most moving passages in
literature, in which he extols the moral virtues of MarcusAurelius,
only to register the Roman's supreme flaw. Mill writes:
If ever any one, possessed ... thinking himself
the best and most enlightened among his contemporaries, it was the
Emperor MarcusAurelius. Absolute monarch of the whole civilized
world, he preserved through life not only ... society was in at the time (wars, internal revolts,
cruelty in all its manifestations), MarcusAurelius assumed that what
held it together and kept it from getting worse