Chapter XXXVI: The Five Good Emperors: Nerva to Marcus Aurelius (96-180 (3)

“Dion adds that when the rain began to fall every soldier lifted his head toward heaven to receive the water in his mouth; that afterwards some held out their shields and others their helmets to catch the water, and many gave their horses to drink. Being set upon at once by the barbarians they drank and fought on the same spot, and several, being wounded, swallowed blood mingled with the water in their helmets. All being occupied in drinking, they would doubtless have been seriously incommoded by this attack had not heavy hail and numerous thunderbolts thrown consternation into the ranks of the enemy. Fire and water could be seen to mingle as they left the heavens; some upon whom they fell drank and were refreshed, but many were burned and perished. The fire did not reach the Romans, but if it did by chance touch one of them it was immediately extinguished; in the same manner the rain, instead of comforting the barbarians, seemed merely to excite, like oil, the fire with which they were being consumed, and all soaked with water as they were they constantly sought more. Some barbarians inflicted wounds upon themselves as though their blood had power to extinguish flames, while many rushed over to the side of the Romans, hoping that there the water might be salutary to them. Marcus Antoninus had compassion on them, and for the seventh time he was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers. Although not usually accepting this title until it had been bestowed upon him by the senate, he made no demur on this occasion, holding that the honour came from a god, and wrote to that effect to the senate. As for Faustina, the title bestowed on her was Mother of the Camp.”[h]

Notwithstanding this victory, the war continued for some months longer; but, after many violent conflicts, the barbarians sent to sue for peace. The emperor imposed conditions upon them, more or less severe, as he found them more or less disposed to revolt; being actually resolved to divide their territories into provinces, and subject them to the Roman Empire. However, a fresh rebellion called him to the defence of his dominions at home.

THE REVOLT OF AVIDIUS

[Sidenote: [174-175 A.D.]]

Avidius Cassius was one of the emperor’s favourite generals, and had been chiefly instrumental in obtaining the Roman successes in Parthia. His principal merit seemed to consist in his restoring the old discipline and in pretending a violent regard for the commonwealth in its ancient form. But, in fact, all his seeming regard for freedom was only to seize upon the liberties of his country for his own aggrandisement. Wherefore, finding his soldiers (for he was left with an army in the East) willing to support his pretensions, he proclaimed himself emperor in Syria. One of his chief artifices to procure popularity was his giving out that he was descended from the famous Cassius, who had conspired against Cæsar; and like him he pretended that his aims were for the re-establishment of the commonwealth of Rome. He also caused it to be rumoured that Aurelius was dead, and he affected to show the greatest respect for his memory. By these pretences, he united a large body of men under his command, and in a short time brought all the countries from Syria to Mount Taurus under his subjection. These prosperous beginnings served to increase the emperor’s activity, but not his apprehensions. He prepared to oppose him without any marks of uneasiness for the event; telling his soldiers that he could freely yield up his empire to Avidius, if it should be judged conducive to the public good; for, as to his own part, the only fruits he had from exaltation were incessant labour and fatigue.

“I am ready,” cried he, “to meet Avidius before the senate, and before you; and to yield him up the empire, without the effusion of blood, or striking a blow, if it shall be thought good for the people. But Avidius will never submit to such a tribunal; he who has been faithless to his benefactor can never rely upon any man’s professions. He will not even, in case of being worsted, rely upon me. And yet, my fellow-soldiers, my only fear is, and I speak it with the greatest sincerity, lest he should put an end to his own life; or lest some, thinking to do me a service, should hasten his death, the greatest hope that I have is to prove that I can pardon the most outrageous offences; to make him my friend, even in spite of his reluctance; and to show the world that civil wars themselves can come to a happy issue.” In the meantime Avidius, who well knew that desperate undertakings must have a speedy execution, endeavoured to draw over Greece to his assistance; but the love which all mankind bore the good emperor frustrated his expectations; he was unable to bring over a single city to espouse his interests. This repulse seemed to turn the scale of his former fortunes. His officers and soldiers began now to regard him with contempt; so that they at last slew him, in less than four months after their first revolt. His head was brought to the emperor, who received it with regret, and ordered it an honourable interment. The rest of the conspirators were treated with great lenity; some few of them were banished, but recalled soon after. This clemency was admired by some, and condemned by others; but the emperor little regarded the murmurs or the applause of the multitude; guided only by the goodness of his own disposition, he did what to him seemed right, content and happy in self-approbation. When some took the liberty of blaming his conduct, telling him that Avidius would not have been so generous had he been conqueror, the emperor replied in this sublime manner: “I never served the gods so ill, or reigned so irregularly, as to fear Avidius could ever be conqueror.”

