Genre and place in the book. The fourth entry in the catalogue of debts, this one to Marcus's great-grandfather, L. Catilius Severus (see the PERSONcard). Technically he is proavus, great-grandfather in Roman family terminology, but biologically: the stepfather of Marcus's mother through a second marriage to Domitia Lucilla Maior; as a child Marcus bore his cognomen as part of his full name (M. Annius Catilius Severus). More on this kin configuration in the card. The general generic conventions and the formula "παρὰ τοῦ X" are set out in 01-01.

The uniqueness of this entry. Unlike 01-01 through 01-03, which enumerate characterological virtues of the forebears (good nature, αἰδώς, piety, simplicity), 01-04 fixes a practical and strategic principle: three concrete pedagogical maxims. This is the first passage of Book I where what is ascribed to a forebear is not a quality of character but a policy — an institutional decision about how to organise the formation of the next generation. Generically it stands close to what Marcus will ascribe to Antoninus Pius in the extended portrait of 01-16, a figure offered as the model of principled decisions, not of temperament.

The three maxims.

1. τὸ μὴ εἰς δημοσίας διατριβὰς φοιτῆσαι — "not to attend public διατριβαί." Διατριβή literally is "the spending of time," in the technical sense a lecture-hall, school, classroom (it is from the same root that the genre of Epictetus's Diatribes will later take its name); φοιτᾶν is the standard Greek verb for "to attend school" (as a pupil). In second-century Rome this is the "public school" — schola publica — chiefly of rhetoricians and grammarians, often municipally or imperially subsidised. The aristocratic preference for home tuition was common but not without alternative; against it Quintilian writes at length (see below).
2. τὸ ἀγαθοῖς διδασκάλοις κατ' οἶκον χρήσασθαι — "to use good teachers at home." The Latin equivalent is magistri domestici. The names of Marcus's teachers, brought in under this institutional mode, unfold further in Book I in §§ 1.5–1.13: the pedagogue (01-05), Diognetus (01-06), Junius Rusticus (01-07), Apollonius of Chalcedon (01-08), Sextus (01-09), and so on. The ten following entries of Book I are, in effect, the unfolding of what the great-grandfather in 01-04 sets out as a principle.
3. τὸ γνῶναι ὅτι εἰς τὰ τοιαῦτα δεῖ ἐκτενῶς ἀναλίσκειν — "to know that on such things one should spend ἐκτενῶς (extensively, without pinching)." Ἀναλίσκειν is the technical word for monetary expenditure; ἐκτενῶς is "stretched out, ungrudgingly." That is: education is the place where the fortune is to be stretched out, not compressed. This third item is the most ethically loaded of the three: not the fact of expenditure, but the understanding that in this area economy is a mistake.

The economy of wealth: 1.3 ↔ 1.4. A comparison with the passage on the mother (01-03) discloses a coherent economy of wealth in the family ethos:

This is not a contradiction but a single principle: stinting where consumption is at issue, generous where formation is at issue. Stoically, this is the consistent right handling of ἀδιάφορα (wealth as an indifferent — its rightness lies not in the quantity but in the direction of its deployment). Marcus, on inheriting the fortune and becoming emperor, will reproduce this same disposition: the famous reduction of court expenses with the preservation of public and educational investment.

A textological note (on the particle μή). Rogovin's note ⁵ records a real textological problem. The manuscript tradition gives τὸ μὴ εἰς δημοσίας διατριβὰς φοιτῆσαι ("not to have attended public schools") — but SHA Marcus, ch. 2, on Marcus's youth reports the opposite: "frequentavit declamatorum scholas publicas" ("he frequented the public schools of the declaimers"). Some seventeenth- to nineteenth-century editors (by tradition Gataker and others; the precise attribution needs verification [verify:edition]) proposed deleting the negative particle as a corruption, in order to reconcile the two testimonies.

The modern consensus (Farquharson, Hadot, Hard, Brunt) keeps the negation and resolves the conflict with SHA chronologically: 1.4 speaks of childhood education (up to age 12–14, under the management of the domestic corps of teachers), whereas Capitolinus in SHA speaks of the youthful exercises after that, when Marcus as an adolescent did attend public rhetorical declamations for formal training (a normal Roman practice — home tuition was followed by a phase of public rhetorical polishing). The two witnesses thus refer to two phases of education and do not in fact contradict each other.

Parallels. Quintilian, Inst. Or., book 1 — the canonical Latin treatise on the same theme "home versus public education," but with the opposite conclusion (Quintilian vigorously defends public schools as the better formative environment). That is, Catilius Severus held one of the standard positions of the elite in this debate, and Marcus in Book I aligns with the great-grandfather's choice against Quintilian's norm. Tacitus, Dialogus de oratoribus — the general background of the debate about the decline / transformation of rhetorical education under the early Antonines. Suetonius, Vita Augusti — Augustus personally taught his grandsons at home (the classical precedent of the aristocratic norm; the precise chapter of Suet. Aug. to be verified [verify:loeb]). The biography of Marcus — SHA Marcus, ch. 1 (the enumeration of the early tutors by name); on Catilius Severus's disgrace in 138 — SHA Hadrian (the relevant chapter).