That has sometimes been the result of the Stoic cosmopolitanism.

Aurelius, however, determined to beautify by all means, great or little, a doctrine which had in it some potential sourness, had brought all the quickness of his intelligence, and long years of observation, to bear on the conditions of social intercourse.

He had early determined "not to make business an excuse to decline the offices of humanity--not to pretend to be too much occupied with important affairs to concede what life with others may hourly demand;" and with such success, that, in an age which made much of the finer points of that intercourse, it was felt that the mere honesty of his conversation was more pleasing than other men's flattery.

His agreeableness to his young visitor to-day was, in truth, a blossom of the same wisdom which had made of Lucius Verus really a brother--the wisdom of not being exigent with men, any more than with fruit-trees (it is his own favourite figure) beyond their nature.

And there was another person, still nearer to him, regarding whom this wisdom became a marvel, of equity--of charity.
[218] The centre of a group of princely children, in the same apartment with Aurelius, amid all the refined intimacies of a modern home, sat the empress Faustina, warming her hands over a fire.