AN IMPERIAL TOUR AND A TRIUMPH

[Sidenote: [175-177 A.D.]]

Though Avidius was no more, yet Aurelius was sensible that he had still some enemies remaining, whom he was willing to win over. He therefore took a journey into the East, where, in all places, he at once charmed them with his affability, raised their admiration by his clemency, instructed them by precept, and improved them by his example. The better to prevent such revolts for the future, he ordained that as Avidius was a native of the country in which he rebelled, no person, for the time to come, should command in the place where he was born. In this journey the empress Faustina was unexpectedly seized with a violent distemper, and died. She was a woman whose wanton life gave great scandal to the dignity of her station; however, her passive husband either could not or at least affected not to see her enormities, but willingly admitted the ill-deserved honours which the senate importunately decreed to her memory.

On his way to Rome he visited Athens, where he conferred many honours on the inhabitants, and established professors in all the sciences, with munificent salaries for their ease. Upon landing in Italy he quitted his soldier’s habit, as also did all his army, and made his entry into Rome in the gown which was worn in peace. As he had been absent almost eight years, he distributed to each citizen eight pieces of gold, and remitted all the debts due to the treasury for sixty years past. At the same time he nominated his son Commodus to succeed him in the empire, and made him a partner in his triumphal entry at the close of 176.[b]

At this time the senate erected an equestrian statue of Marcus, of which Merivale speaks in the following eloquent terms:

“Of all the Cæsars whose names are enshrined in the page of history, or whose features are preserved to us in the repositories of art, one alone seems still to haunt the eternal city in the place and the posture most familiar to him in life. In the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which crowns the platform of the Campidoglio, imperial Rome lives again. Of all her consecrated sights it is to this that the classical pilgrim should most devoutly repair; this of all the monuments of Roman antiquity most justly challenges his veneration. For in this figure we behold an emperor, of all the line the noblest and the dearest, such as he actually appeared; we realise in one august exemplar the character and image of the rulers of the world. We stand here face to face with a representative of the Scipios and Cæsars, with a model of the heroes of Tacitus and Livy. Our other Romans are effigies of the closet and the museum; this alone is a man of the streets, the Forum, and the Capitol. Such special prominence is well reserved, amidst the wreck of ages, for him whom historians combine to honour as the worthiest of the Roman people.”[l]

Besides this, a group of monuments expressive of their homage was erected in the Via Lata (a part of the Flaminian way) on the Field of Mars. The dedicatory inscription and some bas-reliefs have come down to us from a triumphal arch which was not destroyed until the year 1662; the most important of them being some bas-reliefs representing the apotheosis of Faustina. The marble column of Marcus Aurelius, in what is now the Piazza Colonna, is still standing. It measures 29.55 metres in height, inclusive of the base, capital, plinth and abacus, and consists of twenty-eight blocks. A spiral staircase of 190 steps go up in the interior, and the abacus was originally surmounted by a bronze statue of the emperor. Round the shaft, as in Trajan’s column, runs a spiral band of reliefs, containing twenty rows of figures one above the other, and representing the wars of the Romans against the tribes of the Danube. In design and execution, however, these sculptures, which were not finished until the reign of the emperor’s successor, fall far short of the excellence of the earlier work. The representation of motion is often exaggerated, the outlines and draperies are harsh and clumsy, and the profile of the relief is coarser than in Trajan’s column.

The statue was probably carried off by the Byzantine emperor, Constans II, in the year 663 A.D. The column was struck by lightning in 1589, and was restored by Pope Sixtus V, and surmounted by a statue of Paul the apostle in gilded bronze. A temple of Marcus Aurelius probably stood to the west of it, on what is now Monte Citorio.

[Sidenote: [177-180 A.D.]]

After his return to Rome Marcus Aurelius was once more at leisure to prosecute zealously the affairs of peace, for which he had so great a liking. The administration was admirable, its only defect being that the mildness of the emperor’s disposition inclined him to laxity in dealing with the governors of the senatorial provinces. Apart from certain other matters (such as the matter of the Italian magistrates and the judicial powers of the high imperial officials at Rome), the care of the alimentary institution was the object of his peculiar interest. It is not improbable (though open to question) that at this time he placed this institution under the charge of a consular alimentary prefect specially appointed. The work hitherto done by the district prefects was handed over to the Italian magistrates, and the curators of the highways were commissioned, on the one hand, to guard against exactions on the part of customs officials, and on the other, to superintend the Italian grain markets and arrange for the supply and sale of corn.

