From my mother [I learned], piety and kindness, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich. — Marcus Aurelius
Although it goes unmentioned in Marcus’s brief character sketch of his mother, Lucilla exhibited another notable virtue: natural affection. Marcus came to agree with his rhetoric tutor, and family friend Marcus Cornelius Fronto, who claimed that generally speaking, “those among us who are called Patricians are rather deficient” in precisely this quality.
Wealthy Roman slaveowners and the baying audiences at gladiatorial contests may appear to have been numb to human suffering. However, individuals can always be found who stand apart from their contemporaries. The Greek word Marcus and Fronto used of such people, philostorgia, which normally refers to the love of close family members for one another, is central to Stoic ethics. Philostorgia is sometimes translated as “natural affection,” “parental love,” or “familial love,” although we might best describe it as resembling the Christian concept of brotherly love. Paul equates the two terms in the New Testament when, for instance, he says: “Be kindly affectionate [philostorgoi] to one another with brotherly love [philadelphia].”
The Stoics believed that such “natural affection” should extend to everyone, as all rational beings are viewed by the wise as their brothers and sisters. In his letters, Fronto more than once makes the striking claim that the Latin language has no equivalent word for philostorgia, as in his description of a friend:
“His characteristics, simplicity, continence, truthfulness, and honour plainly Roman, a warmth of affection, however, possibly not Roman, for there is nothing of which my whole life through I have seen less at Rome than a man unfeignedly φιλόστοργος [philostorgos]. The reason why there is not even a word for this virtue in our language must, I imagine, be, that in reality no one at Rome has any warm affection.”
It is clear from Fronto’s correspondence that he viewed Marcus and Lucilla as exceptions, among the few patricians in Rome who were capable of exhibiting the natural affection held in such regard by philosophers. Indeed, Marcus’s warmth and toward his friends is displayed throughout the correspondence with his Latin master. He even praises Fronto, on one occasion, by comparing his eloquence to Lucilla’s.
[Excerpt from Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor, now available from Yale University Press in paperback, hardback, ebook, and audiobook formats.]
If we can see beyond Fronto’s rather shameless toadying, his letters provide us with additional insights into Lucilla’s character and her influence upon her son. Fronto celebrates the virtues for which Marcus’s mother was known in a letter he sent her on her birthday in which he compares her to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. He portrays Lucilla as a woman known for having had great love, or natural affection, toward her husband, and for loving her children. The letter suggests that she is seen as virtuous yet modest, good-natured, approachable, and kind. She is also portrayed as a straightforward, honest woman.
Fronto concludes by saying that he would bar from Lucilla’s birthday celebrations any persons who made “a pretense of good-will” and were “insincere,” those for whom everything from laughter to tears was make-believe, and who, as Homer’s Achilles put it, hid “one thing in their hearts while their lips speak another.” Fronto apparently did not see himself in this description, but it surely conjured to mind other rhetoricians of his and Marcus’s acquaintance. He would certainly have insisted that Marcus read his mother’s birthday letter, so it is likely that its portrayal of her met with her son’s approval. Lucilla emerges, in Fronto’s highly contrived compliment, as a woman known for her familial affection, honesty, and, perhaps ironically, for her straight talking.
Marcus recognized that these qualities clashed at times with the culture of the Second Sophistic, which elevated insincerity and sycophancy to an art form, and Fronto was arguably not much better than the Greek Sophists in this regard. His birthday letter could be dismissed as mere flattery, but it echoes what Marcus said about his mother privately in the Meditations. Fronto was right: the woman who taught her son not only to avoid doing wrong but to avoid even contemplating a wrong action inwardly would doubtless “hate like the gates of hell” hypocrites of the sort denounced by Achilles in Homer’s Iliad. It is no surprise that such a woman would rear a son who became famous for his love of truthfulness.
[Excerpt from Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor, now available from Yale University Press in paperback, hardback, ebook, and audiobook formats.]
Our mother was our first home in the universe.
Outstanding.