Great caused _his_ heir to be tried and sentenced to death, because he
was a sot, a liar, and a fool. He dared not intrust the interests of his
Empire to so unworthy a son; the welfare of Russia was more to him than
the interest of his family. In that respect this stern and iron man was
a greater prince than Marcus Aurelius; for the law of succession was not
established at Rome any more than in Russia. There was no danger of
civil war should the natural succession be set aside, as might happen in
the feudal monarchies of Europe. The Emperor of Rome could adopt or
elect his successor. It would have been wise for Aurelius to have
selected one of the ablest of his generals, or one of the wisest of his
senators, as Hadrian did, for so great and responsible a position,
rather than a wicked, cruel, dissolute son. But Commodus was the son of
Faustina also,--an intriguing and wicked woman, whose influence over her
husband was unfortunately great; and, what is common in this world, the
son was more like the mother than the father. (I think the wife of Eli
the high-priest must have been a bad woman.) All his teachings and
virtues were lost on such a reprobate. She, as an unscrupulous and
ambitious woman, had no idea of seeing her son supplanted in the
imperial dignity; and, like Catherine de'Medici and Agrippina, probably
she connived at and even encouraged the vices of her children, in order
more easily to bear rule. At any rate, the succession of Commodus to the
throne was the greatest calamity that could have happened. For five
reigns the Empire had enjoyed peace and prosperity; for five reigns the
tide of corruption had been stayed: but the flood of corruption swept
all barriers away with the accession of Commodus, and from that day the
decline of the Empire was rapid and fatal. Still, probably nothing could
have long arrested ruin. The Empire was doomed.
The other fact which obscured the glory of Marcus Aurelius as a
sovereign was his persecution of the Christians,--for which it is hard
to account, when the beneficent character of the emperor is considered.
His reign was signalized for an imperial persecution, in which Justin at
Rome, Polycarp at Smyrna, and Ponthinus at Lyons, suffered martyrdom. It
was not the first persecution. Under Nero the Christians had been
cruelly tortured, nor did the virtuous Trajan change the policy of the
government. Hadrian and Antoninus Pius permitted the laws to be enforced
against the Christians, and Marcus Aurelius saw no reason to alter them.
But to the mind of the Stoic on the throne, says Arnold, the Christians
were "philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, and morally
abominable." They were regarded as statesmen looked upon the Jesuits in
the reign of Louis XV., as we look upon the Mormons,--as dangerous to
free institutions. Moreover, the Christians were everywhere
misunderstood and misrepresented. It was impossible for Marcus Aurelius
to see the Christians except through a mist of prejudices. "Christianity
grew up in the Catacombs, not on the Palatine." In allowing the laws to
take their course against a body of men who were regarded with distrust
and aversion as enemies of the State, the Emperor was simply
unfortunate. So wise and good a man, perhaps, ought to have known the
Christians better; but, not knowing them, he cannot be stigmatized as a
cruel man. How different the fortunes of the Church had Aurelius been
the first Christian emperor instead of Constantine! Or, had his wife
Faustina known the Christians as well as Marcia the mistress of
Commodus, perhaps the persecution might not have happened,--and perhaps
it might. Earnest and sincere men have often proved intolerant when
their peculiar doctrines have been assailed,--like Athanasius and St.
Bernard. A Stoical philosopher was trained, like a doctor of the Jewish
Sandhedrim, in a certain intellectual pride.
The fame of Marcus Aurelius rests, as it has been said, on his
philosophical reflections, as his "Meditations" attest. This remarkable
book has come down to us, while most of the annals of the age have
perished; so that even Niebuhr confesses that he knows less of the reign
of Marcus Aurelius than of the early kings of Rome. Perhaps that is one
reason why Gibbon begins his history with later emperors. But the
"Meditations" of the good emperor survive, like the writings of
Epictetus, St. Augustine, and Thomas à Kempis: one of the few immortal
books,--immortal, in this case, not for artistic excellence, like the
writings of Thucydides and Tacitus, but for the loftiness of thoughts
alone; so precious that the saints of the Middle Ages secretly preserved
them as in accord with their own experiences. It is from these
"Meditations" that we derive our best knowledge of Marcus Aurelius. They
reveal the man,--and a man of sorrows, as the truly great are apt to be,
when brought in contact with a world of wickedness, as were Alfred
and Dante.
