 Section 7 of the Roman Empire of the Second Century by William Wolfe Capes. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Nagami. CHAPTER III. HADRIAN AD 117-138 PART II There was yet another ancient land which had manifold attractions for the tourist. It was seemingly in later life that Hadrian terried long in Egypt to explore the wonders of its art and study the genius of its people. He looked no doubt with curious eye upon the pyramids, the sphinxes and the giant piles of karnak, and the root-lines may still be read upon the face of Memnon's vocal statue which tell us of the visit of his wife Sabina. His curious fancy found enough to stir it in the secrets of the mystic love which had been handed down from bygone ages in the strange medley of the wisdom and the folly which crossed each other in the national thought, in their strong hold on the belief in an unseen world and the moral government of Providence, in the animal worship which had plunged of late a whole neighborhood into deadly feud about the conflicting claims of cat and ibis, and made rival towns dispute in arms their right to feed in their midst the sacred bull called Apis for the adoration of the rest. He could not but admire the great museum of the Ptolemies, magnificent seat of art and literature and science, the home for centuries of so much academic wit and learning. In that land of many wonders the people of Alexandria were not the least, in a letter to his brother-in-law which still remains, we may see the mocking insight with which the emperor studied the changing moods of the great city, full, as it seemed to him, of soothsayers, astrologers, and quacks, of worshipers of Christ and votaries of Serapis, passing in their fickleness from extreme of loyalty to that of license, so industrious by instinct as to tolerate no idle lounger in their midst, and yet with all so turbulent as to be incapable of governing themselves, professing reverence for many a rival deity, yet all alike paying their court to mammon. But even as he scoffed at the fanciful extravagance of Egypt he was unmanned by the spell of her distempered thought. As he traveled on the Nile we read he was busy with magic arts which called for a human victim. One of his train, a Bithynian shepherd of rare beauty, was ready to devote himself and died to give a moment's pleasure to his master. Another story tells us only that he fell into the river and died an involuntary death. But both agree in this at least, that Hadrian loved him fondly, mourned him deeply, and would not be comforted when he was gone. He could not bring him back to life, but he could honour him as no sovereign had honoured man before. The district where he died must bear his name, and a city grow up on the spot where he was buried. If the old nomes of Egypt had their tutelary beasts which they worshipped as divine, the Antinoite might claim like rank for the new hero who had given it a name. Might build temples to his memory, consult his will in oracles and task the arts of Greece to lodge him worthily. When the new religion spread beyond those narrow bounds, city after city of the Greek and Eastern world caught the fever of this servile adoration, built altars and temples to Antinous, founded festivals to do him honour, and dressed him up in modern fancy in the attributes and likeness of their ancient gods. The sculptor's art lent itself with little scruple to the spreading flattery of the fashion, reproduced him under countless forms as its favourite type of beauty, while poets laureate sung his praises and provincial mince put his face and name upon their medals. We may see the tokens at this time of an influence rather cosmopolitan than Roman. By his visible concern for the well-being of the provinces, by his long-continued wanderings in every land, by his Hellenic sympathies and tastes, Hadrian lessened certainly the attractive force of the old imperial city and dealt a blow at her ascendancy over men's minds. Not indeed that he treated her with any mark to neglect. The round of shows and largessees went on as usual, the public granaries were filled, the circus was supplied with costly victims, and the proud paupers of the streets had little cause to grumble. The old religions of home-growth were guarded by the state with watchful care and screened from the dangerous rivalry of the deeper sentiment or more exciting rituals of the East. In her streets he himself wore the toga, the citizen's traditional dress of state, required the senators to do the like, and so revived, for a time, decaying custom. But the provinces began to feel themselves more nearly on a level with the central city. Every year the doors of citizenship seemed to open wider as one after another of the towns was raised by special grace to the Latin or the Roman status. Each emperor had done his part toward the diffusion of the rights which had been the privilege of the capital in olden time, and Hadrian made them feel that he was ruling in the interests of all without distinction, since he spent his life in wandering through their midst and met their wants with liberal and impartial hand. They looked therefore less and less to Rome to set the tone and guide the fashions. The great towns of Alexandria and Antioch, the thriving marts of Asia Minor, were separate centers of influence and commerce, and Greece, meanwhile spectral and decayed as were her ancient cities, resumed her intellectual sway over men's minds. Students of all lands flocked to her university of culture in the tongue which her poets, philosophers and orators had spoken became henceforth without arrival the literary language of the world. The speech of Cicero and Virgil gradually lost its purity and power. Scholars disdained to pen their thoughts in it. In the sphere of law and justice another leveling influence had been at work which was carried further at this time. The civil law of Rome with its traditional usages and forms had long been seen by statesmen to need expansion in a liberal spirit before the courts could fairly deal with the suits of aliens, or with new cases wholly undefined. The praetors had for many years put out a statement of the principles by which they would be guided in dealing with the questions where the statute law would fail them, or press hardly on the suitors, and many of those rules and forms, though at first binding only for the year, had gradually crystallized into a system of ecstasy. It was again to progress when Salveus Julianus, an eminent jurist of the day, sifted and harmonized these floating principles and forms of justice, giving them a systematic shape under the name of Hadrian's Perpetual Edict. It was a great step toward the imperial codes of later days in which the currents of worldwide experience and Greek philosophy were mingled with the stream of purely Roman thought. floating principles and forms of justice, giving them a systematic shape under the name of Hadrian's perpetual edict. It was a great step toward the imperial codes of later days in which the currents of worldwide experience and Greek philosophy were mingled with the stream of purely Roman thought. The emperor was the sole legislator of the realm, the statutes were the expression of his personal will, but the great jurists who advised him in the council chamber came from countries far away and reflected in many forms the universal sense of justice. So far we have seen only the strength of Hadrian's character, to organize and drill the armies in a period of almost unbroken peace and give atone to discipline which lasted on long after he was gone, to study by personal intercourse the problems of government in every land, dealing with all races on the same broad level of impartial justice, to combine the rigid machinery and iron force of Roman rule with the finer graces of Hellenic culture. This was a policy which borrowed as it was perhaps from the old traditions of Augustus yet could be carried out only by an intellect of most unusual flexibility and force. For the work which was to be done upon so vast a scale, he had only limited resources. He dealt with it in a spirit which was at once liberal and thrifty, thus following in the steps of the wisest emperors who had gone before him. In the first year of his reign he had remitted the arrears due to the treasury to the amount of nine hundred million cesterces burning the bonds in Trajan's Forum as a public offering to his memory. The charities lately set on foot for the rearing of poor children were endowed by him with further bounties. We may still read the metals struck in honor of his largesse of money to the populace of Rome, repeated on seven distinct occasions. Prompt sucker was given with a kindly hand to the sufferers by fire and plague and earthquake in all parts of the widespread empire. But to meet such calls upon his purse, and to maintain the armies and the civil service, he felt the need of frugal ways and good finance. He revised the imperial budget with the skill of a trained accountant, held the details in his retentive memory, and would have no waste or peculation. Economy was the order of his household. No greedy favorites or freedmen grew fat and wanton at the treasury's expense. The purveyors of his table even found that they must be careful, for at his dinners of state he sensed sometimes to taste the dishes which were served to the humblest of his guests. But great as were Hadrian's talents, and consistent in the main, as was his policy as ruler, we are yet told of many a pettiness and strange caprice. If we try to study his real character it seems like the legendary Proteus to take every form by turns, and to pass from the brightest to the darkest moods by some inexplicable fantasy. One of the first things we read of him on his rise to power is his speech to an old enemy. Now you are safe, as if he could stoop no longer to the meanness of a personal quarrel. He will not listen to the advice of a trusty friend to sweep out of his path three men who might be dangerous rivals, but shortly afterwards Rome heard with horror that the most eminent of Trajan's generals, Cornelius Palma, the conqueror of Arabia, and Lucius Quietus, perhaps the ablest soldier of his day, with other men of special mark, had been suddenly struck down unheard without any forms of legal trial on the plea of traitorous plots against the emperor's life, resenting probably as a personal affront the surrender of the conquests which they had helped to win for Trajan, and despising the scholar prince whose great qualities were as yet unknown, they had made common cause, as it was said, with malcontents at Rome and joined in a widespread conspiracy. Hadrian indeed was in Dacia at the time and soon came back in haste, and with good reason seemingly, threw upon the praetorian prefect in the senate the burden of the dark deed that had been done, promising that henceforth no senator should be condemned except by the sentence of his peers. He kept his word till his reason lost its balance, but years afterwards the instinct of cruelty broke out in fearful earnest, when old age and sickness pressed him hard, and the reins of power were slipping from his hands. His fear of treachery proved fatal to his nearest intimates and kinsmen, to those who had secured his rise to empire or had shown their loyalty by the service of a lifetime. As we read the story in the poor chroniclers of a later age, the description of his personal habits is full of striking inconsistencies. He lived with the citizens of Rome as with his peers, and moved to and fro with little state, yet he was the first emperor to employ the services of knights for the