Hadrian was married to the niece of Trajan, the daughter of his sister
Marciana; which was the cause of his election. Even if Plotina forged
the deed of Hadrian’s adoption by Trajan, she did no harm: at all
events, that the election was not contrary to the wishes of Trajan,
everything tends to prove. Of Hadrian it was said by those who came
after him, that it was uncertain whether he should be classed among the
good princes or the bad ones. He committed cruelties which cast a foul
stain on his memory; but, on the other hand, he did an immense deal of
good. But if we keep before us as an excuse for these cruelties, the
state of mind into which he was thrown by his last illness, there is
scarcely any other reign which was so beneficial to the Roman world as
his. No prince before him had looked upon himself as the emperor of the
whole Roman empire, but as the sovereign of Rome, or at most of Italy:
in the provinces, the care of the Cæsars extended only to military
affairs. This was in some measure the case even under Trajan.
Hadrian had properly speaking no war, or at most petty wars on the
frontiers: there were also some disturbances from the Moors; but these
were soon quelled. For the sake of preserving peace, he first of the
Roman emperors gave subsidies to the border nations. Of Trajan’s
conquests, he only kept Dacia; those which had been gained from the
Parthians, he abandoned. The twenty-two years of his reign were free
from any calamity worth mentioning. One of his first acts was to remit
900,000,000 sesterces (45,000,000 dollars) of arrears of taxes; whether
this was to his subjects directly, or to the publicans, has not been
made out. Much remains to be done for the history of the Roman financial
system; for that of the land-tax, Savigny has done a great deal, and
done it well.
Hadrian extended his benefits over all the countries of the Roman
empire: he travelled over the provinces, from the cataracts of Egypt to
the Scottish borders. There is not, perhaps, a province which he did not
visit.
The outbreak of the Jews in Cyprus and Cyrene, where great numbers of
them were settled, was a very fierce one. They had made an attempt
before; but now the struggle was carried on with unbridled fury by
Barkochba: the Jews fought with the greatest courage, though it was only
for vengeance, as they knew all the while that they should perish at
last. All that remained of that hapless nation in Palestine was
extirpated, with the exception of the Samaritans, and Jerusalem was
rebuilt as a military colony under the name of Ælia Capitolina, a name
which, remarkably enough, has been kept up to this day: the Arab writers
do not call the place Jerusalem, but either the Holy City or Ilia. No
Jew was allowed to come near it, not even so much as to get a sight of
Mount Moriah.
Whilst travelling through the provinces, Hadrian built everywhere great
works. In Britain he erected the wall against the Caledonians for the
protection of the province, which now already began to be Romanized,
though indeed the Gaelic and Cymric elements of the population were
likewise preserved. But above all, it was on Athens, which he
enthusiastically loved, as well as on Greece in general, that he
showered his benefits. He adorned Athens with works, the like of which
had not been wrought for the city since the times of Pericles; he
finished the Olympiëum, built a theatre and an entire new town, and even
had himself invested with the dignity of an _Archon Eponymus_. In the
last years of his life, he fell into a state of melancholy; and then, on
the one hand, he sought for aid to secure the succession of the empire,
and on the other, he gave way to sudden outbursts of anger and to
mistrust, and was thus led to put many persons to death. He was an enemy
to the Roman senate, which, however, in all likelihood was a set of
presumptuous, overbearing, disagreeable people, who besides were
enormously rich: it had now already come to pass, that in these wealthy
families the senatorial dignity was handed down as an inheritance from
father to son. Then it was that Hadrian first adopted a young man named
Ælius Verus, in whom, however, he was unaccountably mistaken. On this
occasion an immense _congiarium_ was given to the people. Most happily
for Rome, this unworthy fellow died a short time afterwards; on which
Hadrian chose T. Antoninus (Pius), whom he had already thought of
before, a grandson of Arrius Antoninus, the friend of Nerva, and an
altogether blameless man.
