Notes1.1 My grandfather Verus: Verus (1).
1.2 My father: Verus (2).
1.3 My mother: Lucilla.
1.4 My great-grandfather: Severus (1).
To avoid the public schools: Roman aristocrats normally preferred to
have their sons educated by private tutors (often specially trained
household slaves) who were considered safer and more reliable than the
professional schoolmasters who taught all comers for a fee.1.5 My first teacher: Not named and most likely a slave.
Not to support this side or that: Literally, “not to be a Green or a Blue;
not to support the parmularius [a gladiator with a small shield] or the
scutarius [who carried a larger shield].”1.6 the camp-bed and the cloak: Symbols of an ascetic lifestyle. Marcus’s
sleeping arrangements are recorded by the Historia Augusta: “He used
to sleep on the ground, and his mother had a hard time convincing him to
sleep on a cot spread with skins.”
1.7 his own copy: It is unclear whether this refers to Arrian’s Discourses of
Epictetus or to a set of unpublished notes, perhaps taken by Rusticus
himself.
1.13 Domitius and Athenodotus: The anecdote Marcus refers to is unknown.
1.14 My brother: Probably a copyist’s error based on confusion between the
names Verus and Severus.
Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato: For the significance of these three figures as