LIFE IN THE PALACE
There is much truth in the saying, “No man is a hero to his valet”--be
his reputed heroism either of the physical or the moral type. Humanity,
even at its best, is an imperfect thing, much in need of the kindly
haze which mostly veils its withered ruggedness; and many an angel of
sweetness and light reveals the serpent’s tail on too close inspection;
but I have no such revelation to offer in this chapter. Indeed, it is
in his intimate domestic life that Marcus appears to best advantage.
His presence in the palace brought with it a sense of restfulness, of
serenity and calm, of mutual forbearance and love. It was as if some
pale glimmer of the Christian love-light played about him and diffused
itself over all that came within the charmed round. His household
was known as the _Sacra Domus_--“the sacred house.” Thus the _Pax
Romana_--the peace that was the gift of the Antonines--though lost to
the Empire, was never interrupted in the Emperor’s home; and to Marcus
is due the credit.
All through life it was his lot to consort with persons having sadly
different views from his own on the meaning of existence, the value
of virtue; yet he was kind and sociable with all. In this he did but
follow the example of the gods: “They are not vexed because, during so
long a time, they must tolerate men, such as they are, and so many of
them bad; and besides this they also take care of them in all ways. But
thou, who art destined to end so soon, art thou wearied of enduring
the bad, and this, too, when thou art one of them?” This tolerance
towards the failings of others had its source in his peculiar gospel of
resignation:--or should we say, fatalism? “That is good for each thing
which the universal nature brings to each. And it is for its good at
the time when nature brings it. ‘The earth loves the shower,’ and ‘the
solemn æther loves,’ and the Universe loves to make whatever is about
to be. I say then to the Universe: ‘I love as thou lovest.’” In this
spirit he bore the trials of his domestic, as of his public, life; keen
griefs coming from without and from within; and the keenest of all for
one of his affectionate nature were those of his own household.
Apollonius had taught him “to be always the same in sharp pains, and on
the occasion of the loss of a child and in long illness.” He learnt
the theory of indifference to natural affection; but, fortunately,
never the practice. The severe light of Stoicism was softened and
suffused in passing through the medium of his gentle nature; he trusted
the reasons of the heart, more than those of the pure intellect. If
Stoic cosmopolitanism would have him care for men in inverse proportion
to their nearness to him, he must depart from type in this. To his
wife Faustina, to his children, to his tutor Fronto and to Fronto’s
children, especially “little Gratia,” he was genuinely devoted.
The correspondence with Fronto, if too effusive for our taste, yet
shows both in their best light. It is full of tender references to
the “little ones,” their joys and their ailments. Fronto writes to
the Emperor: “I have seen the little ones--the pleasantest sight of
my life; for they are as like yourself as could possibly be. It has
well repaid me for my journey over that slippery road and up those
steep rocks: for I behold you, not simply face to face before me,
but, more generously, whichever way I turned, to my right and to my
left. For the rest, I found them, Heaven be thanked, with healthy
cheeks and lusty voices. One was holding a slice of white bread,
like a king’s son; the other a crust of brown bread, as becomes the
offspring of a philosopher. I pray the gods to have both the sower and
the seed in their keeping, to watch over this field wherein the ears
of corn are so kindly alike. Ah! I heard, too, their pretty voices,
so sweet that in the childish prattle of one and the other I seemed
to be listening--yes! in that chirping of your pretty chickens--to
the limpid and harmonious notes of your own oratory. Take care! You
will find me growing independent having those I could love in your
place;--love, on the surety of my eyes and ears.” The Emperor replies
with equal affection: “I, too, have seen my little ones in your sight
of them: as also I saw yourself in reading your letter. It is that
charming letter which forces me to write thus.” Alas! Apollonius;
what has become of the Stoic ἀπάθεια which you inculcated with such
great pains? The spirit indeed was willing, but the flesh was weak;
and so the good Emperor cared more for the slender breath of life that
kept soul and body together in his little Annius Verus than for all
the sublime mysticity of the Weltseele--the world-soul of the Stoic
creed. All the sadder was the early death of his children, one after
another; one son alone being left to him--Commodus, his successor in
the Empire--assuredly not the fittest to survive. “Better that he had
never been born,” anyone had said, except he who had most right of
all to say it. But for Marcus, whatever was, was right; the gods, if
gods there were, determined all things, and they could do no wrong.
Commodus, bright, handsome, impulsive, wayward, fond of gladiators and
low life, found the teaching of Fronto and his father little to his
taste. He was more at home in the circus and the amphitheatre than
in the lecture-room; with the actors, the archers and the gladiators
and the “smart set,” which Faustina gathered round her, than with the
bearded and hooded sophists and rhetoricians who talked ἐγκράτεια
(self-restraint) and αὐτάρκεια (self-sufficiency) in the palace gardens.
Bitter as must have been his disappointment at his ill-success with
Commodus, there was another which thrust home deeper. Ill-fame had long
been gathering round the name of his wife Faustina--the most beautiful
woman in the Empire. One of her vivacious temperament, more Parisian
than Roman, was assuredly ill-mated with the Stoic Emperor, whose
days were spent in introspection; their union was “the great paradox
of the age.” She knew no law but the law of the senses: while he was
ever guided by the admirable but unamiable call of duty, cold as the
beckoning of a star, not soft and warm as the sunlight of devotion.
No modern belle of the season had more zest in the life of the moment
than she had; whilst he lived always in the shadow of the wings of
Death. “Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this
very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.” Every act
was to be done “with forethought, as if it were the last of thy life.”