Among the remarkable features of Hadrian’s reign, is the foundation of
the system of Roman jurisprudence in its later form, the drawing up of
the _edictum perpetuum_, and the further development of the law by means
of imperial edicts. It is a new epoch in Roman jurisprudence; the
_responsa prudentum_, now that they were given in the name of the
emperor, acquired a real authority. The emperors had even since Augustus
had a sort of council of state; but Hadrian put the _consistorium
Principis_ on a surer footing: a regularly settled form that body never
had. The _præfectus prætorio_ henceforth is a lawyer and not a military
man, a strange combination in the manner of the East.
The decline of literature under Hadrian becomes yet more marked than it
had been under Trajan. The inscriptions are in a quite barbarous Latin,
the grammatical forms being utterly disregarded, and all the cases
jumbled together. I have seen at Rome an inscription of the time of
Hadrian, which is composed in a real _lingua rustica_. Just so, we have
in Egypt inscriptions, which pass for Greek, but are entirely barbarous.
Such inscriptions, although still to be met with in Italy only far and
between, are yet enough to show in what a state the population was even
then, the gaps which had been made in it by the civil wars, having been
filled up by myriads of slaves. A jargon was formed in the altogether
desolate parts of Italy, from whence it also spread to Rome; just what
happened in the case of the Wends, when about a hundred and fifty years
ago they were compelled to speak German. This is the _lingua rustica_,
or _vulgaris_, like that of the black slaves in the American colonies.
People of rank, no doubt, still spoke Latin; they learned it as the
English in the colonies do their own language, after having spoken when
children that of the Creoles. I do not doubt in the least that Pliny and
Tacitus, even if they knew a _lingua rustica_ at all, talked to each
other as they wrote. A language which is grown poor, as ours did after
the thirty years’ war,[49] tries to recruit itself from books and from
the earlier writers. The latter were therefore read for the sake of
their language; the older the style, the more valued was the writer.
Hence indeed it was that Plautus, Nævius, Ennius, whom people in
Seneca’s time still held in such contempt, were now read with so much
favour: the older the language, the purer it was deemed. This fondness
for them caused the most correct authors to be neglected; as for
instance, Cicero was for Cato and Gracchus. The contempt for the older
writers, certainly lasted from Virgil to the end of the first century of
our era. In like manner, not a very long while ago were Walther von der
Vogelweide and Zacharias Theobald extolled among us as models, the
former for poetry, the latter for historical writing. Hadrian, being
himself a lover of the _antiquitas_, contributed by his example to this
revival of the ancient literature; but he did much more in favour of
that of the Greeks. Greek had no doubt also kept itself more alive: in
Athens, the people in all likelihood did not yet speak at all
barbarously. There were very few Greek writers indeed, and Hadrian only
brought them out too much. To write Greek poetry got into fashion more
than it had ever been, and he gave pensions for it; as for instance, to
the lyric poet Mesomedes.
The taste for archæology and old-fashioned language called forth a
writer like Gellius, from whom we may learn much. He is somewhat later
than Pliny; his book must be dated from the reign of M. Antoninus. His
ignorance of his own age is quite inconceivable: he knows nothing about
Roman institutions, so that he also most ludicrously misunderstands the
ancients, being one of those who, to use Goethe’s words, “see the world
but on a holiday.” Yet he has not even the least knowledge of antiquity
itself, nor any notion of the law, or in fact of human life: thus for
instance, he has no idea of what a colony is, although there were
hundreds of them in his times. Hence his many mistakes, however
agreeable an author he may be otherwise. A man of the same stamp is
Fronto, the tutor of M. Antoninus: it is remarkable how he makes his
pupil read authors merely for the sake of their phrases, leading him to
hunt after words, as he calls it himself. Former rhetoricians had tried
to produce an effect by a subtle combination of thoughts; but now it was
to be done by out-of-the-way words and forms. Fronto’s hatred against
Seneca really arises from a feeling of being entirely incapable of such
refinement as his.