The serious financial straits in which the empire was involved during the critical years of the war on the Danube were not without their effect on the alimentary institution. The emperor had already allowed the weight of the gold piece to fall to 7.3 gr. and the proportion of alloy in the denarius to rise to 25 per cent.; and he seems now to have found it necessary to call in from the landowners the capital set aside for the support of the institution and to divert the interest to the public treasury; a precedent which was hereafter to prove very injurious. Nevertheless Marcus Aurelius was so able an economist that no later than the year 176 he was able to relieve the burdens of the nation by the remission of all debts and arrears due to the public treasury (for a period of forty-six years). Meanwhile the population of the capital was gratified by repeated donations of money and corn during the lean years.

The emperor endeavoured to modify the sanguinary character of the gladiatorial shows by requiring the combatants to have buttons on their foils, and the appointment of a prætor tutelaris was a proof of his special care for interests of minors. Moreover, while following the levelling policy of his two predecessors in the extension of Latin and Roman citizenship to all parts of the empire, he was careful to lay the foundation of a more accurate knowledge of the statistics of his dominions.[m]

“Amid these records of gentleness and forbearance,” says Miss Zimmern, “it seems strange to read that Marcus Aurelius permitted a cruel persecution of the Christians. Among the victims of this reign were Justin Martyr and Polycarp, and numbers suffered in a general persecution of the churches at Lyons and Vienna. It must not, however, be forgotten that the persecution was political rather than religious. Of the true teaching of Christianity Marcus Aurelius knew little and cared less; but its followers, in refusing to acknowledge a religion which included the emperors among its deities, became rebels against the existing order of things, and therein culpable.”[n]

The well-meant labours of Aurelius were interrupted by grievous calamities. In Asia, earthquakes were a veritable scourge; and the year 178 in particular was marked by frightful destruction on the Ionian coasts, especially at Samos, Chios, Miletus, and the magnificent city of Smyrna. Liberal assistance was sent to the last-named place at the entreaty of P. Ælius Aristides (born 117 or 129) of Adriani in Bithynia.

But the emperor’s gravest anxieties were for the future. The hand of death had lain heavy on his family, nor was the heir-presumptive to the throne a son likely to rejoice his father’s heart. Marcus Lucius Ælius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus was born at Lanuvium on August 31, 161, and invested with the title of Cæsar on October 12, 166. But the boy was ill-endowed by nature, and the efforts of his father, and of the other able men about him (such as Cornelius Fronto, and Galen, the famous physician, who had lived in Rome from 169 onwards as his physician in ordinary, and died about 200 A.D.) were unsuccessful in fitting him for the duties of his high station. Commodus, though by no means free from evil tendencies, was not exactly vicious, but he was stupid, timid, lacking in initiative, and therefore likely to be swayed by his immediate surroundings. This was not the kind of man the empire needed at this juncture. Nevertheless, Marcus Aurelius could not summon up resolution enough to exclude him from the succession. On the contrary, Commodus was invested with tribunician authority in the year 177, and in order to secure his succession he was called upon, thus early, to take his place at his father’s side as augustus.

LAST CAMPAIGNS AND DEATH OF AURELIUS

The whole imperial power was only too soon to pass into the hands of this sinister being. The middle Danube, where Pertinax had been in command and had been succeeded, on his appointment to the governorship of Mœsia, by the two Quintilii, was the centre of constant disorders. The German tribes were inflamed afresh by the exaction of the hard conditions of peace, and by the year 177 the flames of war had burst forth again. In 178 Marcus Aurelius was once more forced to take the field in person. He therefore married his son to Crispina, daughter of the consular Caius Bruttius Præsens (if, indeed, the marriage had not taken place in the previous year), and set forth with him to the Danube on the fifth of August.

