William O. Stephens

It's easy to speculate and hard to be confident about how one speculates.

So let's contrast Marcus's boyhood with that of, say, Commodus, right?

So the thing that jumps out to me about Marcus, of course, is that his biological father died when he was quite young.

And that didn't make him an orphan because, you know, he still had his mother.

But in Roman society, just as in all of antiquity and down through today, although less so today,

You're dealing with patriarchy.

Right.

So the death of a father is going to be a huge blow for any Roman boy.

And including and perhaps especially so for a privileged young boy as Marcus was.

Right.

Because his family is a lead in there and there.

They're optimists, right?

They're aristocrats.

So it's tempting.

I mean, I'm tempted to read back Marcus's, let's just be clear and call it obsession with death, right?

I mean, as a Stoic,

you know, the memento mori, he lived it.

I mean, he faced so much death in his life and it started with his dad.

His father died.

And, you know, he might've been six, seven, eight years old.