I am not aware that any capital principle of municipal law has been
evolved since that time, and the astonishing power of the Roman mind can
only be appreciated when it is remembered that the whole of this colossal
fabric was original. Modern European law has been only a servile copy.
But, regard being had to the position of the emperor in relation to the
people, and more especially in relation to the vast bureaucracy of Rome,
which was the embodiment of the vested interest which was Rome itself, the
adherence of Roman thought to the path of least resistance was absolute.
"So far as the cravings of Stoicism found historical and political
fulfilment, they did so in the sixty years of Hadrian and the Antonines,
and so far again as an individual can embody the spirit of an age, its
highest and most representative impersonation is unquestionably to be
found in the person of Marcus Antoninus.... Stoicism faced the whole
problem of existence, and devoted as searching an investigation to
processes of being and of thought, to physics and to dialectic, as to the
moral problems presented by the emotions and the will." [Footnote:
_Marcus Aurelius Antoninus_, in English, by Gerald H. Rendall,
Introduction, xxvii.]
Such was stoicism, of which Marcus Aurelius was and still remains the
foremost expression. He admitted that as emperor his first duty was to
sacrifice himself for the public and he did his duty with a constancy
which ultimately cost him his life.
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