Here on the Caelian Hill, as his great-grandfather did not recognize the benefits of public school, Marcus's homeschooling began.
Music was taught to him by the Greek Citharode20 Andron, with whom Marcus also learned geometry. Musician-geometer, what could have been weirder? But amazing people often met a curious boy. Or maybe he saw the unusual in the fact that the others considered the matter ordinary?
And Marcus studied painting from another strange man, also a Greek, Diognetus.
“Keep your hand softer, don't strain the brush!” Marcus was taught. “Art is like nature, vague strokes replace clear lines, empty space filled with inner air. This is where the mystery is born. Look at the sculptures covered with toga, tables or cloaks. Behind the soft folds is human flesh, the living soul, though wrapped in marble. This secret of revival is incomprehensible and eternal, but we Greeks still prefer the naked body, with the beauty of which nothing can be compared.”
“Didn't the poet Lucian condemn the call?” Marcus, who studied Lucian's grammar satire, asked.
“Nudity does not hide anything, and this is its appeal,” Diognetus concluded.
Marcus looked at the Greek mentor, absorbed, listened, watched. Diognetus taught him a lot. He was not like the grammar teachers of Alexander of Cotiaeum or Titus Prokul. They forced their pupils to read literature, memorize passages from Latin and Greek authors, to make speeches published by them, and then to disassemble. For example, Marcus had to come up with the text of Cato's speech to the Senate. Or an obituary for the Spartan king Leonid, who died in battle with the Persians.
Grammar exercises awakened the imagination, seemed to Marcus interesting, but Diognetus ridiculed them.
This tall, with a large forehead, sinewy artist, in general turned out to be a great skeptic. Marcus suspected that in Greece Diognetus attended a school of cynics21 and therefore wore a long uncombed beard, a simple squalid cloak. Laughing, he said of himself that he lived like a dog and that he was free from possessing useless things. “I am a true dog,” he grinned.
From him, Marcus learned that only strong personalities, heroes who were not afraid of anything but the gods could trust people. That's why the less you trust, the stronger you become. That's the paradox. Especially it is impossible to rely on magicians, on all sorts of fortune-tellers and broadcasters, who are the real charlatans, because they have appropriated the right of predictions belonging only to the Parks.