menial offices of the palace filled hitherto by freedmen. He would hear no more of the charges of high treason so terrible and days gone by, he would have the courts of law to act without respect of persons, but he organized a system of espionage of a new and searching kind, and read the familiar correspondence of his friends, tweeting them even now and then with the reproaches of their wives meant only for the husband's ears. He loved art and literature sincerely, he liked to be surrounded with the men who studied them in earnest, but they thought at least that he took ombrage easily at any fancied rivalry and was full of jealousy and unworthy spite. It was dangerous to be too brilliant where the emperor wished to shine, and there were few departments of the fine arts in which he did not find himself at home. The scholar, favorinus, once was asked why he had given way so easily in a dispute upon a point of grammar when he was in the right, and he answered with good reason, it is not a prudent thing to call in question the learning of the master of thirty legions. The professors of repute, who moved his envy, found their pupils taken from them, or rival lecturers started to irritate and supplant them. Apollodorus, the great architect, was even more unlucky. Long ago in Trajan's company he had listened with impatience to the future emperor's critical remarks and had told him to paint pumpkins and not to meddle with design. Years afterwards when Hadrian sent him his own plans for the Temple of Aphrodite, which he wished to build, it was returned with the offensive comment that the statue of the goddess was made upon so large a scale that she could not stand upright in her own house. The critic paid with his life, we read, the penalty for his sharp words. Even the glory of the immortal dead stirred the jealousy of the artist prince, and he affected to prefer Cato to Cicero, Aeneas to Virgil, the obscure Antimacus to Homer. He was said to be jealous of the fame of Trajan, and therefore to attribute to his secret counsels the most unpopular of his own measures by way of indirectly blaming him. He would not have his own name put upon any of the public buildings which he raised, while yet he was ready to allow some twenty cities to take their title from him. It was a marked feature of his policy to be on good terms with the chieftains of the border races and to win their goodwill with ample presence, a dangerous precedent perhaps, for the tribute paid to barbarians by later rulers. But after receiving one of them at Rome with special honour, he treated with contempt the robes of state presented to him by his illustrious guest, dressing up in like a tire three hundred criminals whom he sent to fight as gladiators in the circus. CHAPTER III He was courteous and kindly to his friends, granting them readily the boons they asked, yet he listened with open ears to scandalous stories to their hurt, and few even of the most favoured, escaped at last without disgrace. Shrewd and hard-headed as he was, he believed in necromancy, magic and astrology, and after making much of keeping up the purity of the old national faith, he allowed the flattery of his people to canonise Antinous, the minion who won his love in later years. "'In fine,' says one of the oldest writers of his life, after reckoning up his fickle moods and varied graces, he was everything by turns, earnest and light-hearted, courteous and stern, bountiful and thrifty, frank and dissembling, wary and wanton. A very chameleon with changing colours. It seems as if he gathered up in his paradoxical and many-sided nature all the fair qualities and gross defects which singly characterised each of the earlier rulers. Yet we have grave reasons for mistrusting the accounts which reach us from such questionable sources as the poor biographies and epitomies of a much later age, which often betray a fatal want of judgement, while they reflect the credulous malevolence of rumour. Rome had no tender feelings for a ruler who seemed more at home in learned Athens or in the camp among the soldiers than in the old capital of fashion and of power. The idol-nopals doubtless were well pleased to repeat and colour the ill-natured stories which floated in the air and in the literary circles gathered round the prince there were sensitive and jealous spirits ready to resent a hasty word and think their merits unacknowledged, or to point a venomed epigram against the emperor's sorry taste. Hadrian was a master in the fence of words and could hit hard in repartees, as when a tippling poet wrote of him ingesting strain, I should not like to be a Caesar roaming through the wilds of Britain suffering from sithian frosts. He answered in the same meter, I should not like to be a florist, wandering among the taverns and keeping pothouse company. He may well have shown impatience at petty vanities and literary quarrels, or have amused himself at their expense with scant regard for ruffled pride. But if we pass, from words to facts, few definite charges can be brought against his dignity or justice as a prince. An enlightened patron of the arts he fostered learning with a liberal bounty, advancing to posts of trust, the scholars whose talents he had noticed, and knew how to turn their powers to practical account, as when Salveus Julianus began, probably by his direction, to compile a code of equity, or when he prompted Arian to compose his tactics and explore the line of border forts upon the Uxen, or when he bade Apollodorus to write his treatise on artillery, Polly Orchetica, the opening words of which, though written in exile, betray no personal resentment as of one suffering from a wanton wrong. With that exception, if it really was one, there is no clear case of harshness or of cruelty to stain his memory until his reason failed in the frenzy of his dying agony. To set against such rumours and suspicions, we have proofs enough in monumental evidence, and in the works which lived on after he was gone, of the greatness of the sovereign, who left abiding tokens of his energy strewn through all the lands of the vast empire, who kept his legions in good humor, though busy with unceasing drill, who stamped his influence for centuries upon the forms of military service, drew vast lines of fortresses and walls round undefended frontiers, reorganized departments of the civil service, and with all found leisurely enough and with the intellectual sympathies to appreciate and foster all the higher culture of the age. We may find perhaps a sort of symbol of his wide range of tastes in the arrangements of the villa and the gardens which he planned for himself in his old age at Tibor, Tivoli. No longer able with his failing strength to roam over the world, he thought of gathering in his own surroundings a sort of pictorial history of the genius of each race and the national monuments of every land. Artists travelled at his bidding and plied their tools and reproduced in marble and in bronze the memories of a lifetime and the works of all the ages. A great museum was laid out under the open sky bounded by a ring fence of some ten miles in circuit. Within it the old historic names were heard again, but in strange fellowship, as the most diverse periods of art and thought joined hands, as it were, to suit the Emperor's fancy. The parks and avenues were peopled with statues which seemed to have just left the hands of Phidias or Polycletus or many an artist of renown. There was the academy linked in memory forever to the name of Plato. There the Lyceum where his scholar and his rival lectured, and the porch which gave its name to the doctors of the Stoic Creed, and the Pretenium or Guildhall, the center of the civic life of Athens. Not far away were imaged forth in mimic forms the cool retreats of Tempe, while the waters of a neighbouring valley bore the votaries along to what seemed the temple of Serapis at Canopus. Not content with the solid realities of earth, he found room also for the shadowy forms of the unseen world. The scenes of Hades were portrayed as borrowed from the poet's fancy or as represented in dramatic shapes in the Illusinean mysteries. In the settings of these pictures a large eclectic taste gave itself free liberty of choice. The arts of Greece, of Egypt, and of Asia yielded up their stores at the bidding of a connoisseur who saw an interest or a beauty in the mall. The famous gardens are now a wilderness of ruins, full of weird suggestions of the past, over which a teeming nature has flung her luxuriant festoons to deck the fairyland of fancy. But they have served for centuries as a mine which the curious might explore, and the art galleries of Europe owe many of their bronzes, marbles, and mosaics to the industry and art once summoned to adorn Hadrian's panorama of the history of civilized progress. Among these the various statues of Antinous are of most interest, partly as they show the method of ideal treatment than in vogue, and the amount of creative power which still remained, but partly also as the symptoms of the infatuation of a prince who could find no worthier subjects for the artists of his day than the sensuous beauty of a Bithynian shepherd. At this time indeed his finest faculties of mind were failing, and his death was drawing nigh. He was seized by a painful and hopeless malady, and it was time to think of choosing his successor. But at first he could not bear the thought of any one preparing to step into his place, and his jealousy was fatal to the men who were pointed out by natural claims or by the people's favour. After a time he singled out a certain Elias Varys, who had showy accomplishments, a graceful carriage and an air of culture and refinement, but he was thought to be a sensual, selfish trifler, with little trace of the manly hardy-hood of Hadrian in his best days, and few eyes save the emperors could see his merits. The world was spared the chances of a possible Nero in the future. The emperor himself soon found, to use his own words, that he was leaning on a tottering wall, and that the great sums spent in donatives to the soldiers upon the adoption of the new-made Caesar were a pure loss to his treasury. The young man's health was failing rapidly. He had not even the strength to make his complementary speech before the Senate, and the dose which he took to stimulate his nerves was too potent for his feeble system, and hurried the weakling to the grave before he had time to mount the throne. Once more the old embarrassment of choice recurred, but this time with a happier issue. By a lucky accident one day we read the emperor's eye fell on Titus Aurelius Antoninus as he came into the Senate House, supporting the weakness of his aged father-in-law with his strong arm. He had passed with unstained honor through the round of the offices of State, had taken rank in the Council Chamber of the Prince, where his voice was always raised in the interest of mercy. All knew his worth, and gladly hailed the choice when the emperor's mantle fell upon his shoulders. The formal act of adoption once completed they could wait now with lighter hearts till the last scenes of Hadrian's life were over. The Prince's son was setting fast in lurid cloud. He's was tightening its hold upon him and bringing with it a lingering agony of torment in which his strong reason wholly lost its balance and gave way to the fitful moods of a delirious frenzy. Now he was preyed to wild suspicions and was haunted by a menia for bloodshed. Now he tried to obtain relief by magic arts and incantations, and at last in his supreme despair he resolved to die. But his physician would not give him the