There were, however, some people besides, who combined both refinement
of thought and refinement of expression. Seceding from the Roman school,
they formed the African one, to which belonged Apuleius and Tertullian,
and which lasted to the middle of the third century, until the time of
Arnobius. This African school is most incorrectly spoken off as having
had quite a dialect of its own, the peculiarities of its diction are all
of them expressions of the most ancient Roman language, which it
collected and made use of. The same thing was about this time to a
certain extent the case with the Greeks; and this may then have given
rise to many a collection of glosses in Latin as well as in Greek: the
abuse of it is shown in the Lexiphanes of Lucian. Apuleius and
Tertullian, however, are men of the highest talent: Apuleius, who writes
in a remarkably lively style, is undoubtedly to be placed among the
first geniuses of his age. His Apology, in which the quaint expressions
are not so heaped together as in the Metamorphoses, shows with what
eloquence he could speak and write, so long as he did not strive to be
over-refined. Old words which were becoming obsolete, are here and there
to be met with even in Sallust and Tacitus, but very sparingly and
without abuse: the later writers sow them broadcast. How the African
school with all its peculiarities arose, is perhaps more than we can now
tell; yet Carthage was in the western world so decidedly the second city
after Rome, that one may easily understand, how in literature also it
stood in marked opposition to it: there was very much the same
difference which there is now between Paris and Geneva. In the
provincial towns, like Madaura, Hippo, and others, Punic was still
spoken; and thus it was that the change into the Arabic became so easy
in those parts. It is very likely that the present language of Tunis is
by no means Arabic in reality, but that it still contains much of the
Punic: many Latin elements are preserved in it; as for instance, the use
of the preposition _de_ to express the genitive.
Greek literature kept rising: the eastern world, owing to Hadrian’s
partiality, had not only got to a far greater height of literary wealth
and originality, but also of pride and vanity. Then arose the witty
Lucian, who indeed has been overrated for some time, but whom we should
by no means make light of. His pure Attic style calls forth our
admiration, as he certainly spoke nothing but Syriac until he had grown
up to be a young man. On the whole, all the eastern world at that time
went on cheerfully, whilst the West moved sluggishly: the East had
ceased to look upon itself as subdued, since the right of Roman
citizenship already extended over millions, every emperor conferring it
on new countries. In the days of the Antonines also lived Lucian, Galen,
Pausanias (who indeed is less ingenious, but very useful and important
for us), Aristides, that most disagreeable writer, and the whole school
of Greek rhetoricians who looked upon themselves as forming the second
grand era of eloquence. These wrote after the ancient models, but alas!
there is nothing in their works: whenever they have something to write
about, they show no want of talent. This is also the case with the Latin
writers. Apuleius shows talent wherever he has a subject, as in that
eccentric book, the Metamorphoses, and in his Apology; and so does
Tertullian, as for instance, when he writes against the theatre, having
a truth to deal with. On the other hand, Aristides’ declamation on the
battle of Leuctra is really insufferable. Tertullian should be read much
more generally by philologists, and so should the Fathers on the whole;
for this we have before us the bright example of such great men as
Scaliger, Hemsterhuys, Valckenaer, and others. We cannot thoroughly know
the history of those times, unless we study the writings of a Justin
Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Athenagoras.
There is no pile of building in earlier Rome more colossal than the
_moles Hadriani_, of which we know for certain that the tower with all
its inscriptions was still in existence in the middle ages: Procopius
tells us that the statue of the emperor was thrown down at the siege of
Rome by the Goths. The destroyer did his worst; but the huge masses are
yet standing, so that it is now the largest building which has been
left, and even in its shattered state it is still noble. Of Hadrian’s
villa, about two miles from Tibur, there remain to this day immense
ruins, which, notwithstanding their strange outlines, have kept their
extraordinary beauty: a great number of very fine statues have been dug
up there. Where the gardens were, some exotic plants have grown wild. Of
Hadrian as an author, we have nothing but a few verses, which are found
in his life by Spartianus; a doubtful epigram on his favourite horse
Borysthenes, (as for myself, I think it to be genuine;) and some Greek
verses. He has, however, written much poetry.
