But what precise place could there be for Verus and his peculiar charm, [197] in that Wisdom, that Order of divine Reason "reaching from end to end, strongly and sweetly disposing all things," from the vision of which Aurelius came down, so tolerant of persons like him?
Into such vision Marius too was certainly well-fitted to enter, yet, noting the actual perfection of Lucius Verus after his kind, his undeniable achievement of the select, in all minor things, felt, though with some suspicion of himself, that he entered into, and could understand, this other so dubious sort of character also.

There was a voice in the theory he had brought to Rome with him which whispered "nothing is either great nor small;" as there were times when he could have thought that, as the "grammarian's" or the artist's ardour of soul may be satisfied by the perfecting of the theory of a sentence, or the adjustment of two colours, so his own life also might have been fulfilled by an enthusiastic quest after perfection--say, in the flowering and folding of a toga.
The emperors had burned incense before the image of Jupiter, arrayed in its most gorgeous apparel, amid sudden shouts from the people of Salve Imperator! turned now from the living princes to the deity, as they discerned his countenance through the great open doors.

The imperial brothers had deposited their crowns of myrtle on the richly embroidered lapcloth of the god; and, with their chosen guests, sat down to a public feast in the temple [198] itself.

There followed what was, after all, the great event of the day:--an appropriate discourse, a discourse almost wholly de contemptu mundi, delivered in the presence of the assembled Senate, by the emperor Aurelius, who had thus, on certain rare occasions, condescended to instruct his people, with the double authority of a chief pontiff and a laborious student of philosophy.

In those lesser honours of the ovation, there had been no attendant slave behind the emperors, to make mock of their effulgence as they went; and it was as if with the discretion proper to a philosopher, and in fear of a jealous Nemesis, he had determined himself to protest in time against the vanity of all outward success.
The Senate was assembled to hear the emperor's discourse in the vast hall of the Curia Julia.