Marcus Aurelius’s father died when he was young. But then this young boy who was cursed by tragedy received a great gift. A gift that all children who have received it know to be one of the most incredible things in the world: a loving step-father.

Ernest Renan wrote that, more than his teachers and tutors, “Marcus had a single master whom he revered above them all, and that was Antoninus.” All his adult life, Marcus strived to be a disciple of his adoptive stepfather. While he lived, Marcus saw him, Renan said, as “the most beautiful model of a perfect life.”

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And in today’s audiobook reading, we hear in Marcus Aurelius’s own words what he learned from and thought about Antoninus, and he admired him so. 

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