In these "Meditations" there is a striking resemblance to the discourses
of Epictetus, which alike reveal the lofty and yet sorrowful soul, and
are among the most valuable fragments which have come down from Pagan
antiquity; and this is remarkable, since Epictetus was a Phrygian slave,
of the lowest parentage. He belonged to the secretary and companion of
Nero, whose name was Epaphroditus, and who treated this poor Phrygian
with great cruelty. And yet, what is very singular, the master caused
the slave to be indoctrinated in the Stoical philosophy, on account of a
rare intelligence which commanded respect. He was finally manumitted,
but lived all his life in the deepest poverty, to which he attached no
more importance than Socrates did at Athens. In his miserable cottage he
had no other furniture than a straw pallet and an iron lamp, which last
somebody stole. His sole remark on the loss of the only property he
possessed was, that when the thief came again he would be disappointed
to find only an earthen lamp instead of an iron one. This earthen lamp
was subsequently purchased by a hero-worshipper for three thousand
drachmas ($150). Epictetus, much as he despised riches and display and
luxury and hypocrisy and pedantry and all phariseeism, living in the
depths of poverty, was yet admired by eminent men, among whom was the
Emperor Hadrian himself; and he found a disciple in Arrian, who was to
him what Xenophon was to Socrates, committing his precious thoughts to
writing; and these thoughts were to antiquity what the "Imitation of
Christ" was to the Middle Ages,--accepted by Christians as well as by
pagans, and even to-day regarded as one of the most beautiful treatises
on morals ever composed by man. The great peculiarity of the "Manual"
and the "Discourses" is the elevation of the soul over external evils,
the duty of resignation to whatever God sends, and the obligation to do
right because it is right. Epictetus did not go into the dreary
dialectics of the schools, but, like Socrates, confined himself to
practical life,--to the practice of virtue as the greatest good,--and
valued the joys of true intellectual independence. To him his mind was
his fortune, and he desired no better. We do not find in the stoicism of
the Phrygian slave the devout and lofty spiritualism of
Plato,--thirsting for God and immortality; it may be doubted whether he
believed in immortality at all: but he did recognize what is most noble
in human life,--the subservience of the passions to reason, the power of
endurance, patience, charity, and disinterested action. He did recognize
the necessity of divine aid in the struggles of life, the glory of
friendship, the tenderness of compassion, the power of sympathy. His
philosophy was human, and it was cheerful; since he did not believe in
misfortune, and exalted gentleness and philanthropy. Above everything,
he sought inward approval, not the praises of the world,--that happiness
which lies within one's self, in the absence of all ignoble fears, in
contentment, in that peace of the mind which can face poverty, disease,
exile, and death.
Such were the lofty views which, embodied in the discourses of
Epictetus, fell into the hands of Marcus Aurelius in the progress of his
education, and exercised such a great influence on his whole subsequent
life. The slave became the teacher of the emperor,--which it is
impossible to conceive of unless their souls were in harmony. As a
Stoic, the emperor would not be less on his throne than the slave in his
cottage. The trappings and pomps of imperial state became indifferent to
him, since they were external, and were of small moment compared with
that high spiritual life which he desired to lead. If poverty and pain
were nothing to Epictetus, so grandeur and power and luxury should be
nothing to him,--both alike being merely outward things, like the
clothes which cover a man. And the fewer the impediments in the march
after happiness and truth the better. Does a really great and
preoccupied man care what he wears? "A shocking bad hat" was perhaps as
indifferent to Gladstone as a dirty old cloak was to Socrates. I suppose
if a man is known to be brainless, it is necessary for him to wear a
disguise,--even as instinct prompts a frivolous and empty woman to put
on jewels. But who expects a person recognized as a philosopher to use
a mental crutch or wear a moral mask? Who expects an old man, compelling
attention by his wisdom, to dress like a dandy? It is out of place; it
is not even artistic,--it is ridiculous. That only is an evil which
shackles the soul. Aurelius aspired to its complete emancipation. Not
for the joys of a future heaven did he long, but for the realities and
certitudes of earth,--the placidity and harmony and peace of his soul,
so long as it was doomed to the trials and temptations of the world, and
a world, too, which he did not despise, but which he sought to benefit.
