Marcus Aurelius by Henry Dwight SedgwickReview by: SartonIsis, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1923), pp. 148-149Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/223604 .

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Reviews

Henry Dwight Sedgwick. - MARCUS AURELIUS. A biography told as much as may be by letters. together with some account of the Stoic religion and an exposition of Roman government's attempt to suppress Christianity during MARCUS's reign. 309 p., New Haven, Yale University Press, 1921.

I warmly recommend this little book to the readers of Isis, for it gives one a very good insight into the civilization of the second century, but even more because the Stoic attitude came as near to the modern scientific point of view, - I mean the point of view of the humanized scientist, - as any philosophic or religious attitude ever came. The author has taken pains to explain, and rightly so, that the Stoic philosophy was in fact a religion. It was also a science, or rather it embodied the scientific knowledge of those

days. Stoicism was a philosophy or a religion based upon science ; it was a sort of positivism, in some ways more humane and more lovable than the modern one. As RENAN splendidly said: (( La religion de MARC-AURELE... est la religion absolue, celle qui resulte du

simple fait d'une haute conscience morale, placee en face de l'univers s Mr. SEDGWICK has succeeded in drawing a series of sketches of

the great emperor as he was in youth, in manhood and in later years, which are as full of life as the available material would permit. He quotes extensively from his correspondence, adding the necessary glosses with much discretion and pointedness. The character of MARCUS AURELIUS is outlined with a firm but gentle hand. The following paragraphl is a fair specimen of Mr. SEDGWICK'S nanner:

(( MARCUS possessed a sensitive spirit and a heroic soul; both had their needs. A simple life of work and kindness and amiability. doing each day some daily good. such as sufficed ANTONINUS PIUS, could not satisfy him ; neither could the arts, nor intellectual diversions, such as filled HADRIAN'S active life; nor ambition and

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war, as with TRAJAN. His high-strung soul beheld life as a matter of duty, not of happiness, and he wished to lay hold of whatever strength he could come at, in order to do the full measure of his duty. On the other hand, his sensitive spirit was inclined to doubt, to find vanity lurking behind every semblance of good, and to seek relief in an imperious demand that the world be made intelligible to hlim; in these respects he was religious-minded, and, whether he knew it or not, he was seeking a religion. ))

I am particularly grateful to the author for his rehabilitation of MARcus' wife, FAUSTINA, and of his brother-in-law and co-emperor, Lucius VERus the younger. Both had been scandalously slandered by the low-minded Scriptores Historiae Azng'ustae (IV. cent.), whose venomous gossip had been but too readily accepted by later histor- ians, including GIBBON. I am also indebted to him for a better appreciation of FRONTO, whom I had hitherto disliked too much to make any effort to understand him better. Mr. SEDGWICK gives us a very good portrait of him; pedantic as FRONTO naturally was, he fully deserved the solid affection which MARCUS had for him through- out his life.

In short, a good and delectable book which helps one to consider the world with equanimity.

SARTON.

Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera Omnia edidit I. L. E. DREYER. Auxilio IOANNIS RAEDER. Sumptus fecit G. A. HAGEMANN. Hauniae, MCMXIII (et sq.). In libiaria Gyldendaliana.

It is hardly possible to analyze the works of TYCHO BRAHE apropos of their recent edition by J. L. E. DREYER; at least this could not be done usefully within the limited scope of a review, but we must draw the attention of our readers to this monumental publication. The Societas linguae et litterarum danicarumn is to be congratulated for

having undertaken it and thus rendered a signal service both to their own beloved country and to the whole Republic of Letters. It seemed very shocking indeed that while the collected works of COPERNICUS, of KEPLER and GALILEO had been carefully edited, those of TYCHO remained scattered or unpublished. No one was better qualified to prepare this edition than Dr. J. L. E. DREYER, late Director of the Armagh Observatory in Ireland, to whom we owe an excellent History of the planetary systems from THALES to KEPLER (Cam- bridge 1906) and the best biography of TYCHO BRAHE (Edinburgh 1890; German translation, Karlsruhe 1894). The complete works of Tycho will fill 13 volumes in 4?, of which 225 copies are for sale.

war, as with TRAJAN. His high-strung soul beheld life as a matter of duty, not of happiness, and he wished to lay hold of whatever strength he could come at, in order to do the full measure of his duty. On the other hand, his sensitive spirit was inclined to doubt, to find vanity lurking behind every semblance of good, and to seek relief in an imperious demand that the world be made intelligible to hlim; in these respects he was religious-minded, and, whether he knew it or not, he was seeking a religion. ))

I am particularly grateful to the author for his rehabilitation of MARcus' wife, FAUSTINA, and of his brother-in-law and co-emperor, Lucius VERus the younger. Both had been scandalously slandered by the low-minded Scriptores Historiae Azng'ustae (IV. cent.), whose venomous gossip had been but too readily accepted by later histor- ians, including GIBBON. I am also indebted to him for a better appreciation of FRONTO, whom I had hitherto disliked too much to make any effort to understand him better. Mr. SEDGWICK gives us a very good portrait of him; pedantic as FRONTO naturally was, he fully deserved the solid affection which MARCUS had for him through- out his life.

In short, a good and delectable book which helps one to consider the world with equanimity.

SARTON.

Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera Omnia edidit I. L. E. DREYER. Auxilio IOANNIS RAEDER. Sumptus fecit G. A. HAGEMANN. Hauniae, MCMXIII (et sq.). In libiaria Gyldendaliana.

It is hardly possible to analyze the works of TYCHO BRAHE apropos of their recent edition by J. L. E. DREYER; at least this could not be done usefully within the limited scope of a review, but we must draw the attention of our readers to this monumental publication. The Societas linguae et litterarum danicarumn is to be congratulated for

having undertaken it and thus rendered a signal service both to their own beloved country and to the whole Republic of Letters. It seemed very shocking indeed that while the collected works of COPERNICUS, of KEPLER and GALILEO had been carefully edited, those of TYCHO remained scattered or unpublished. No one was better qualified to prepare this edition than Dr. J. L. E. DREYER, late Director of the Armagh Observatory in Ireland, to whom we owe an excellent History of the planetary systems from THALES to KEPLER (Cam- bridge 1906) and the best biography of TYCHO BRAHE (Edinburgh 1890; German translation, Karlsruhe 1894). The complete works of Tycho will fill 13 volumes in 4?, of which 225 copies are for sale.

149 149 REVIEWS REVIEWS

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