alt Hacker Newswow, full context from Gibbon is great:
> It has been objected to Marcus, that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy; and that he chose a successor in his own family, rather than in the republic. Nothing however, was neglected by the anxious father, and by the men of virtue and learning whom he summoned to his assistance, to expand the narrow mind of young Commodus, to correct his growing vices, and to render him worthy of the throne for which he was designed. But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy...
compare (~500 years earlier for MA; a couple of thousand for EG)
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... et seq. (93c-95a; great foreshadowing by Anytus...)
Glad that helped! Sleeping on it, it was even more likely that NB was correctly quoted by the still unremembered English historian as having taken issue with Tacitus’ (cf the famous convo with Wieland) coverage of one or more of the emperors’ motivational techniques