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CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT THE ROMAN LADY SAID.
"You may always be successful if you do but set out well, and let
good thoughts and practice proceed upon right method."--_Marcus
Aurelius._[55]
The same wise Roman emperor who said this tells us a very pretty thing
about his mother, which shows us what a wise lady she must have been,
and how in the days of his manhood, with the cares of a great nation
upon him, he yet pondered upon the childhood teaching of home. First,
he speaks of his grandfather Verus, who, by his example, taught him
not to be prone to anger; then of his father, the Emperor Antoninus
Pius, from whom he learned to be modest and manly; then of his mother,
whose name was Domitia Calvilla. Let us read some of his own words
about her, dwelling particularly upon a few of them. He writes: "As
for my mother, she taught me to have regard for religion, to be
generous and open-handed, and not only to forbear from doing anybody
an ill turn, _but not so much as to endure the thought of it_."
Now these words are the more wonderful when we remember that they were
not taken down by a scribe in the pleasant apartments of the royal
palace in Rome, but were written by the Emperor himself on the
battlefield; for this part of his famous book is signed: "Written in
the country of the Quadi."
In our last Talk on the Hands we came to the conclusion, that unless
the hands were commanded they could not act.
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