In book 1 of The Meditations, Marcus, after contemplating the good qualities and lessons learned from his own family, next goes on to praise a mysterious unnamed tutor, probably a slave or freedman in his mother’s household.8 It’s truly remarkable that Marcus seems to credit a humble slave with more influence upon his moral development than either the Emperor Hadrian or any of his rhetoric tutors, who included some of the most highly esteemed intellectuals in the empire.
