard). The general generic conventions of Book I — the catalogue of debts, the formula "παρὰ τοῦ X," the naming without argument and without verb — are set out in 01-01; here I shall note only how 01-02 deviates from the standard formula of Book I. And it deviates sharply.

The unique construction of the paragraph. Unlike every other paragraph of Book I, built on the scheme "παρὰ τοῦ X" ("from such-and-such"), 01-02 gives "παρὰ τῆς δόξης καὶ μνήμης τῆς περὶ τοῦ γεννήσαντος" — "from the good name and the remembrance of the one who begot me." This is the only place in Book I where the source of the debt is not the person himself but a mediating layer of testimony about him. The biographical explanation lies on the surface: Marcus's father died around 124 CE, when Marcus was about three years old; Marcus did not know him personally. Access to his father as an ethical source is possible only through δόξα (reputation, public estimation of him) and μνήμη (the memory of those who knew him). The syntax directly mirrors the ontology of the relationship: between Marcus and his father stands an intermediary — the tradition-about-him.

The periphrasis "τοῦ γεννήσαντος". Nowhere in Book I does Marcus call the biological father by the word πατήρ. Here we have the substantivised participle γεννήσας ("the one who begot"). The title ὁ πατήρ, meanwhile, Marcus does employ — and more than once — for Antoninus Pius, his adoptive father and exemplar (especially in 01-16 and 01-17). The selectivity is not accidental:

• Reservation. πατήρ is a word Marcus preserves for the one who actually raised him; biological fatherhood, of itself, gives no claim to the word.
• Emotional distance. To describe as "father" the one you do not remember would have been a false gesture.
• Platonic register. γεννήσας / γεννήσαντες is the standard language of filial ethics in the Republic and the Laws, where it carries an objective, more juridical than affective, accent in relation to the one who begets.

The two virtues.

1. τὸ αἰδῆμον — the substantivised form from TERMαἰδώς (see the separate card: at once "shame," "reverence," and "self-respect"). Epictetus, to whom Marcus is apparently looking here, defines αἰδώς as an inner restraining principle — "the daughter of προαίρεσις" (Disc. 1.5), the last line that separates the human being from the animal. The attribution of αἰδώς to the father is not the ascription of timidity or bashfulness (the everyday English "modesty" is misleading), but a high Stoic quality: the capacity to refrain from anything shameful out of respect for one's own rational nature.
2. τὸ ἀρρενικόν — from ἄρρην ("male," biologically), the derivative adjective ἀρρενικός. Marcus, significantly, does not use the canonical Stoic term ἀνδρεία (courage as one of the four cardinal virtues). The choice of a more "natural," less technical word is a characteristic manoeuvre of Book I: Marcus prefers to name family qualities in the vocabulary in which they were named in the family circle, not in the school jargon of the Stoa. Substantively, the pair αἰδώς + ἀνδρεία is as old as Homer: αἰδώς restrains from the shameful act, ἀνδρεία performs the right one (Hom. Il. 13.121–124; Plat. Prot. 322c). Marcus inherits this paired conjunction and transposes it onto the paternal ethos.

Biographical note. Marcus's father was a praetor; he died approximately 124 CE, when Marcus was about three (SHA Marcus, ch. 1: "patre orbatus est primum, dum praetorem ageret" — a sentence in the early chapters; the precise sub-section is to be verified against the Hohl Teubner [verify:hohl]; for the full account see the PERSONcard). Modern prosopography (Birley, Marcus Aurelius, in the chapters on the early years) gives the father's praenomen as Marcus — that is, M. Annius Verus, as with the grandfather and (initially) Marcus himself. Rogovin's note gives "Publius," at variance with the modern consensus; the precise source of this form in Rogovin is hard to establish (perhaps an older, now discarded, tradition of nineteenth-century Russian or German scholarship). Rogovin's remark about Faustina is correct: Annia Galeria Faustina (Faustina the Elder), wife of Antoninus Pius, was the sister of Marcus's father — and it was through this connection that the house of the Annii came into blood relation with the ruling house.

The compositional pendant — 1.16. The principal compositional "twin" of 1.2 is 01-16, the extended portrait of Antoninus Pius. The structural opposition is most visible just here: 1.2 — the brief shadow of the biological father, to whom Marcus has only mediated access through δόξα and μνήμη; 1.16 — the long portrait of the adoptive father, six or seven times as developed, seen and lived through in person. This is the most significant compositional figure of Book I: Marcus's two "fathers" receive proportionally opposite treatments, and that disproportion is the book's principal substantive statement about his own biography.

Parallels. Terminological background of αἰδώς — Hom. Il., book 13 (the paired αἰδώς + ἀνδρεία in battle); Hes. Op. (the departure of Αἰδώς and Νέμεσις from the earth as the mark of the end of the Iron Age; the precise location — in the section on the five ages — to be verified [verify:loeb]); Plat. Prot. 322c (αἰδώς and δίκη as Zeus's gifts, without which there is no polis); Arist. EN 4 (αἰδώς as a "pre-virtue," not a full virtue; the precise Bekker pagination to be verified [verify:bekker]). Stoic refashioning — Epict. Disc., book 1 (αἰδώς as "the daughter of προαίρεσις"); Disc. book 3 (αἰδώς as the principal mark distinguishing humans from animals); Disc. book 4 (the paired αἰδώς + ἀνδρεία). The modern study of the concept is D. Cairns, Aidōs (Oxford, 1993); on the Stoic reception, A. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford, 2002).