fatal potion which he called for, his servants shrank in terror from the thought of dealing the blow which would rid him of his pains and stole out of his grasp the dagger which he tried to use. In vain he begged them to cut short his sufferings in mercy. The filial piety of Antoninus watched over his bedside and stayed his hand when it was raised to strike himself as he had already hid from his sight the object of his murderous suspicions. But the memory of Sarianus whom he had slain but lately haunted in nightmare shapes the conscience of the stricken sufferer with the words which the victim uttered at the last. I am to die though innocent, may the gods give to Hadrian the wish to die without the power. He had also lucid intervals when his thoughts were busy upon the world unknown beyond the grave and the scenes that were pictured for him in the gardens of his favorite house of Tivoli. Even on his deathbed he could feel the poet's love for tuneful phrase and the verses are still left to us which were addressed by him to his soul, which pale and cold and naked would soon have to make its way to regions all unknown with none of its willum and gaiety. Animola, wagula, blandula, hospes, comesques, corporeis, qu'on nunca bibis inloca, palidula, rigida, nudula, necut soles dabbis yocos. The end came at last at bayae. The body was not brought in state to Rome for the capital had long been weary of its ruler. It foregot the justice of his earlier years and the breadth of his imperial aims, and could not shake off the sense of terror of his moribund cruelty and frenzy. The senators were minded even to proscribe his memory in annull his acts and to refuse him the divine honors which had been given with such an easy grace to men of far less worth. They yielded with reluctance to the prayers of Antoninus and dropped an official veil over the memories of the last few months, influenced partly by their joy at finding that the victims whom they had mourned were living still, but far more out of respect for the present emperor than the past. Was it popular caprice or a higher tone of public feeling owing to which Rome which had borne with caligula and regretted Nero could not pardon the last morbid excesses of a ruler who for one and twenty years had given the world the blessings of security and justice? Though Hadrian cared little for state parade in life, he wished to be lodged royally in death. The mausoleum of Augustus was already full. He resolved therefore to build a worthy resting place for himself and for the Caesar's yet to come. A stately bridge across the Tiber in the neighborhood of the compass marshes decked with a row of statues on each side was made to serve as a road of state to lead to the great tower in which his ashes were to lie. Above the tower stood out to view the groups of statuary whose beauty moved the wonder of the travelers of later days. Within was a sepulchral chamber in a niche of which was stored the urn which contained all that the flames had left of Hadrian. The tower was built of masonry almost as solid as the giant piles of Egypt, and with the bridge it has outlived the wreck of ages. For almost a century it served only to enshrine the dust of emperors, but afterwards it was used for other ends and became a fortress, a papal residence, a prison. When the Goths were storming Rome the tide of war rolled up against the mausoleum and when all else failed the statues which adorned it were torn from their pedestals by the besieged and flung down upon their enemies below. Some few were found long centuries after, almost unhurt among the ruins and may still be seen in the great galleries of Europe. The works of art have disappeared with the gates of bronze and with the lining of rich marble which covered it within, and after ages have done little to it saved to replace the triumphal statue of the builder with the figure of the Archangel Michael whom a pope saw in his vision sheathing his sword and token that the plague was stayed above the old tower that has since been called the Castle of Sant'Angelo. The policy of Hadrian was one of peace. Through all his wide dominions a generation had grown up which scarcely knew the crash of war. One race only the Jewish would not rest but rose again in fierce revolt. The hopes of the nation had seemingly been crushed forever by the harsh hand of Titus. The generals of Trajan pitilessly stifled its vindictive passion that had burst out afresh in Africa and Cyprus. It had seen in Palestine the iron force of Roman discipline and the outcasts in every land had learned how enormous was the empire and how irresistible its power. Yet strange to say they flung themselves once more in blind fury on their masters and refused to despair or to submit. They could not bear to think that colonists were planted among the ruins of their holy city, that heathen temples should be built in spots so full to them of sacred memories, or that the old sound of Jerusalem should be displaced in favor of the motley combination of Iliacapatulina to which both the emperor and the chief god of Rome lent each their quota. They nursed their wrath till Hadrian's back was turned and the bulk of the legions far away, then at last the fire blazed out again and wrapped all Palestine in flames. A would-be messiah showed himself among them, taking the title of Bar Kokpa after the star whose rising they had waited for so long. The multitudes flocked eagerly around his banner and Akiba the great rabbi lent him the sanction of his venerated name. The patriot armies needed weapons, but the Jewish smiths had bungled purposely in working for the Roman soldiers that the cast-off arms might be left upon their hands. The dismantled fortresses were speedily rebuilt, the walls which Titus ruined rose afresh, and secret passages in galleries were constructed under the strongholds that the garrisons might find ingress and egress as they pleased. They could not meet the legions in the field, but tried to distract their energy by multitudinous warfare. The revolt, despised at first, soon grew to such a height as to call for the best general of the empire and all the discipline of her armies. Julius Sueris was brought from distant Britain to drive the fanatics to bay and to crush them with his overwhelming forces. One stronghold after another fell though stubbornly defended till the fiercest of the zealots entrenched themselves in despair at Bitar and yielded only to the last extremities of famine. The war was closed after untold misery and bloodshed, and even the official bulletins avowed in their ominous change of style how great was the loss of Roman life. All that had been left of the holy city of the Jews was swept away and local memories were quite effaced. New settlers took the place of the old people, statues of the emperor marked the site where the old temple stood, and the spots dear to Christian pilgrims were befouled and hid away from sight by a building raised in honor of mere carnal passion. The Jews might never wander more in the old city of their fathers. Once only in the year were they allowed on the anniversary of the destruction of their temple to stand awhile within the holy precincts and kiss a fragment of the venerable ruin, and mourn over the hopeless desolation of their land. Even this privilege says Jerome they dearly bought for a price was set by their masters on their tears as they had set their price of old upon the blood of Jesus. Chapter 4 Antoninus Pius A.D. 138-161 The ancient writer who tells us most of Antoninus twice compares him with the legendary Numa whose reign appears in the romance of early Roman history as the golden age of peace and equity when men lived nearest in communion with heaven. As in that dreamland of old and fancy the outlines are all faint and indistinct from want of stirring adventure or excitement, so now it might seem as if the happiness of the world were too complete to let it care either to make history or to write it. For the new sovereign was no trajan, happiest when on the march and proud of his prowess in the field, he was not brilliant and versatile like Hadrian, bent on exploring every land and person and exhausting all the experience of his age. His life as emperor was passionless and uneventful, and history, weary of unbroken eulogy, has soon dropped her curtain upon the government of a prince who shunned parade and high ambition and was content to secure the welfare of his people. To describe him the popular fans he chose the name of Pius as Virgil called the hero of his epic, though not perhaps with the same shade of meaning. The Romans meant by piety the scrupulous conscience and the loving heart which are careless of no claims upon them and leave no task of duty unfulfilled. They used it for the reverence for the unseen world and the mystic fervor of devotion, but often or far, for the quiet, unobtrusive virtues of brother, child or friend. In the case of Antoninus, other reasons were not wanting to justify the title, but above all, it seemed a fitting name for the tenderness with which he watched over Hadrian's bed of sickness, refusing to let him cut short his pains and his despair, or stain his memory with the blood of guiltless victims, and when death came at last to the sufferer's relief, he would not rest till he rung from the unwilling Senate the vote which raised the departed Emperor to the rank of Godhead. But he had spent the same loving care, it seems, already on many of his kinsmen, had given loans on easy terms to friends and neighbors, and showed to all a gentle courtesy which never failed. A character so kindly could not look with unconcern upon the endowments of poor children which Trajan's charity had founded. He enlarged their number and called the girls whom he reared at his expense after the name of his own wife Faustina. But there was no weakness, no extravagance in his good nature. His household servants, the officials of the court who had counted perhaps on his indulgence, found to their surprise that his favor was no royal road to wealth. There was no golden harvest to be reaped from fees and perquisites and bribes in the service of a master, who had a word and ear for all who came to see him, but made no special favorites, and had a perfect horror of rich sinicures as a cruel tax upon the endurance of his people. Nor did he, like earlier monarchs, use his patronage to win the loyalty of more adherents. The offices of State in the old days of the Republic had passed rapidly from hand to hand to satisfy the ambition of the ruling classes. The first emperors gave the consulship for a few months only to please men's vanity with the unsubstantial honor, and rarely kept provincial governors long at the same post. But Antoninus had no love of change. He retained an office the ministers whom Hadrian had named, and seldom displaced the men who had proved their capacity to rule. In this he had chiefly the public interest in view, for he called his agents sharply to account if they were grasping or oppressive. He tried to lighten the burden of taxation and would not even travel abroad for fear that the cause of hospitality toward his train might be burdensome to the land through which it passed. Yet though the provincials never saw him in their midst, they felt the tokens of his watchful care. He was ready to grant an audience to every deputation. His ear was open to all the cries for succor or redress. He seemed quite familiar with the ways and means of all the country towns and with the chief expenses which they had to meet. Had any grave disaster from fire or earthquake scourged their neighborhood, the emperor was prompt