Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 3, Athens-BOI

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theory of Stoicism, and lived so abstemious and laborious
a life, that he injured his health. It was from his Stoical
teachers that he learned so many admirable lessons,—to
work hard, to deny himself, to avoid listening to slander,
to endure misfortunes, never to deviate from his purpose,
to be grave without affectation, delicate in correcting
others, “ not frequently to say to any one, nor to write in
a letter, that I have no leisure,” nor continually to excuse
the neglect of ordinary duties by alleging urgent occupa¬
tions. Through all his Stoical training, Aurelius pre¬
served the natural sweetness of his nature, so that he
emerged from it the most lovable as well as the saintliest
of Pagans.
Antoninus Pius reigned from 138 to 161 a.d., and the
concord between him and his destined heir was so com¬
plete, that it is recorded that during these twenty-three
years Marcus never slept oftener than twice away from
the house of Pius. It is generally believed that Aurelius
married Faustina in 146, at all events a daughter was born
to him in 147. The two noblest of imperial Romans were
associated both in the administration of the state and in
the simple country occupations and amusements of the
sea-side villa of Lorium, the birthplace of Pius, to which he
loved to retire from the pomp and the wretched intrigues
of Rome.
Antoninus Pius died of fever, 161 a.d., at his villa of
Lorium at the age of seventy-five. As his end approached,
he summoned his friends and the leading men of Rome
to his bedside, and recommended to them Marcus, who
was then forty years of age, as his successor, without men¬
tioning the name of Commodus, his other adopted son,
commonly called Lucius Verus. It is believed that the
senate agreed with what appeared to be the wishes of the
dying emperor, and urged Aurelius to take the sole ad¬
ministration of the empire into his hands. But at the very
commencement of his reign, Marcus showed the magnani¬
mity of his nature by admitting Yerus as his partner
in the empire, giving him the tribunitian and proconsular
powers, and the titles Caesar and Augustus. This was
the first time that Rome had two emperors as colleagues.
Yerus proved to be a weak, self-indulgent man • but he
had a high respect for his adoptive brother, and deferred
uniformly to his judgment. Although apparently ill-
assorted, they lived in peace; and Verus married Lucilla,
the daughter of Aurelius. In the first year of his reign
Faustina gave birth to twins, one of whom survived to
become the infamous Emperor Commodus.
The early part of the reign of Aurelius was clouded by
various national misfortunes: an inundation of the Tiber
swept away a large part of Rome, destroying fields, drowning
cattle, and ultimately causing a famine ; then came earth¬
quakes, fires, and plagues of insects; and finally, the
unruly and warlike Parthians resumed hostilities, and
under their king, Yologeses, defeated a Roman army and
devastated Syria. Yerus, originally a man of considerable
physical courage and even mental ability, went to oppose
the Parthians, but, having escaped from the control of his
colleague in the purple, he gave himself up entirely to
sensual excesses, and the Roman cause in Armenia would
have been lost, and the empire itself, perhaps, imperilled,
had Yerus not had under him able generals, the chief of
whom was Avidius Cassius. By them the Roman prestige
was vindicated, and the Parthian war brought to a con¬
clusion in 165, the two emperors having a triumph for
their victory in the year following. Verus and his army
brought with them from the East a terrible pestilence,
which spread through the whole empire, and added greatly
to the horrors of the time. The people of Rome seem to
have been completely unnerved by the universal distress,
and to have thought that the last days of the empire had
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come. Nor were their fears without cause. The Parthians
had at the best been beaten, not subdued, the Britons
threatened revolt, while signs appeared that various tribes
beyond the Alps intended to break into Italy. Indeed,
the bulk of the reign of Aurelius was spent in efforts to
ward off from the empire the attacks of the barbarians.
To allay the terrors of the Romans, he went himself to
the wars with Yerus, his headquarters being Carnuntum
on the Danube. Ultimately, the Marcomanni, the fiercest
of the tribes that inhabited the country between Illyria and
the sources of the Danube, sued for peace in 168. The
following year Yerus died, having been, it is said, cut off
by the pestilence which he had brought from Syria, although
in that wicked age there were not wanting gossips malig¬
nant enough to say even of Marcus that he hastened his
brother’s death by poison.
Aurelius was thenceforth undisputed master of the
Roman empire, during one of the most troubled periods of
its history. Mr Farrar, in his Seekers after God, thus
admirably describes the manner in which he discharged his
multifarious duties :—“ He regarded himself as being, in
fact, the servant of all. It was his duty, like that of the
bull in the herd, or the ram among the fiocks, to confront
every peril in his own person, to be foremost in all the
hardships of war, and most deeply immersed in all the toils
of peace. The registry of the citizens, the suppression of
litigation, the elevation of public morals, the care of minors,
the retrenchment of public expenses, the limitation of
gladiatorial games and shows, the care of roads, the restora¬
tion cf senatorial privileges, the appointment of none but
worthy magistrates, even the regulation of street traffic,
these and numberless other duties so completely absorbed
his attention, that, in spite of indifferent health, they often
kept him at severe labour from early morning till long after
midnight. His position, indeed, often necessitated his
presence at games and shows, but on these occasions he
occupied himself either in reading, in being read to, or in
writing notes. He was one of those who held that nothing
should be done hastily, and that few crimes were worse
than the waste of time.”
Peace was not long allowed the emperor. The year after
the death of his partner, two of the German tribes, the
Quadi and the Marcomanni, renewed hostilities with Rome,
and, for three years, Aurelius resided almost constantly
at Carnuntum, that he might effectually watch them. In
the end, the Marcomanni were driven out of Pannonia,
and were almost destroyed in their retreat across the
Danube. In 174 Aurelius gained a decisive victory over
the Quadi, to which a superstitious interest is attached,
and which is commemorated by one of the sculptures on
the Column of Antonine. The story is that the Roman
army had been entangled in a defile, from which they
were unable to extricate themselves, while at the same time
they suffered intensely from thirst. In this extremity a
sudden storm gave them abundance of rain, while the hail
and thunder which accompanied the rain confounded their
enemies, and enabled the Romans to gain an easy and
complete victory. This triumph was universally con¬
sidered at the time, and for long afterwards, to have been
a miracle, and bore the title of “ The Miracle of the
Thundering Legion.” The Gentile writers of the period
ascribed the victory to their gods, while the Christians
attributed it to the prayers of their brethren in a legion to
which, they affirmed, the emperor then gave the name of
Thundering. Dacier, however, and others who adhere to
the Christian view of the miracle, admit that the appel¬
lation of Thundering or Lightning (i<epavvo(36\os, or
K<ipavvo(t>6pos) was not given to the legion because the
Quadi were struck with lightning, but because there was
a figure of lightning on their shields. It has also been
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