So, what was contentment in the slave became philanthropy in the
emperor. He would be a benefactor, not by building baths and theatres,
but by promoting peace, prosperity, and virtue. He would endure
cheerfully the fatigue of winter campaigns upon the frozen Danube, if
the Empire could be saved from violence. To extend its boundaries, like
Julius, he cared nothing; but to preserve what he had was a supreme
duty. His watchword was duty,--to himself, his country, and God. He
lived only for the happiness of his subjects. Benevolence became the law
of his life. Self-abnegation destroyed self-indulgence. For what was he
placed by Providence in the highest position in the world, except to
benefit the world? The happiness of one hundred and twenty millions was
greater than the joys of any individual existence. And what were any
pleasures which ended in vanity to the sublime placidity of an
emancipated soul? Stoicism, if it did not soar to God and immortality,
yet aspired to the freedom and triumph of what is most precious in man.
And it equally despised, with haughty scorn, those things which
corrupted and degraded this higher nature,--the glorious dignity of
unfettered intellect. The accidents of earth were nothing in his
eyes,--neither the purple of kings nor the rags of poverty. It was the
soul, in its transcendent dignity, which alone was to be preserved
and purified.
This was the exalted realism which appears in the "Meditations" of
Marcus Aurelius, and which he had learned from the inspirations of a
slave. Yet such was the inborn, almost supernatural, loftiness of
Aurelius, that, had he been the slave and Epictetus the emperor, the
same moral wisdom would have shone in the teachings and life of each;
for they both were God's witnesses of truth in an age of wickedness and
shame. It was He who chose them both, and sent them out as teachers of
righteousness,--the one from the humblest cottage, the other from the
most magnificent palace of the capital of the world. In station they
were immeasurably apart; in aim and similarity of ideas they were
kindred spirits,--one of the phenomena of the moral history of our race;
for the slave, in his physical degradation, had all the freedom and
grandeur of an aspiring soul, and the emperor, on his lofty throne, had
all the humility and simplicity of a peasant in the lowliest state of
poverty and suffering. Surely circumstances had nothing to do with this
marvellous exhibition. It was either the mind and soul triumphant over
and superior to all outward circumstances, or it was God imparting an
extraordinary moral power.
I believe it was the inscrutable design of the Supreme Governor of the
universe to show, perhaps, what lessons of moral wisdom could be taught
by men under the most diverse influences and under the greatest
contrasts of rank and power, and also to what heights the souls of both
slave and king could rise, with His aid, in the most corrupt period of
human history. Noah, Abraham, and Moses did not stand more isolated
amidst universal wickedness than did the Phrygian slave and the imperial
master of the world. And as the piety of Noah could not save the
antediluvian empires, as the faith of Abraham could not convert
idolatrous nations, as the wisdom of Moses could not prevent the
sensualism of emancipated slaves, so the lofty philosophy of Aurelius
could not save the Empire which he ruled. And yet the piety of Noah, the
faith of Abraham, the wisdom of Moses, and the stoicism of Aurelius have
proved alike a spiritual power,--the precious salt which was to preserve
humanity from the putrefaction of almost universal selfishness and vice,
until the new revelation should arouse the human soul to a more serious
contemplation of its immortal destiny.
The imperial "Meditations" are without art or arrangement,--a sort of
diary, valuable solely for their precious thoughts; not lofty soarings
in philosophical and religious contemplation, which tax the brain to
comprehend, like the thoughts of Pascal, but plain maxims for the daily
intercourse of life, showing great purity of character and extraordinary
natural piety, blended with pithy moral wisdom and a strong sense of
duty. "Men exist for each other: teach them or bear with them," said he.