with words of condolence and acts of grace. He was not ostentatious in his bounty, for he knew that to give freely to the favored he must take largely from the rest, and in the imperial budget of those times there was no wide margin for his personal pleasures. In earlier days indeed he had readily received the family estates bequeathed to him by the kinsmen who had prized his dutiful affection, but now he would take no legacy save from the childless and discourage the morbid whim of those who used his name to gratify some spleen against their natural heirs. The eagerness of fiscal agents and informers died away, and the dreaded name of treason was seldom if ever heard. It is natural to read that far and wide the provinces were prosperous and contented with the prince who ruled them quietly and firmly, who had no hankering after military laurels but like to say with skippio that he would rather save a single fellow countryman than slay a thousand of the enemy. But his reign was not one of unbroken peace, like that of fabled Numa. The Moors and the Britons and the untamed races of the Rhine and Danube tasked the skill and patience of his generals, and the Jews, even hopelessly crushed as they had seemed to be, flung themselves once more with ineffectual fury on the legions. But in the main the influence of Rome was spread by wise diplomacy rather than with the sword. The neighboring potentates saw Hadrian's machinery of war standing in strong and burnished trim upon their borders, and had no mind to try its force. While the gentle courtesies of Antoninus came with a better grace from one who could wield, if need be, such thunderbolts of battle. So kings and chieftains, one after another, sought his friendship. Some came to Rome from the Far East to do a monor. Kings at a word or sign stopped short in the career of their ambition, appealed to him to be umpire in their quarrels, or renounced the aims which threatened to cross his will. For in the interests of the empire he would not part with the reality of power, though he cared little for the show of glory. He grasped the substance but despised the shadow. This is well nigh all we read about the ruler. It is time to turn to the pictures of the man in the quiet of the home-circle, and in the simplicity of rural life. His family on the father's side had long resided at Namausus, Nîme, in the Romanized Proynchia, Provence. But he chose for his favorite resort in time of leisure his country seat at Loriam in Aturria. There he had passed the happy days of childhood, and though often called away to the dignities of office in which father and ancestor had gone before him, he had gladly returned thither as often as he could lay aside his cares. There too as emperor he retired from the business and bustle of the city, put off a while the purple robe of state, and dressed himself in the simple homespun of his native village. In that retreat no tedious ceremonies disturbed his peace, no weariness of early greetings, no long debates in privy council or in judgment hall. But in their stead were the homely interests of the farm and vintage, varied only by a rustic merry-making or the pleasures of the chase. It was such a life as Curius or Cato lived of old, before the country was deserted for the towns, or slave-labour on the large estates took the place of native yeoman. Though the rude austerity of ancient manners was tempered by a genio-refinement which was no natural growth upon the soil of Italy. In the memoirs of his adopted son who was one day to succeed him we find a pleasant picture of the surroundings of the prince, of the easy tone and unaffected gaiety of the intercourse in his home circle, where all the etiquette of courts was laid aside and every neighbor found a hearty welcome. The emperor stood little on his dignity and could wave easily enough the claims of rank, could take in good part a friendly jest or even at times a rude retort. In the house of an acquaintance he was one day looking at some porphyry columns which he fancied, and asking where his host had bought them, but was unceremoniously told that under a friend's roof a guest should know how to be both deaf and dumb in season. Such heirs disturbed him little, at times served only to amuse him, as when Apollonius came from Colchus to teach philosophy to the young Marcus at the invitation of the prince but declined to call upon him when he came to Rome saying that the pupil should wait upon the master, not the master on the pupil. Antoninus only laughed at his pretentiousness and said that it was easier seemingly to come all away from Colchus than to walk across the street at Rome. Long before when he was governor of Asia he had visited Smyrna in the course of a judicial circuit, he was quartered by the magistrates in the mansion of the Sophist Polymon who was away upon a journey at the time. At the dead of night the master of the house came home and knocked with impatience at the doors and would not be pacified till he had the place entirely to himself and had closed the doors upon his unbidden guest. The great man took the insult quietly enough and when years afterwards the Sophist came to Rome to show off his powers of eloquence the emperor welcomed him to court without any show of rancor at the past, only telling his own servants to be careful not to turn the door upon him when he called. And when an actor came with a complaint that Polymon, as stage director had dismissed him without warning from a company of players, he only asked what time it was when he was so abruptly turned away. Midday was the complainant's answer. He thrust me out at midnight, said the prince, and I lodged no appeal. It was the charm and merit of his character that he was so natural and all he said and did, in disliked conventional and affected manners. His young air was warm and tender-hearted and would not be comforted when he lost his tutor. The servants of the court quite shocked at what seemed an outburst of such vulgar grief urged him to consult his dignity and curb his feelings. But the emperor silenced them and said, Let the tears flow. Neither philosophy nor rank needs stifle the affections of the heart. Happily he was himself rewarded by the tenderness which he respected in its love for others. He had adopted his nephew long ago by Hadrian's wish, had married him to his own daughter, and watched his career with anxious care. The character thus formed under his eye was dutiful and loyal to the last. For many a year the young man was near him always, night and day, storing in his memory lessons of statecraft and experience, taking in his pliant temper the impression of the stronger will, and preparing to receive the burdens of state upon his shoulder when the old man was forced to lay them down. At length the time was come, and Antoninus felt that the end was near. He had only strength to say a few last words, to commend the empire in his daughter to the care of his successor, to bid his servants move into the chamber of his son the golden statuette of fortune which had stood always near his bed, and to give the watch word for the last time to the officer on guard before he passed away after three and twenty years of rule. The word he chose was equanimity, and it may serve as a fitting symbol for the calm and balanced temper which was gentle yet firm and homely yet with perfect dignity. History has dealt kindly with the good old man, for it has let his faults fall quite into the shade till they have passed away from memory and we know him only as the unselfish ruler who was rich at his accession, but told his wife that when he took the empire he must give up all besides, who preferred to repair the monuments of others rather than to build new ones of his own, and Prince, as he was, recurred fondly in his medals to the memories of the old republic. No great deeds are told of him save this perhaps the greatest, that he secured the love and happiness of those he ruled. CHAPTER V Plato had written long ago that there could be no perfect government on earth till philosophy was seated on the throne. The fancy was to be realized at last in the person of the second of the Antonines, for the whole civilized world was in the hands of one who in the search for truth had sat at the feet of all the sages of his day and left no source of ancient wisdom unexplored. Marcus Aeneas Varus, for such was the name he bore at first, came of a family which had long been settled in the south of Spain and thence summoned to the capital to fill the highest offices of state. Left fatherless in infancy he had been tenderly cared for by his grandfather and early caught the fancy of the Emperor Hadrian, who because of the frank candor of his childish ways called him playfully Varisimus, a name which he liked well enough in later years to have it put even at times upon the coins struck in his mince. At the early age of eight he was promoted to a place among the Salii, the priests of Mars, recruited commonly from the oldest of the patrician families at Rome. With them he learned to make the stated round in public through the city with the shields which fell of yore from heaven, to join in the old dances and the venerable litany, to which among much that had almost lost its meaning to their ears new lines were added now and then in the honor of the rulers lately deified. When they flung their flowers together on the statue of the God, his was the only garland which lighted on the sacred head, and young as he was he took the lead of all the rest, and knew by heart all the hymns to be recited. He grew a pace in the sunshine of court favor, and no pains were spared at home meantime to fit him for high station, for the greatest of the teachers of his day took part in his instruction. Of these fronto was one of the most famous. By a lucky accident not many years ago the letters which passed between him and his young pupil were found in an old manuscript over the fading characters of which another work had been written at a later date, in accordance with a custom which has saved for us many a pious homily at the expense of classic lore. There is much of pedantry and affectation in the style, and professor of rhetoric as fronto was he could not teach his young charge how to write with dignity or grace. Yet if we look below the poor conceits of form and still dediction we shall find the gush of warm affections welling up to give a beauty to the boyish letters. There is a genuine ring about the endearing epithets which he lavishes upon his teacher, and a trustfulness with which he counts upon his sympathy and all his passing interests. He writes to him, of course, about his studies, how he is learning Greek and hopes one day to rival the most eloquent Hellenic authors, how he is so hard at work as to have made extracts in the course of a few days from sixty books at least, but playfully relieves his fears by telling him that some of the books were very short, and then among passages of pretentious criticism which make a sphere that he is growing a conceited bookworm, come others of a lighter vein which show that he has not lost his natural love of youthful pranks. One day he writes in glee to say how he frightened some shepherds on the road where he was riding, who took him and his friends for highway robbers for seeing how suspiciously they eyed him, he charged at full speed upon the flock and only scampered off again when they stood on their defence and began to bandy blows with crook and staff. But happily the lad had other masters who taught him something better than the quibbles and subtleties of rhetoric. Philosophy found him an apt pupil at a