INTRODUCTION
Gordian I., for the latter in his youth, soon after the Emperor's death, wrote an epic poem on Pius and Marcus. He also married Fabia Orestilla, the latter's granddaughter through Fadilla (probably) and Claudius Severus. As their eldest son Gordian II. had sixty children, the blood of Marcus was soon widely diffused.
The first direct mention of the work is about 350 A.D. in the Orations of the pagan philosopher Themistius, who speaks of the παραγγέλματα (precepts) of Marcus. Then for 550 years we lose sight of the book entirely, until, about 900, the compiler of the dictionary, which goes by the name of Suidas, reveals the existence of a MS of it by making some thirty quotations, taken from books I, III, IV, V, IX, and XI.[1] He calls the book (συγγραφή) an "ἀγωγή (a directing) of his own life by Marcus the Emperor in twelve books." About the same time Arethas, a Cappadocian bishop, writing to his metropolitan, speaks of the scarcity of this μεγαλωφελέστατον βιβλίον, and apparently sends him a copy of it.[2] He also refers to it three times in scholia to Lucian, calling it τὰ εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἠθικά. Two similar references are found in the scholia to Dio Chrysostom, possibly by the same Arethas.
Again a silence of 250 years, after which Tzetzes, a grammarian of Constantinople, quotes passages from Books IV. and V. attributing them to Marcus. About 150 years later (1300 A.D.) the ecclesiastical historian, Nicephorus Callistus (iii. 31) writes that Marcus "composed a book of instruction for his son, full of universal (κοσμικῆς, ? secular) experience and wisdom." About this very time Planudes, a monk
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