It was hardly the expression of "the healthy mind in the healthy body," but rather of a sacrifice of the body to the soul, its needs and aspirations, that Marius seemed to divine in this assiduous student of the Greek sages--a sacrifice, in truth, far beyond the demands of their very saddest philosophy of life.
[192] Dignify thyself with modesty and simplicity for thine ornaments!--had been ever a maxim with this dainty and high-bred Stoic, who still thought manners a true part of morals, according to the old sense of the term, and who regrets now and again that he cannot control his thoughts equally well with his countenance.

That outward composure was deepened during the solemnities of this day by an air of pontifical abstraction; which, though very far from being pride--nay, a sort of humility rather--yet gave, to himself, an air of unapproachableness, and to his whole proceeding, in which every minutest act was considered, the character of a ritual.

Certainly, there was no haughtiness, social, moral, or even philosophic, in Aurelius, who had realised, under more trying conditions perhaps than any one before, that no element of humanity could be alien from him.

Yet, as he walked to-day, the centre of ten thousand observers, with eyes discreetly fixed on the ground, veiling his head at times and muttering very rapidly the words of the "supplications," there was something many spectators may have noted as a thing new in their experience, for Aurelius, unlike his predecessors, took all this with absolute seriousness.

The doctrine of the sanctity of kings, that, in the words of Tacitus, Princes are as Gods--Principes instar deorum esse--seemed to have taken a novel, because a literal, sense.