tender age and he soon caught up with eagerness and pushed even to excess the lessons of hardy-hood and self-control. He tried to put his principles to the test of practice, to live simply in the midst of luxury and licence, to content himself with frugal fare and to take the bare ground for his bed at night. At last it needed all his mother's gentle influence to curb the enthusiasm of his ascetic humor. The old professor, whom he loved so well, began to be jealous of such rival influence and begged him not to forsake the muses for austere guides, who cared little for the graces of fine language, but seemed to think it vain and worldly to dress well or write in a decent style. It was indeed no petty jealousy of a narrow heart, for the old man thought sincerely that rhetoric was the queen of all the sciences and arts and longed as he herceded on the throne. He wished to see his pupil famous and could think of no opportunity so good as the one which imperial eloquence would have before it. To lecture his subjects on the duty of man, to award the meat of praise or blame, to animate to high endeavours and well-turned periods and graceful phrase, herein he thought, lay the greatness of the ruler's work, not in policy or law-making or the rough game of war. The interests of humanity therefore were at stake, not personal ambition only or the credit of his favourite study. He writes to say that he had already passed many a sleepless night in which he was haunted by the fear that he had culpably neglected to stimulate the progress of his pupil. He had not guarded carefully the purity of his growing taste, had led him turn to questionable models, but henceforth they should study the grand style together, eschew comedies and such meaner moods of thought and language and drink only at the sources which were undefiled. But the earnest scholar had outgrown his master and even then was full of serious thoughts about great questions of the misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised and was not to be moved to give them up for cannons of taste and rules of prosody. He gave in after years the Stoic Rusticus the credit of his conversion from letters to philosophy. It was he who made me feel how much I needed to reform and train my character. He warned me from the treacherous paths of sophistry, from formal speeches of parade which aim at nothing higher than applause. Thanks to him I am weaned from rhetoric and poetry, from affected elegance of style and can right now with simplicity. From him I have learned to concentrate my thoughts on serious study and not to be surprised into agreeing with all the random utterance of fluent speech. Other influences came in meantime to tempt his thoughts from graver themes. Honours and dignities pursued him more as he grew careless of their charms. Already at fifteen years of age he was made prefect of the city or first magistrate of Rome when the consuls were away to keep the Latin holidays. He was betrothed also to the daughter of Ilias Weris, who stood nearest to the imperial succession, and on his death two years later he was at the express wish of Hadrian adopted himself by Antoninus, who was raised into the vacant place and was soon to be left in undisputed power. In accordance with the Roman practice the young man called himself after the Aurelian family into which he passed and may be spoken of henceforward as Marcus Aurelius, the name by which history knows him best. It was a brilliant prospect that opened now before his eyes. All the priestly colleges were glad to welcome him among their members. Inscriptions in his honour which had been found even in far off Dacia show that the eyes of men were turned on the young Caesar, who already bore his part of the burdens of the empire. They soon learned it seems to love him and to hope fondly of his youthful promise. The popular fancy multiplied his portraits and an eyewitness speaks of the rude dobs and ill-carved statuettes which were everywhere exposed for sale and which in the shops and public taverns and over the tables of the money changers showed the well-known features of the universal favourite. But happily the incense of such flattery did not turn his head or cloud his judgment, rather it seemed to make him feel more deeply the responsibilities of high estate and to make him the more resolved to fill it worthily. The sirens of the court had tried on him the witchery of their wanton charms and the home life of Hadrian, which he shared a while, had brought him into somewhat questionable circles, but his mother watched him with her constant care and screened the purity of his growing manhood, a tender service for which he fondly thanks her memory in later years. Attracted by the high professions of the stoic creed, he sought the secret of a noble life from the great doctors of the porch, trusting with their help to find a sure guiding star of duty and the true measure of all earthly grandeur. Their principles indeed had sometimes been austere and hard, councils of perfection scarcely fitted for the frail and struggling, coldly disdainful of the weakness of our suffering manhood. But Marcus Aurelius was too generous and tender-hearted to nurse such a lonely pride of philosophic calm. He was vigorous in questioning his heart, but was stern only to himself. The man was not forgotten in the student. We may still read in the familiar letters which he wrote to his old friend and teacher about the pleasant days he spent in the country house at Lurium, how he dwells fondly on the infant graces of his children and watches with anxious care the course of every little ailment. He speaks often of his little nestlings, and forgets his graver thoughts while he is with them. "'The weather is bad, and I feel ill at ease,' he writes, "'but when my little girls are well, it seems that my pains are of slight moment, and the weather is quite fair.' Fronto enters readily enough into the same vein of homely sentiment, sends his loving greeting to the young princesses, kisses their fat little toes in tiny hands, and dwells complacently upon the simple happiness of the princess circle. I have seen your little ones,' he writes, "'and no sight could have been more charming to me, for they are so like you in face, that nothing could be more striking than the likeness. I was well rewarded for my pains in journeying to Lurium, for the slippery road and rough ascent, for I had two copies of yourself beside me, and both happily were strong a voice and had the look of health upon their faces. One held a morsel of fine white bread in his hands, such as a king's son might eat. The other, a hard black crust, fit for the child of a philosopher. In the pleasant prattle of their little voices I seem to recognize already the clear tones of your harmonious speech.' Fronto had learned, it seems, to jest at the austere studies of his former pupil, but he disliked them still as much as ever. Philosophy indeed was now a great moral force, and the chief teacher of the heathen world, but he could only think of it as the mere wrangling of pretentious quibblers, intent only on hair-splitting or offensive words, and with no power to guide the reason or to touch the heart. Prejudiced and one-sided as his criticism was, it had perhaps some value when he urged the future sovereign to remember the responsibilities of high estate and the difference between the purple of the Caesars and the coarse mantle of the Stoic Sages. He had also a powerful ally who did not fail to use her influence. Faustina, the mother of the little nestlings whom Fronto wrote about so often, was affectionate and tender as a wife, but had all the pride of birth and the fastidious refinement of the fashionable Roman circles. She had little liking doubtless for the uncourtly doctors of the porch, with their philosophic talk about equality and rights of manhood, grudged them their influence with her husband, and freely spent her woman's wit in petulant sally or in mocking jest. The Sages took it somewhat ill, misjudging her levity of manner, and saw only wantonness or vice in the frank gaiety of the Highborn Dame. Hence among the earnest thinkers or in literary circles, harsh sentiments began to spread about Faustina and stamped themselves perhaps in ugly memories on the page of formal history. Thus the years passed by in serious study and the cares of state, relieved by the tenderness of home affections, but history has no more details of interest to give us, till at length Antoninus closed his long reign of prosperous calm, leaving the throne to his adopted son, who was already partner in the tribunition power, the most expressive of the imperial honors. Marcus Aurelius might now have stood alone, without arrival, if he had harbored of vulgar ambition in his soul, but he but thought him of the claims else little heeded of Lucius Varus, who like himself had been adopted at Hadrian's wish by the late Emperor, and had grown up doubtless in the hopes of future greatness. He was raised also to the throne, and Rome saw now, in AD 161, for the first time two co-rulers share between them on an equal footing all the dignity of absolute power. Their accession was not greeted at the first by fair omens of prosperity and peace, such as the world had now enjoyed for many years. Soon the bright sky was overcast, and the lowering storms began to burst. First the tiber rose to an unprecedented height, till the flood spread over all the low grounds of the city, with fearful loss of property and life, and only retired at length to leave widespread ruin and famine in its track. Then came rumors of danger and of war in far-off lands. In Britain the troops were on the point of rising to assert their liberty of choice and to raise their general to the seat of empire, but their experienced and gallant leader would not be tempted to revolt, and the soldiers soon returned to their allegiance, while their favorite was recalled to do good service shortly in the east. On the northern borders also the native races were in arms, and broke in sudden onset through the Roman lines, and a soldier of Mark had to be sent to drive them back. But it was on the Euphrates that the danger seemed most pressing. They are the Parthians, long kept in check by the memory of Trajan's military prowess, and by the skillful policy of his successors, challenged once more the arms of Rome. Years ago they had taken offense, it seems, because a ruler had been chosen for the independent kingdom of Armenia, which had been the debatable ground for ages between the empires of the east and the west. For a while the war had been averted by fair words or watchful caution, but the storm burst at last at an unguarded moment, and swept over the borderlands with unresisted fury. Armenia fell into the invaders' hands almost without a blow. The city in which the Roman general stood at bay was taken by storm, a whole legion cut to pieces, and Syria was laid open to the conquerors who pressed on to ravage and to plunder. The danger was imminent enough to call for the presence of an emperor in the field, and in AD 162 Varys started for the east to rouse the soldiers' courage and organize the forces of defense. With him or before him went skilled advisors to direct the plan of the campaign, chief among whom was Awidius Cassius, a leader of ancient hardyhood in Valor. It was well for Roman honor that resolute men were in command, for the soldiers were demoralized by long years of peace. Sloth and self-indulgence in the Syrian cities had proved fatal to their discipline, and proflicate Antioch, above all with its ill-famed haunts of Daphne, had unnerved the vigor of