Yet, different as they were, by a whole heaven’s breadth in character,
it is to the credit of both that they loved one another. The rumours
that assailed her name were probably in great part the exaggerations
of prurient gossips, though with sufficient foundation to make them
credible. Whatever their truth, the Emperor did not hearken to them.
Even when they became the property of the stage and he himself was
ridiculed in connexion with them, he paid no heed. In the first book of
the Meditations, written a few years before the death of Faustina, he
thanks the gods that he had such a wife, “so obedient, so affectionate,
so simple.” He, too, must have felt at times that Cæsar’s wife should
be above suspicion, but his kindly nature was ever disposed to take the
most charitable view of things, and he minded little the slanderous
tongues of men.
“Does a man gather figs from thistles, or grapes from thorns?”--this
was the keynote to his philosophy of life--a strange fatalist
philosophy it too often was; but it served to lay the gibbering
spectres that haunted the palace of the Cæsars. After all, Faustina,
associating with sailors and gladiators (even if the worst were true),
and Commodus, already giving free reign to his passions over all the
paths of license, were but acting in accordance with nature, “just as
the fruit trees” or the beasts of the forest. Thus, in the loneliness
of his spirit, would Aurelius reason, with an indulgence to the
shortcomings (or worse) of others, which we must condemn as weakness.
But perhaps it was owing to his tact and consideration that her untamed
restlessness carried her to no greater excesses, and that Pater’s
words are true, “the one thing quite certain about her, besides her
extraordinary beauty, is her sweetness to himself.”
One of his biographers, writing under the Emperor Diocletian, has this
pious reflection on the story: “Such is the force of daily life in a
good ruler, so great the power of his sanctity, gentleness, and piety,
that no breath of slander or invidious suggestion from an acquaintance
can avail to sully his memory. In short, to Antonine, immutable as the
heavens in the tenor of his own life, and in the manifestations of his
own moral temper, and who was not by possibility liable to any impulse
or movement of change, on any alien suggestion, it was not eventually
an injury that he was dishonoured by some of his connexions; on him,
invulnerable in his own character, neither a harlot for his wife, nor
a gladiator for his son, could inflict a wound. Then as now, O sacred
lord Diocletian! he was reputed a god; not as others are reputed but
specially and in a separate sense, and with a privilege to such worship
from all men as is addressed to his memory by yourself, who often
breathe a wish to heaven that you were or could be such in life and
merciful disposition as was Marcus Aurelius.”
We saw that even Marcus’ integrity could not shield his household from
the taint of scandal, ever mingling with the divinity that doth hedge
a king; yet the life of that household was of the simplest kind. The
Emperor’s tastes were mostly domestic--philosophy, the fine arts and
intercourse with the learned world around him. The palace was a museum
of all the curious and choice things of every land gathered together
by Hadrian and preceding Emperors; the precious and luxurious were
strewn all around in Oriental magnificence; but not for long. The
Emperor had learnt from Antoninus to be a king without the trappings;
and in his later life he set an example truly Platonic to all future
monarchs of private detachment for the sake of the public good. At that
time distress became universal; the treasury was exhausted; and yet
money was wanted for the wars in the North. In these circumstances, in
order to avoid all further taxation, Marcus put all the treasures of
his Roman palaces and country villas into the public market. Jewels,
pictures, furniture of rare workmanship; dinner-services of gold and
crystal; murrhine vases; the rich hangings and sumptuous apparel of
the imperial household, including even the wardrobe of silken robes,
interwoven with gold, which had been his wife’s before her death:
all these objects, made sacred by long use in the home of the divine
Cæsars, were put under the hammer and fetched fabulous prices. The
auction lasted two months. The _novi homines_--the Roman equivalent for
our _nouveaux riches_--were as keen as would be a group of Americans
at an auction of the Vatican contents. Thus the historic palace of the
Cæsars was despoiled; but Marcus was content while the neighbouring
library in the temple of Apollo remained intact, with Fronto and
Rusticus to come at morning and evening and walk with him amidst the
shrubberies of the Palatine discoursing on the great Greek schools
of Ionia, of Athens, and of Elea; of Democrites, of Plato, Zeno and
Pythagoras and his favourite Epictetus.
In his home, as in public, he was devoted to the old religious
practices. The _lararium_--or family shrine--contained statues of his
favourite gods, one of his own _Genius_ (or spiritual counterpart) and
those of his favourite philosophers and teachers. Here he would offer
the morning sacrifice with flowers and lights and incense, and beg the
favour of the gods for himself and for the Empire. There he would utter
a prayer for the wayward Commodus and Faustina, and for the courage to
persevere to the end on his own steep path. “Every morning I pray for
Faustina,” he writes; and again: “My mother’s illness leaves me not a
moment’s rest; and now Faustina’s confinement is approaching. Well,
we must trust in the gods.” In all this, how strange the mixture of
truth and falsehood; of crude superstition and a higher light breaking
through; of matter and spirit; perhaps even of nature and grace; for it
is hard not to see the special handiwork of God in these fair works of
the spirit world--who will set limits to His mercy and power? or who
will nicely disentangle the strands of that strange mesh-work, a human
soul? St. Clement of Alexandria and St. Augustine saw in those pagan
heroes those who were to prepare the way of the Lord and make straight
His paths. “Paganism saw at least the road from its hill-top,” said
Augustine. We too may say that they were not far from the Kingdom of
God.
Christo iam tum venienti,
Crede, parata via est.
“Believe me even then the path was made straight for Christ already on
His way.” So sang the Christian Prudentius; and we sing, Amen! Even so,
Lord Jesus.