He was succeeded by T. Antoninus Pius, whom he would not have adopted,
had M. Aurelius been grown up. To this boy, Hadrian’s attention was
directed even from his early childhood: his real name was Annius Verus;
but on account of his unflinching love of truth Hadrian called him
Verissimus. But as he was well aware that a youth of such tender years
was not yet fit for the throne; he adopted the husband of the sister of
Verus’ father, whose chief recommendation in his eyes was this
connexion. T. Antoninus Pius was married to Galeria Faustina, the sister
of Annius Verus the elder. The Roman names are now so confused, that it
is with the greatest trouble that one is able to find one’s way among
them. T. Aurelius Antoninus came originally from Nemausus (_Nismes_) in
the province of Gaul, Italy having even then almost entirely ceased to
furnish princes. His history is one of those which are least known to
us. The seventieth book of Dio Cassius was already lost when Zonaras and
Xiphilinus made their abstracts; so that we are indeed confined to the
wretchedly written lives in the _Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_. His reign
lasted more than twenty-two years. His personal character was very good:
his surname of _Pius_ he earned by getting divine honours granted to
Hadrian when he died, in spite of the violent irritation which was felt
against him. His reign was not as undisturbed as the one before it had
been. He had some wars on the borders, besides which there were risings
among the Britons and the Moorish tribes of mount Atlas; moreover, there
was a rebellion of the Jews, and there were hostilities with the
Parthians. These wars were in many places insurrections, which more than
anything proves the oppression of the people by the governors. His reign
was disastrous, owing to awful earthquakes: the destruction of Rhodes,
Smyrna, and other Ionian towns, mentioned by Aristides, took place at
this time. If we can venture to make conjectures from the very few
memorials which have been left to us, we may say that Antoninus was a
very well-meaning, good man, but a commonplace person, and anything but
a great prince. He seems to have laid the foundation of that steady
decline which we see in the days of M. Antoninus.
The golden age of jurisprudence still went on in his time. Gaius, it is
certain, already wrote in the last years of his reign; Appian, the
beginning of the writings of Galen, and Sextus Empiricus are of the same
date. The manufactures of Egypt, especially of Alexandria, were most
flourishing indeed, even under Hadrian; above all, those of linen,
cotton, and glass. Astronomy also and mathematical geography had reached
a high standard.
He was succeeded by M. Antoninus: of the adoption of this Marcus, there
are two different accounts. The generally received one is that T.
Antoninus adopted him together with Lucius Verus, the son of L. Verus;
according to the other, Marcus had to adopt Verus as his son. The former
of these is supported by the fact of their being called _Divi fratres_;
on the other hand, Verus in a letter to Marcus, speaks of Antoninus as
“_pater tuus, avus meus_.” It may be that M. Antoninus adopted Verus as
his son, and afterwards gave him to his father for adoption. The real
name of the elder Verus was Commodus and Antoninus Verus; but they
changed names, and the firstborn son of Verus was called Commodus. If
there ever was spotless virtue, it was that of Marcus. There cannot be
greater kindness, modesty, conscientiousness, and mastery over self,
than was seen in this noble-hearted man: he certainly was the best of
his age. We may behold him from his early childhood, recognising him
even in the wretched life which has been written of him; moreover we
have the many busts which have been taken at the different ages of his
life, from his twelfth, sixteenth, twentieth year to his death: there is
in every one of these the same virtuous expression. Formerly we knew him
as a full-aged man from his golden book the Meditations, in which indeed
there are things which give us pain, as we thence discover that he was
not happy; but even in his trouble we cannot but love him for his fine
soul. Particularly interesting is the first book. Now again we see him
also in his correspondence with Fronto as a grown up youth, in the first
cheerful years of the spring tide of life, and, as far as his nature
would allow, very happy indeed. Afterwards, we find him sorrowful and
weighed down by the burthen of his duties, of which, however, he never
would let himself neglect any: he was an excellent husband and father,
and an enthusiastic disciple of his master, who was infinitely below
him; and when his eyes had been opened with regard to this, he yet
returns to him that he might not slight or offend him, coaxing him, and
asking his advice when he had no need for it. His education is
remarkable; the range it took was immense: it is quite incredible what
an amount of knowledge was placed before him, and with what zeal he
applied himself to it. As his teacher of rhetoric, he had Fronto, who,
at that time, had the greatest reputation as an advocate, and who in his
own way was training him to be a rhetorician. He had also a Greek of the
same stamp, Herodes Atticus, who was, however, much more a man of the
world than the old pedantic Fronto. Marcus Antoninus read a vast deal of
the classical literature of the two languages; and until his twentieth
year, the whole of his attention was directed to grammar and literature.