their manhood. They cared little as we read that their horses were ill-groomed and their equipment out of gear, so long as their arms were light enough to be borne with ease and their saddles stuffed with down. Varys the general-in-chief was worthy of such troops. He was in no haste to reach the seat of war. Alarming as were the tidings which each fresh courier brought. He lingered in the south of Italy to enjoy the pleasures of the chase, and dallyed amid the aisles of Greece where all his interests seemed to center in the charms of music and of song. The attractions of the towns upon the coast of Asia tempted him often to halt upon the way, and when at last he came to Antioch he stooped so low as to treat for peace with the invader, and only resolved to prosecute the war in earnest, when the Parthians spurned the proffered terms. Even then he had no mind to take the field in person or risk the hazards of a soldier's life, but loitered far behind, safe in the rear of all the fighting, and gave himself up without reserve to frivolous gayities and sensual excess, till even indolent natives of the Syrian towns began to scoff, and courtly panagyrists found it hard to gloss over his slothful incapacity with their flattering phrases. But hardier troops were in the field meantime than the licentious garrison of Antioch. The armies of the distant frontiers sent their contingents to the east, and at least eight legions may be traced in the campaigns that followed, besides a multitude of auxiliary forces. Happily they're worst-guilful generals to handle them a right. Statious Priscus, the commander who had been put forward by his men against his will as a pretender to the throne, proved his loyalty once more by his successful march into Armenia, and the conquest of its capital, Artaxara, a woody Iscassius, meantime with the bulk of the Roman army, pushed on, direct towards Parthia, proved his valor and address in many a hard-fought battle, and drove back the beaten enemy at last beyond the walls of Seleucia and Tessophan. The humbled Parthians sued for peace and gained it at the price of the borderlands between the two great rivers. The fame of these achievements found an echo possibly in the far regions of the east of Asia, where no sound of western armies had hitherto been heard. The native chroniclers of China date the First Roman Embassy to the Celestial Empire, with its presence of tortoise-shell and ivory, from AD 166, the very year in which the war with Parthia closed. But the visitors, whether simply merchants or official envoys, entered China from the south, and not by the direct route through Central Asia, which, when they started, was doubtless barred to them by the movements of the armies in the field. END OF SECHTION X Five years had passed away in the course of the campaign, and whereas at length, unwillingly prepared to leave the scene of his soldier's glory but of his own shame. Once only at the urgent entreaties of his court had he moved to the front as far as the Euphrates. He had journeyed also to Ephesus to meet his bride Lucilla, for fear that Marcus Aurelius might come with her in person to see for himself the life which his son-in-law was leading. But his time was chiefly spent in listless dalliance and cyberidic ease, in which there was little else to mark the lapse of time except the recurring changes from his winter quarters to his summer palace. There was little in such a life to fire the fancy of poet laureate or courtly chronicler, yet if we read the letter which he wrote to frontot on the subject of the Parthian war we shall find that he expects the history on which the old professor was engaged to make his name illustrious to future ages. He promises that his generals shall forward their account of the battles and campaigns, with special memoirs on the nature of the country and the climate, and offers even to send some notes himself, so great is his desire for glory. But calmly, as the thing of course, he takes the credit of all the successes won by the valor of his captains, and begs the rhetorician to paint in striking colors that general dismay in Syria before the emperor arrived upon the scene to chain victory once more to the Roman eagles. The history which frontot wrote has not survived, but we may judge perhaps somewhat of its tone and of the author's willingness to cater for the vanity of his princely correspondent, when we read his pretentious eulogy of the struggle of generosity between the two co-rulers on the subject of the titles to be taken in honor of the successes in the east. Marcus Aurelius declined to be called Parthicus or Armoniacus in memory of a war in which he took no part, but Varus, not to be outdone in seeming modesty, would only accept the names on condition that he shared them with his colleague. "'To have pressed this point and won it,' says the courtier in his hyperbolic vein, "'is a greater thing than all the glories of the past campaigns. Many a stronghold like Artazata had fallen before the onset of thy conquering arms, but it was left for thy eloquence to storm in the resolute persistence of thy brother to refuse the proffered honors, a fortress more impregnable. Little is told us of what passed meantime during the five years in Italy where Marcus Aurelius ruled alone, and the scanty fragments of our knowledge come chiefly from monumental sources. The endowments for poor children, founded by the charity of recent emperors, were put under the charge of consular officials instead of simple knights, in token of the importance of the work, while on occasion of the imperial marriage which bound the princes by fresh ties, the claims of poverty were not forgotten. But fresh funds were set apart to rear more little ones, who were to bear probably the names of the two reigning houses as the earlier fondlings had been called after Trajan and Faustina. Another measure of this date seems to have been prompted by a tender interest for the material welfare of the people. Some four or five officials of high rank had been sent from Rome of late, with large powers of jurisdiction in the county courts of Italy. In the interest alike of central authority and local justice, rising as they did above the town councilors and magistrates of Burras. These Euridiki, as they were called, were now entrusted with the further duty of watching over the supplies of food and the regulation of the corn trade, for Italy was letting her lands pass out of culture and growing more dependent every year upon the mercy of the winds and the surplus of foreign harvests. An inscription found at Rimini informs us that the seven wards of the old city and all the corporations in it passed a public vote of thanks to one of these officials for his laborious exertions in behalf of themselves and all their neighbors in the hard times of famine. A third change breathes the same spirit of compassion for the helpless and the destitute. A praetor was specially commissioned to watch over the welfare of orphan children and to see that the guardians did not abuse their trust or neglect the interests of their wards. By a singular coincidence the first of the officials thus appointed became soon after a Euridicus in northern Italy and also won an honorary notice of the energy with which he met the crisis of a famine and brought to countless homes the emperor's thoughtful tenderness. A new provision was closely connected with these changes as well as with the needs of a well-ordered state. All births in Italy were to be registered henceforth in a public office within the space of thirty days, a necessary step if public or private charity were to try to cope with the spread of pauperism and despair. For the rest the emperor had no high ambition nor care to signalize himself by great achievements. He was content to let the Senate rule and treated it throughout with marked respect, being always present at its meetings when he could, and when business was pressing he sat off in times till nightfall. He never spared himself meantime but worked on with unremitting labor till his pale face and care-worn looks told all who loved him how serious was the strain upon his feeble powers of body and made his physicians warn him that he must give himself more rest or die. For he was anxious above all things to do justice promptly to his people, by himself or through his servants, and to have no arrears of work. With this view he added largely to the number of the days on which the law courts might be opened and sought the counsel and the active aid of the most enlightened men around him. His old master Junius Rusticus had to give up his learned leisure and take perforce to politics, to be counsel first, then prefect of the city, to show his old pupil by his own example how to turn the stoic maxims to practical account and prove that the leader of mankind must learn to govern others by first governing himself. But Marcus Aurelius had little leisure after this to study the arts of civil rule and peace, for unto war destiny required him to spend the best years of his life in an inglorious warfare with enemies unknown to fame. His was too gentle and sensitive in nature to feel at home among the armies, too large-minded to be dazzled by the vanity of fading laurels. The war was none of his own seeking, and he would gladly have purchased peace at any price save that of the honor or of the safety of his people. But the dangers were very imminent in grave, and could not everywhere be safely left to the care of generals of lower rank. The austere lessons of philosophy had taught him not to play the sophist with his conscience or to shirk distasteful offices when duty called. The Roman lines lay like a broad belt around the civilized world, and the trusty legionaries stood there on watch and ward. The wild tribes beyond had been long quiet, cowed seemingly by Trajan's martial energy and Hadrian's armaments of war. But now some passionate impulse seemed to pass like a fiery cross along the borders, and barbarous hordes came swarming up with fury to the attack and threatened to burst the barriers raised against them. The Parthians had been humbled for a time, but were soon to show themselves in arms once more. The Moors of Africa were on the move, and before long were sweeping over Spain with havoc and desolation in their track. The Caledonians of the Far West were irritated rather than frightened by the long lines of wall and dyke which had been built to shut them in, and their untamed fierceness was enough to make the Roman troops retire before the children of the mist. From the mouth of the Niester, to where the Rhine bears to the sea the waters of all its tributary rivers, a multitude of restless tribes with uncouth names and unknown antecedents, Teutonic, Slav, Finnish, and Tartar were roaming in hostile guise along the northern frontiers and ready to burst in at every unguarded point. It is time to enter more into details on the subject of these wars, to see in what spirit the meditative student faced the rough work of war and how far he showed the forethought of a ruler cast on evil times. We turn with natural interest to read of the fortunes of his arms in Britain, but there are only scanty data to reward our search. At the outset of this period, a new commander, Calpurnius Agricola by name, had been sent to meet the threatening rumors of arising among the native or the Roman forces. His name recalled the memory of the famous captain of an earlier age, whose career of glory in the island found in his kinsman Tacitus a chronicler of note. But there is no evidence that the efforts of the later general were crowned with like