"Benevolence is invincible, if it be not an affected smile." "When thou
risest in the morning unwillingly, say, 'I am rising to the work of a
human being; why, then, should I be dissatisfied if I am going to do the
things for which I was brought into the world?'" "Since it is possible
that thou mayest depart from this life this very moment, regulate every
act and thought accordingly (... for death hangs over thee whilst thou
livest), while it is in thy power to be good." "What has become of all
great and famous men, and all they desired and loved? They are smoke and
ashes, and a tale." "If thou findest in human life anything better than
justice, temperance, fortitude, turn to it with all thy soul; but if
thou findest anything else smaller (and of no value) than this, give
place to nothing else." "Men seek retreats for themselves,--houses in
the country, seashores, and mountains; but it is always in thy power to
retire within thyself, for nowhere does a man retire with more quiet or
freedom than into his own soul." Think of such sayings, written down in
his diary on the evenings of the very days of battle with the barbarians
on the Danube or in Hungarian marshes! Think of a man, O ye Napoleons,
ye conquerors, who can thus muse and meditate in his silent tent, and by
the light of his solitary lamp, after a day of carnage and of victory!
Think of such a man,--not master of a little barbaric island or a
half-established throne in a country no bigger than a small province,
but the supreme sovereign of a vast empire, at the time of its greatest
splendor and prosperity, with no mortal power to keep his will in
check,--nothing but the voice within him; nothing but the sense of duty;
nothing but the desire of promoting the happiness of others: and this
man a Pagan!
But the state of that Empire, with all its prosperity, needed such a man
to arise. If anything or anybody could save it, it was that succession
of good emperors of whom Marcus Aurelius was the last, in the latter
part of the second century. Let us glance, in closing, at the real
condition of the Empire at that time. I take leave of the man,--this
"laurelled hero and crowned philosopher," stretching out his hands to
the God he but dimly saw, and yet enunciating moral truths which for
wisdom have been surpassed only by the sacred writers of the Bible, to
whom the Almighty gave his special inspiration. I turn reluctantly from
him to the Empire he governed.
Gibbon says, in his immortal History, "If a man were called to fix the
period in the history of the world during which the condition of the
human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation,
name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of
Commodus."
This is the view that Gibbon takes of the prosperity of the old Roman
world under such princes as the Antonines. Niebuhr, however, a greater
critic, though not so great an artist, takes a different view; and both
are great authorities. If Gibbon meant simply that this period was the
happiest and most prosperous during the imperial reigns, he may not have
been far from the truth, according to his standpoint of what human
happiness consists in,--that external prosperity which was the blessing
of the Old Testament, and which Macaulay exalts as proudly as Gibbon
before him. There _was_ this external prosperity, so far as we know, and
we know but little aside from monuments and medals. Even Tacitus shrank
from writing contemporaneous history, and the period he could have
painted is to us dark, mysterious, and unknown. Still, it is generally
supposed and conceded that the Empire at this time was outwardly
splendid and prosperous. Certainly there was a period of peace, when no
wars troubled the State but those which were distant,--on the very
confines of the Empire, and that with rude barbarians, no more
formidable in the eyes of the luxurious citizens of the capital than a
revolt of the Sepoys to the eyes of the citizens of London, or Indian
raids among the Rocky Mountains to the eyes of the people of New York.
