Caesars' wives, to say the least, since many of them came from Asia Minor—were not. Yet one is almost grateful to marble for its lack of pigmentation, the way one is grateful to a black-and-white photograph, for it unleashes one's fantasy, one's intuition, so that viewing becomes an act of complicity: like reading.
VII
And there are ways of turning viewing into reading. When I was a boy I used to frequent a big museum in my hometown. It had a vast collection of Greek and Roman marbles, not to mention those by Canova and Thorvaldsen. I'd noticed that, depending on the time of day as well as the season, those carved features would wear different expressions, and I wondered what they would look like after hours. But the museum closed at 6 p.m., presumably because the marbles were not accustomed to electricity. I couldn't do much about that. In general, one can't do much about statues anyway. One can circle around them, squint at them from different angles; but that's that. With busts, though, one can go a bit further, as I discovered inadvertently. One day, staring at the little white face of some early Roman fanciulla, I lifted my hand, presumably to smooth my hair, and thus obstructed the single source of light coming to her from the ceiling. At once her facial expression changed. I moved my hand a bit to the side: it changed again. I began moving both my arms rather frantically, casting each time a different shadow upon her features: the face came to life. Eventually, of course, I was interrupted by the shrieks of the guard. He ran toward me, but looking at his screaming face, I thought it less animated than that of a little marble girl from B.C.
viii
Of all Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius gets the best press. Historians love him, and so do philosophers. It is to the latter, though, that Marcus Aurelius owes his good standing to this day, since this discipline proved to be more durable than the Roman Empire or the aspects of one's statecraft in it. Actually, historians should be perhaps less enthusiastic about him than they are, because a couple of times he came very close to depriving them of their subject, particularly by designating his son, the really moronic Commodus, to be his heir. But historians are a sturdy lot; they've digested things much harder than Commodus' idea of renaming Rome after himself. They could live with—as well as live in— Commodiopolis and research the history of the Commodian empire. As for philosophers, they were, and some still are, enamored of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations perhaps not so much for the depth of its probing as for the respectability the discipline itself gained in the royal embrace. Politics is far more often the pursuit of philosophers than philosophy is the sideline of kings. Besides, for Marcus Aurelius, philosophy was a lot more than a sideline: it was, as we'd say today, a therapy, or, as Boethius put it later, a consolation. He wasn't a great philosopher, nor was he a visionary; not even a sage; his Meditations is at once a melancholy and repetitive book. The Stoic doctrine at the time had become a doctrine indeed, and though he did write in Greek, he is no match for Epictetus. Most likely a Roman emperor was drawn to this kind oflanguage out of respect for the doctrine's origins, and also perhaps out of nostalgia, in order not to forget the language of civilized discourse; the language, after all, of his youth and pursuits more noble perhaps than those at hand. Add to that, if you will, possible considerations of secrecy, and the benefit of detachment: the purpose and the method of the discipline itself, enhanced here by the very means of expression. Not to mention that his reign simply happened to coincide with a substantial revival of Greek culture in Rome, the first Renaissance, if you will, owing no doubt to the long era of considerable stability historians dubbed the "Pax Romana." And historians love Marcus Au- relius precisely because he was the last guardian ofthat Pax. Because his reign effectively and neatly concluded a period of Roman history lasting nearly two centuries that began with Augustus and, to all intents and purposes, ended with our man. They love him because he is the end of the line, and a very coherent one at that: which, for historians, is a luxury. Marcus was a highly conscientious ruler; perhaps because he was appointed to the job—not anointed; because he was adopted into the dynasty, not born to it. And both historians and philosophers love him precisely for carrying out so well the commission for which he thought himself ill suited, and was in fact reluctant to accept. To them, his predicament presumably echoes in some fashion their own: he is, as it were, a model for those who have to go in this life against their calling. In any case, the Roman Empire gained a lot more from his dual loyalty to duty and philosophy than did the Stoic doctrine (which, in its own turn, comes with Marcus to the end of its own line: to ethics). So much so that it's been maintained, often vigorously, that this sort of inner split is a good recipe for ruling. That it's better if one's spiritual yearnings have their own outlet and don't interfere too much with one's actions. This is what the whole philosopher-king business is all about, isn't it? When your metaphysics get short shrift. As for Marcus, however, he dreaded this prospect from the very beginning, dreaded being summoned to Hadrian's court, for all its comforts and bright perspectives. Perhaps precisely because of those; as a true product of the Greek doctrine, all he aspired to was "the camp-bed and skin coverlet." Philosophy for him was a manner of dressing as much as it was a manner of discourse: the texture of existence, not just a mental pursuit. Picture him as a Buddhist monk, then; you won't be much off target, since the "way oflife" was the essence ofStoicism as well; emphatically so, we may add. The young Marcus must have been apprehensive of the royal adoption for more reasons than Hadrian's sexual predilections: it meant a wardrobe as different as the accompanying mental diet. That he went for it had to do, one imagines, less with royal pressure than with our man's own misgivings about his intellectual fortitude: apparently it's easier to be a king than a philosopher. Anyhow, it came to pass, and here's a monument. The good question, though, is: To whom? To a philosopher? Or to a king? To both? Perhaps to neither.