success. Seven years afterwards, at the least, he is mentioned in an inscription found near Hadrian's Wall. But there is no trace of any forward movement in the course of all these years, not a single monumental notice of a Roman soldier upon Scottish soil, though under Antoninus, an imperial legate, had pushed his way some eighty miles beyond the old ramparts of defence, and raised a second line of wall and dyke between the Clyde and the Firth of Forth to screen the conquered lands from the indomitable races of the north. Reinforcements had been brought, meantime, from countries far away. Five thousand horsemen came in one contingent from the lower Danube, where a friendly tribe had taken service in the pay of Rome, but they found their match in the hardy warriors of the Picts and Scots, before whom Sarmatian ferocity and Roman discipline combined could scarcely make head or even hold their ground. But formal history hardly danged to note their doings at this time, and the troubles of that distant province seemed insignificant enough, no doubt, to the imperial court. The dangers on another frontier were more threatening. The army of defence upon the Danube had been weakened to meet the pressure of the Parthian War, and the Marcomani and their neighbours, who were constantly on the alert, had taken advantage of the withdrawal of the legions and harried the undefended provinces with fire and sword. From the mouth of the Danube to the confines of Illyria the barbarian world was on the move, and all those elements of disorder, if allowed to gather undisturbed, might roll ere long as an avalanche of ruin on the south. There was no time to be lost in parrying this danger when peace was restored on the Euphrates. The acclamations of the city populace had hardly died away, or the pomp of the triumphal show faded from men's thoughts when both emperors resolved to start together to conduct their armies in the field. But in spite of the successes lately won, they were in no cheerful mood to open fresh campaigns. The tone of public sentiment was sadly low. The brooding fancy of the people drew presages of disaster and defeat for coming days from the misfortunes of the present. The effects of the famine were still felt in Italy, though years had passed since its ravages had first begun, and officers of state had been ready with their timely suckers. A yet more fatal visitant had stalked among them and spread a panic through the hearts of men. The soldiers who had come back from the east to take part in the reviews which graced the public triumph, or to return to their old quarters, brought with them the fatal seeds of plague, and spread them rapidly through all the countries of the west. The scourge passed on its desolating course from land to land. In the capital itself, numbers of honored victims fell, while deaths followed so fast upon each other that all the carriages available were needed for the transport of the plague stricken corpses through the streets. Stringent laws had to be passed to regulate the internment of the bodies and provisions made in the interest of the poorer classes for whom the state took up the task which slipped from their despairing hands. While men's hearts were thus failing them for fear and death was knocking at the door of every class without distinction, appeal was made to the ministrations of religion to soothe and reassure their troubled minds. Lekdisternia, as they were called, were solemnized, days of public mourning and humiliation set apart, and as if the old national deities were ineffectual to save, men turned in their bewilderment to the mystic rites of alien creeds, and drew near with offering and prayer to the altars of many an unknown god. The races of the North Mean Time who had learnt that the emperors were on the way, already hurried upon the border the tramp of the advancing legions, in their ardour for war was cooling fast in the presence of the forces of defense. Hartley had the princes arrived at Aquileia when the tidings came that their enemies had withdrawn beyond the river and were sending in hot haste envoys to sue for peace, bearing the heads of the counselors who had urged them to attack the Roman lines. So complete seemed the discouragement among them that the Quadi, who were at the time without a leader, asked to have a chieftain given them by Rome. Where as we read in the carelessness of his self-indulgent nature thought that the danger was quite over and was urgent to return, but it needed little foresight to discern that it was but a temporary lull in the fury of the storm and that only a stern and watchful front could maintain the ground which had been won. The meager annals of the period failed to tell us how long the emperors were in the field. We only hear that within two years of their return they were summoned from Rome once more in A.D. 169 by the news that the hollow truce was broken and their old enemies again in arms. They set out together as before for Aquileia where the armies were to be organised and drilled during the winter months to be ready for the spring when the campaign might open in earnest. But the plague whose ravages had never wholly ceased meantime broke out afresh with redoubled fury in the crowded camp and the death-rate mounted with alarming speed. The famous Galen was called in to try all that medical experience and skill could do, but as efforts failed to arrest the spread of pestilence or bring its victims back to health. In face of such fearful waste of life the plan of the war had to be changed. The camp was broken up without delay, the various battalions were dispersed in separate cantonments, and the emperors set forth on their return. They were not far upon the homeward way when at Altenham, wherece was struck down with a sudden attack from which he never rallied, and Marcus Aurelius was left to rule alone. Alone indeed he had often stood already. The colleague who was taken from him had helped him little with the cares of state, and there were few who could regret his loss. Unnerved by years of selfish luxury in the east, Wherece had come back with shattered body and with diseased mind to startle the sober citizens of Rome with freaks of disillude wantonness which recall the memory of Nero and the orgies of his house of gold. Marcus Aurelius was not blind to the luxury and extravagance of his ignoble nature. He had sent him to the east perhaps in hope that the braver manhood in him might be roused by the sobering contact of real cares. He had seen to his dismay that the careless whirlbling had come back with a motley train of actors, dancers, parasites and buffoons, to be the pastimes of his idle life, while in default of manlier pleasures he loved to have the poor gladiators in to fence and hack themselves before his eyes. Still the Emperor had borne calmly and patiently the vices of his colleague and even now that he was dead he proposed the usual vote of honours in the Senate, but he dropped some words perhaps unconsciously which betrayed to watchful ears that he had long chafed and fretted though in silence, and now was resolved to rule alone without the embarrassment of divided power. He might perhaps have been more careful had he known that rumour was busy with the death of Varys and pointing to foul play with which his own name was coupled, though indeed in all days of personal government scandalous gossip circulates about the court, and as an old biographer remarks no one can hope to rise above suspicion if the pure name of Marcus Aurelius was thus befouled. He had lost also a young son whom he loved fondly and mourned deeply, for the sages of the porch had never taught him as they did to others to disguise his feelings under a cloak of stoic calm, and the Senate's votes of honours and of statues were but a sorry comfort to the tender father. CHAPTER FIVE Marcus Aurelius Antoninus AD 147-180 PART III But he had little leisure for his grief, and the same year saw him once more on his way northward, to guide the plans and share the labours of the war. All through his reign that danger lasted, nor did he ever shirk the irksome duty but was constantly upon the scene of action and lived henceforth more on the frontier than at Rome. In default of full details in the ancient writers we may judge how arduous was the struggle by the evidence of the inscriptions. Of the thirty legions which made up the regular complement of the Roman army more than half took part in the Marcomonic War and have left repeated tokens of their presence in epitaphs or votive offerings. We may find the traces also of the irregular contingents which marched with them to the field from many a far-off province and its fringe of barbarous races and which though variously manned and armed, were welded into unity by the stern discipline of Rome, for she soon learned the lesson, since familiar to the world, to group distinct nationalities round a common center by a strong imperial system in which each helped in arms to keep the others down. As the war went on the emperor had recourse to far more questionable levies if what we read is true, enrolling exiles, gladiators, and even slaves in two new legions which he brought into the field. The work of recruiting went slowly forward and could scarcely supply the constant drain of war. The central provinces had long ago wearied a military service since Augustus raised his legions on the borderlands, and at Rome itself no volunteers would answer to the call, but the lazy rabble hooted as they saw the gladiators go and said in hotest pleasure, our gloomy prince would rob us even of our pleasures to make us turned philosophers. The pestilence was still abroad and spread its ravages among the ranks, clouding with discouragement all their hopes and efforts. They showed little courage in the field, sometimes they were driven back in panic fear. In one such route the fortress of Aquileia had nearly fallen, but the bravery of its garrison saved it from disaster. To make matters worse the treasury was empty, drained perhaps by the charitable outlay for the sufferers by plague and famine. The emperor drew upon his privy purse when that too failed, he stripped his palaces of their costly furniture, put up to auction the art treasures which Hadrian's fine-tasted gathered in the course of the journeys of a lifetime, and sold them all without reserve. While for himself he needed little more than the general's tent and the soldier's cloak. Brighter days set in at last to reward his persevering courage, though dangerous mean time had thickened in his path. The tribes of the Rhine and Danube had joined hands, forgetting for a while their mutual rivalries in the hope of carrying the Roman lines and one great simultaneous assault. Their women were stirred with patriotic ardor and fought and died beside their husbands. The rigor of the winter could not check them, for in time of frost we read they challenged the legionaries to mortal duel on the ice-bound river where the southerners dismayed at first, found a firm footing at the last by standing on their shields and closing in a death-grapple with a foe. In the ranks of Rome none showed more resolution than the emperor himself, none faced with a calmer or a stouter heart, the hardship of the wintry climate, the monotony of the life of camps or the horrors of the clash of war. At length he was rewarded by seeing the assailants sullenly retire before the firm front of his array, and the Danubian provinces were left a while undisturbed. Not content with resting on his laurels he set forth to chastise the Quadi and drive back the hostile tribes yet further from his borders. The hard