And there was the reign of law and order, a most grateful thing to those
who had read of the conspiracy of Catiline and the tumults of Clodius,
two hundred and fifty years before. And there was doubtless a
magnificent material civilization which promised to be eternal, and of
which every Roman was proud. There was a centralization of power in the
Eternal City such as had never been seen before and has never been seen
since,--a solid Empire so large that the Mediterranean, which it
enclosed, was a mere central lake, around the vast circuit of whose
shores were temples and palaces and villas of unspeakable beauty, and
where a busy population pursued unmolested its various trades. There was
commerce on every river which empties itself into this vast basin; there
were manufactures in every town, and there were agricultural skill and
abundance in every province. The plains of Egypt and Mesopotamia
rejoiced in the richest harvests of wheat; the hills of Syria and Gaul,
and Spain and Italy, were covered with grape-vines and olives. Italy
boasted of fifty kinds of wine, and Gaul produced the same vegetables
that are known at the present day. All kinds of fruit were plenty and
luscious in every province. There were game-preserves and fish-ponds and
groves. There were magnificent roads between all the great cities,--an
uninterrupted highway, mostly paved, from York to Jerusalem. The
productions of the East were consumed in the West, for ships whitened
the sea, bearing their precious gems, and ivory, and spices, and
perfumes, and silken fabrics, and carpets, and costly vessels of gold
and silver, and variegated marbles; and all the provinces of an empire
which extended fifteen hundred miles from north to south and three
thousand from east to west were dotted with cities, some of which almost
rivalled the imperial capital in size and magnificence. The little
island of Rhodes contained twenty-three thousand statues, and Antioch
had a street four miles in length, with double colonnades throughout its
whole extent. The temple of Ephesus covered as much ground as does the
cathedral of Cologne, and the library of Alexandria numbered seven
hundred thousand volumes. Rome, the proud metropolis, had a diameter of
eleven miles, and was forty-five miles in circuit, with a population,
according to Lipsius, larger than modern London. It had seventeen
thousand palaces, thirty theatres, nine thousand baths, and eleven
amphitheatres,--one of which could seat eighty-seven thousand
spectators. The gilding of the roof of the capitol cost fifteen millions
of our money. The palace of Nero was more extensive than Versailles. The
mausoleum of Hadrian became the most formidable fortress of Mediaeval
times. And then, what gold and silver vessels ornamented every palace,
what pictures and statues enriched every room, what costly and gilded
and carved furniture was the admiration of every guest, what rich
dresses decorated the women who supped at gorgeous tables of solid
silver, whose very sandals were ornamented with precious stones, and
whose necks were hung with priceless pearls and rubies and diamonds!
Paulina wore a pearl which, it is said, cost two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars of our money. All the masterpieces of antiquity were
collected in this centre of luxury and pride,--all those arts which made
Greece immortal, and which we can only copy. What vast structures,
ornamented with pillars and marble statues, were crowded together near
the Forum and Capitoline Hill! The museums of Italy contain to-day
twenty thousand specimens of ancient sculpture, which no modern artist
could improve. More than a million of dollars were paid for a single
picture for the imperial bed-chamber,--for painting was carried to as
great perfection as sculpture.
Such were the arts of the Pagan city, such the material civilization in
all the cities; and these cities were guarded by soldiers who were
trained to the utmost perfection of military discipline, and presided
over by governors as elegant, as polished, and as intelligent as the
courtiers of Louis XIV. The genius for war was only equalled by genius
for government. How well administered were all the provinces! The Romans
spread their laws, their language, and their institutions everywhere
without serious opposition. They were great civilizers, as the English
have been. "Law" became as great an idea as "glory;" and so perfect was
the mechanism of government that the happiness of the people was
scarcely affected by the character of the emperors. Jurisprudence, the
indigenous science of the Romans, is still studied and adopted for its
political wisdom.
Such was the civilization of the Roman world in the time of Marcus
Aurelius,--that external grandeur, that outward prosperity, to which
Gibbon points with such admiration and pride, and to which he ascribed
the highest happiness which the world has ever enjoyed. Far different,
probably, would have been the verdict of the good and contemplative
emperor who then ruled the civilized world, when he saw the luxury, the
pride, the sensuality, the selfishness, the irreligion, the worldliness,
which marked all classes; producing vices too horrible to be even
named, and undermining the moral health, and secretly and surely
preparing the way for approaching violence and ruin.
What, then, is the reverse of the picture which Gibbon admired? What
established facts have we as an offset to these gilded material glories?
What should be the true judgment of mankind as to this lauded period?