The Danube provinces were at this time very strongly fortified, and the river was extremely well guarded as far as Ratisbon on the west. Its waters were navigated by a powerful fleet divided into squadrons corresponding to the three principal harbours of Laureacum, Arelape Comagenæ, and Carnuntum. The emperor had raised two legions to occupy Noricum and Rætia. In Noricum the central point of the military frontier was at Laureacum, and the highway of the Danube had now been completed. The valleys and roads leading to the Danube were no less strongly fortified than those which led to the Rhine. Above Laureacum the forts of Lentia (on the Schlossberg of Linz) and Joviacum (Schlögen near Haibach) commanded the surrounding country, and below the central fortress the great road to Vindobona was guarded by the castellum of Lacus Felicis (of which the wall may still be seen at Oehling on the Url), which was capable of accommodating three cohorts, by Elegium (on the crags of Wallsee), and by the fortified camp of Arelape at the mouth of the Erlaf. Beyond these came the castle of Namare on the crags of Melk, the castella of Trigisamum (Traismauer), Faviana (Mautern), and Comagenæ (Tulln), and lastly of Citium (Zeiselmauer), at the foot of the forest of Vindobona. The next section of the Pannonian Danube was even more thoroughly protected. Vindobona was flanked by several forts, and close to this strong fortress was Carnuntum, its main bulwark, a mighty quadrangle close upon the steep bank of the river, raised far aloft above the torrent stream and looking across its turbid waves and green islands to the boundless stretches of the Marchfeld. The passage of the Danube was guarded by a barbican (at Stopfenreut).

Of this fresh war on the Danube few records have come down to us. From the outset it was more successful than the former campaign. One of the most brilliant episodes was a great victory gained over the Germans, after fearful carnage, at the end of the year 179, by Tarruntenus Paternus, a notable jurist and scientific tactician, who was now in command as _præfectus prætorio_. Fortune seemed to smile ever more brightly on the Roman arms, when, as the evil genius of the empire would have it, the admirable emperor died of the plague in the camp at Vindobona, rightly appreciated and deeply mourned in death; deified and vainly desired as the fortunes of the declining empire became more and more gloomily overcast.[m]

“It seemed,” said the sympathetic Goldsmith,[b] “as if the whole glory and prosperity of the Roman Empire died with Aurelius. From thenceforward we are to behold a train of emperors either vicious or impotent, either wilfully guilty or unable to assert the dignity of their station. We are to behold an empire, grown too great, sinking by its own weight, surrounded by barbarous and successful enemies without and torn by ambitious and cruel factions within; the principles of the times wholly corrupted; philosophy attempting to regulate the minds of men without the aid of religion; and the warmth of patriotism entirely evaporated, by being diffused in too wide a circle.” But a certain allowance must be made for eulogistic exaggeration in such an estimate as this. It must never be forgotten that a great empire changes slowly. All was not well with the empire before Marcus Aurelius, and all was not ill with it afterwards.[a]

The despondency which had seized on the gentle emperor’s spirits is strongly marked in the circumstances of his last hours. While anticipating his own decease with satisfaction, and even with eagerness, he regarded himself as only a fellow-traveller on the common road of life with all around him, and took leave of his friends as one who was but just preceding them. If he regarded the condition of public affairs, the prospect of his son succeeding him was not such as to console him; for he could not hide from himself that Commodus was vicious, cruel, and illiterate. The indulgence he had shown to his consort’s irregularities might be pardoned by the state, to which they were of little moment; but his weakness in leaving to his graceless offspring the command of a world-wide empire must reflect more strongly on his memory.

He may have judged, indeed, that the danger to the state from a bad prince was less than the danger from a disputed succession, especially in the face of the disasters accumulating around it. On his death-bed he warned his son not to underrate the peril from the barbarians, who, if at the moment worsted and discouraged, would soon revive, and return again to the assault with increasing vigour. And so he left the laws of inheritance, as now ordinarily received, to take their course, indicating his will that Commodus should succeed him by the simple form of recommending him to the care of his officers and to the favour of the immortal gods. On the seventh day of his illness he admitted none but his unworthy son to his chamber, and after a few words dismissed him, covered his head for sleep, and passed away alone and untended.

Born on the 20th of April, 121, and dying on the 17th of March, 180, he had almost completed his fifty-ninth year. His career had been divided into three nearly equal portions: the first, to his association in the empire with Antoninus; the second, to his accession to complete sovereignty; the third, from thence to his decease. The first was the season of his general education, the second that of his training for empire, in the last he exercised power uncontrolled. In each he had acquitted himself well, in each he had gained himself love and admiration; but the earlier periods were eminently prosperous and happy; the crowning period was a time of trial, of peril, fatigue, distress, and apprehension.

MERIVALE COMPARES AURELIUS AND ALFRED THE GREAT

Historical parallels between men of different times and circumstances are very apt to mislead us, yet I cannot refrain from indicating the comparison, which might be drawn with unusual precision, between the wise, the virtuous, the much-suffering Aurelius, and England’s great and good king Alfred. Both arrived early and unexpectedly to power; both found their people harassed by the attacks of importunate enemies; they assumed with firmness the attitude of resistance and defence, and gained many victories in the field, though neither could fail to acknowledge the unequal conditions of the struggle. Both found themselves at the head of a weak and degenerate society whose hour of dissolution had well-nigh struck. Nevertheless, they contended manfully in its behalf, and strove to infuse their own gallant spirit into a people little worthy of their championship.