winter had been followed by a hot and parching summer which made the labours of the march exhausting to the troops. In the midst of the campaign they were lured into a pass where the natives beset them on all sides. Worn out by heat and thirst and harassed by continual onsets they were on the point of breaking in disgraceful route when the scorching sun was covered and the rain burst in torrents from the clouds to cool and refresh the weary combatants. The enemy came swarming up once more to the attack, but they were met with pelting hail and lightning flashes and driven back in utter consternation to lay down their arms before the imperial forces. Dion Cassius who tells the story in the greatest detail accounts for the marvel by the magic incantations of an Egyptian in the army whose potent spells unlocked the windows of heaven and call to the rescue powers unseen. And in accordance with the legend we may see in the monumental column which portrays in sculptured forms the military story of this rain, a Jupiter pluvius of giant stature whose arms and hair seem dripping with the moisture which the Romans run to gather while the thunderbolts are falling fast meantime upon the hostile ranks. But Zephyllinus the Christian monk who abridged the historian's tedious chapters taxes his author roundly with inventing a lying tale to support the credit of the heathen gods. His pious fancy, dwells upon a miracle of grace, vouchsafed in answer to the Christian prayers of a battalion come from Militini in AD 174 in the East of Asia which was called thenceforth the Thundering Legion in token of the prodigy wrought by their Ministry of Intercession. The Fathers of the Church took kindly to the story and pointed the moral with becoming fervor. But the 12th Legion which had indeed been sent long since from the siege of Jerusalem to Militini to defend the line of the Euphrates had borne in earlier days the name not of Fulmanans indeed but Fulmanata and so appears on an inscription which was written as early as the time of Nero. There was now a prospect of at least a breeding space in the long struggle with the races of the north. The humbled tribes consented to give back the captives swept away in border forays. The human spoil to be surrendered by the Quadi reached the tale of fifty thousand and a neighboring race which had resisted with desperate valor restored we are told twice that number when the war was closed. Some hordes of the Marcomani consented to abandon their old homes and were quartered in the country near Ravenna. But before long they tired of the dullness of inglorious peace and took once more to butchery and rapine till Italy sadly rude the fatal experiment which future emperors were one day to copy. The emperor was still busy with the arrears of work which the war had brought with it in its train when the alarming news arrived that a governor in the east had raised the banner of revolt and seemed likely to carry with him the whole province as well as the legions under his command. Awidius Cassius had one distinction in the Parthian campaigns and to his skill and energy the successes of war were largely due while the general-in-chief was lounging at ease in the haunts of Syrian luxury. He had been chosen at the first as a commander of the good old type to tighten the bands of discipline among the disillute soldiers who were more formidable to quiet citizens than to the foe. He soon checked, with an unsparing hand the spread of luxury and self-indulgence, let them stroll no more at will in the licentious precincts of Daphne or in like scenes of riot but kept them to hard fare and steady drill, threatening to make them winter in the open field till he had them perfectly in hand. Before long a new spirit of hardyhood and valor spread among the ranks till the army going forward with their leader in the path of glory proved itself worthy of the ancient memories of Rome. Yet wear aside with jealousy the talents which eclipsed his own was stung by words or looks of sarcasm which fell sometimes from the hardy soldier or perhaps divine the latent germs of the ambition which was one day to make a rebel of the loyal warrior. He warned his brother emperor to be upon his guard and urged him even to dismiss the general from his post before his influence with the army grew too potent. The answer of Marcus Aurelius is recorded and throws an interesting light on his pure unselfish nature. I have read he writes the letter in which who give utterance to fears they'll be coming an emperor or a government like ours. If it is the will of heaven that Cassius should mount the throne, resistance on our part is idle. Your own forefather used to say that no prince can kill his own successor. If it is not written in the book of destiny that he shall reign, disloyal efforts on his part will be followed by his fall. Why then deprive ourselves on mere suspicion of a good general whose services are needful to the state? His death, you say, would secure the prospects of my children? Nay, but it will be time for the sons of Marcus Aurelius to die when Cassius is able more than they to win the love and further the happiness of our people. Nor were these mere idle phrases, for Cassius was retained in command of Syria and the border armies, and treated with an undiminished confidence, which he repaid by quelling a revolt in Egypt and by victories in Arabia. But the man of action seems to have despised the scholar prince as a mere bookworm, fitter to take part in verbal quibbles than in cares of state, to have thought him too easy tempered and indulgent, to keep strict watch over his servants and check their navery and greed. In a letter to his son-in-law, which is still preserved, he dwells on such abuses how truly we have no means of knowing. Marcus is a very worthy man. But in his wish to be thought merciful, he bears with those of whose character he thinks but ill. Where is Cato the old kensor? Where are the strict rules of ancient times? They are vanished long ago, and no one dreams of reviving them again. For our prince spends his time in stargazing, in fine talk about the elements and the human soul, in questions of justice and of honor, but neglects the interests of state meanwhile. There is need to draw the sword, to prune and lop away with energy before the common wealth can be put upon its former footing. As for the governors of the provinces, if governors they can be called, who think that offices of state are given them, that they may live at ease and make their fortunes, was not a praetorian prefect only the other day as starveling mendigent, rich as he is now? Let them enjoy their wealth and take their pleasure while they can, for if heaven smiles upon my cause, they shall fill the treasury with the riches they discourage. It would be hazardous to accept the views of a discontented rival in place of solid evidence upon this subject, but it is likely enough that the emperor may have been too tolerant and gentle to repress with needful promptitude the abuses of his servants. The machinery of government was perhaps out of gear, when the chief who applied the motive force was busy with a great war upon a distant frontier and glad to steal the moments of his leisure from the congenial studies of philosophy. Certainly if we may trust the stories gleaned by the writers of a later age, Awidius Cassius was not the man to err on the side of sentimental weakness. He had gained a name it seems among the soldiers for a severity near akin to cruelty, and invented startling forms of punishment for marauders and deserters, crucifying some in frightful torments and leaving others hamstrung by the way to be a living warning to the rest. He carried the sternness of his discipline so far as to hurry off to execution, the officers who had just returned in triumph from a border foray for which he had himself given no sanction. But we can put little trust in the talk of the day, for few cared to deal tenderly with the memory of an unsuccessful rebel. Probably it is only such an afterthought of history when we are told that he came of the family of Cassius the murderer of the great Caesar, and like his ancestor he hated the very name of Monarchy, deploring often that the imperial power could only be assailed by one who must be emperor himself. It is idle now upon such evidence as we possess, to speculate upon his motives or to say how far his personal ambition was disguised by larger and unselfish aims. Of Marcus Aurelius he seldom spoke at least in public, save in respectful tones, and only appealed to his partisans to rally round him when a false rumor of the prince's death was spread abroad in AD 175. The movement was short-lived, threatening as was its march at first. It spread through Syria without letter hindrance, and all beyond the torus was won by the usurper's arms. It seemed that there was no time to be lost, and the emperor was on his way to face the struggle in which an empire was at stake when the news came that Cassius was no more, having met an inglorious death by the hands of a petty officer of his own army, the victim of revenge more probably than loyal feeling. The emperor heard the tidings calmly, showed regret at the death of the pretender, and would sanction no vindictive measures, though Faustina, whom idle rumor has accused of urging Cassius to revolt, had written to him before in a tone of passionate resentment, praying him not to spare the traitor but to think of the safety of his children. He answered her with tenderness, chiding her gently for her revengeful language, and reminding her that mercy was the blessed prerogative of imperial power. He wrote, in a like spirit to the senate also, to let its members know that he would have no sentence of attainder passed on the wife or children of the fallen leader, and no prescription of his partisans. For himself he only wished that none had died already to rob him of his privilege of mercy, and now he was resolved that in that cause no more blood should flow. The senate read his words with gladness, were well pleased to drop the veil on the intrigues in which some of their own body were concerned, and carefully entered on their minutes all the dutiful phrases and ejaculations in which the counselors showed their thankfulness and admiration. The letters and dispatches of the rebel which were full probably of fatal evidence against his accomplices in the army or at Rome fell into the hands of the governor of Syria, or some said of the emperor himself, but were burnt without delay to relieve the fears of the survivors. The people of Antioch had sided eagerly with Cassius and used their wit in contemptuous jest against their prince, moving him to resent their disloyalty by forbidding for a while all public gatherings for business or pleasure. Soon however he relented and even visited the city when he passed by in his state progress to restore order to the troubled east. Now for the first time in his career could he set foot in those far-off regions and wander among the memories of ancient peoples. Before he left Rome as it would seem, he had the tribunition title conferred on Commodus, the son who was soon to take his place, and then more than a year was spent in the long journey. His wife Faustina died upon the way, AD 175, at a tiny village near the range of Taurus which was raised in honor of her to the dignity of a city and a colony. For the empress herself the senate passed at his request the solemn vote which raised her to the rank of the immortals, and one of the sculptures of his triumphal arch portrayed her as borne aloft to heaven by the guardian arms of fame. End of section 12