But Aurelius and Alfred were not warriors only. They were men of letters by natural predilection and early habit; they were legislators, administrators, and philosophers, with this difference, that the first came at the end of a long course of civilised government, the second almost at its beginning; the first at the mournful close of one period of mental speculation, the second at the fresh and hopeful commencement of another. The one strove to elevate the character of his subjects by the example of his own scrupulous self-examination; the other by precepts of obedience to an external revelation. But both were, from their early days, weak in body, and little fit to cope with the appalling fatigues of their position; both, if I mistake not, were sick at heart, and felt that their task was beyond their power, and quitted life prematurely, with little reluctance.

In one respect, however, their lot was different. The fortunes of the people of the English Alfred, after a brief and distant period of obscuration, have ever increased in power and brightness, like the sun ascending to its meridian. The decline of which Aurelius was the melancholy witness was irremediable and final, and his pale solitary star was the last apparent in the Roman firmament.[l]

GIBBON’S ESTIMATE OF MARCUS AURELIUS, AND OF THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES

[Sidenote: [161-180 A.D.]]

The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severe and laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid system of the stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as things indifferent. His meditations, composed in the tumult of a camp, are still extant; and he even condescended to give lessons of philosophy, in a more public manner than was perhaps consistent with the modesty of a sage or the dignity of an emperor. But his life was the noblest commentary on the precepts of Zeno. He was severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just and beneficent to all mankind. He regretted that Avidius Cassius, who excited a rebellion in Syria, had disappointed him by a voluntary death of the pleasure of converting an enemy into a friend; and he justified the sincerity of that sentiment by moderating the zeal of the senate against the adherents of the traitor. War he detested, as the disgrace and calamity of human nature; but when the necessity of a just defence called upon him to take up arms, he readily exposed his person to eight winter campaigns on the frozen banks of the Danube, the severity of which was at last fatal to the weakness of his constitution. His memory was revered by a grateful posterity; and, above a century after his death, many persons preserved the image of Marcus Antoninus among those of their household gods.

If a man were called upon to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which lapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.[33] The vast extent of the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honour of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their day been capable of enjoying a rational freedom.

The labours of these monarchs were overpaid by the immense reward that inseparably waited on their success; by the honest pride of virtue, and by the exquisite delight of beholding the general happiness of which they were the authors. A just but melancholy reflection embittered, however, the noblest of human enjoyments. They must often have recollected the instability of a happiness which depended on the character of a single man. The fatal moment was perhaps approaching when some licentious youth, or some jealous tyrant, would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power which they had exerted for the benefit of their people. The ideal restraints of the senate and the laws might serve to display the virtues, but could never correct the vices, of the emperor. The military force was a blind and irresistible instrument of oppression; and the corruption of Roman manners would always supply flatterers eager to applaud, and ministers prepared to serve, the fear or the avarice, the lust or the cruelty, of their masters.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[28] [There are other accounts; some claiming that Trajan “loved Hadrian as his son.”]

[29] [Simon’s real name was Bar Kosiba from the town Kosiba. “Son of lies” was the interpretation given to his name after his failure.]

[30] [Nearly all the ancient historians of Rome were partisans of the senate, as against the emperors. This circumstance chiefly accounts for the unfavourable report of Hadrian’s last years which has come down to us.]

[31] [Hadrian’s villa hardly deserves such sarcasm. It was a sort of miniature, natural and architectural, of the Roman world,--a pleasant artistic retreat for the emperor during his weary illness, and a monument to his cosmopolitan character.]

[32] [Bury’s[n] estimate is different. He says: “Antoninus was hardly a great statesman. The rest which the empire enjoyed under his auspices had been rendered possible through Hadrian’s activity, and was not due to his own exertions; on the other hand, he carried the policy of peace at any price too far, and so entailed calamities on the state after his death.”]

[33] [This famous estimate of Gibbon’s has been seriously questioned. About half of the inhabitants of the empire were slaves, and it is scarcely in doubt that a great majority of the freemen were materially, intellectually, and morally inferior to the average civilised man of to-day. It must be recalled, however, that the condition of the masses has greatly improved since the time of Gibbon.]