He had a great liking for the older writers before Cicero, preferring
Plautus, Ennius, and Nævius, to Virgil and Horace. Soon afterwards, in
his twenty-second year, he became acquainted with a man whom he looked
upon as his true guardian angel, sent to him by Heaven. This was Junius
Rusticus, of whose personal character we know nothing beyond what M.
Antoninus himself says of him in his first book. However inferior Zeno
may have been to Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics were the only
philosophers at that time who were worth anything: the Platonists had
sunk into _Thaumaturgi_ and _Theurgi_; the Peripatetics had fallen to
nothing; but the Stoics were ever able to rise again, owing to their
moral discipline. That really great man, Epictetus, had already lived
and taught. Arrian was likewise a distinguished man; and in his
philosophy also, he was worthy of the better ages of Greece. Epictetus
infused a new life into the Stoic philosophy; though indeed it was not
of long duration, as the minds, which until then had been attached to
Stoicism, now turned themselves towards Neo-Platonism and Christianity.
Stoicism opened to M. Antoninus a new world; and it is this which gives
the otherwise childish letters of Fronto such an indescribable interest:
they throw light upon the state of mind of the youth, who cast rhetoric
aside in disgust, and sought his only happiness in philosophy, in the
insight which it opens into virtue and eternity, and not in its
dialectical juggleries. He bore the task of government, just as
religious men say that one should take up the cross and bear it. Living
wholly for the state and the government, and unremittingly fulfilling
his duties as a general, he complains of not being able to conceive one
cheering thought. No prince was ever so loved by his subjects, that is
to say, by one half of the world, as he was by his: the people of Syria
and Egypt are to be excepted, who indeed had never seen him, and were
little inclined to him. The whole of the West, on the other hand, adored
him: this is shown by the countless busts which are found of him. Men of
the same age, as a mark of love, would in those days call each other
_frater_; younger ones would call their elders _pater_; and so loveable
was he, that all who knew him in the least placed themselves on this
affectionate footing with him. His demeanour to the senate was just as
if he looked upon it as the old senate, the real seat of Roman
sovereignty, and upon himself as a mere _magistratus_.
This excellent man was very unhappy: a gloomy fatality seemed to weigh
upon him in every relation of life. The times became very troubled. The
long peace had destroyed military discipline, and relaxed the energy of
the Roman armies; sensuality, the love of pleasure, and sloth, had risen
to a dreadful height. The German nations, pressed upon by the Sclavonic
races, were obliged to throw themselves into the arms of the Romans,
wherever these were strong enough to protect them; or else to invade the
Roman territory, as was done by the Marcomanni and Quadi, who now
crossed the Danube. On the other side, the Parthians in the East burst
into Armenia, which in fact owed allegiance to both states; and when
they had become masters of it, they also marched from thence into the
Roman territory, and cut to pieces a legate with one or two legions.
This happened in the beginning of his reign.—Another of his misfortunes
was his having L. Verus for his adopted brother, a man who wallowed in
luxury and debauchery: he was the true counterpart of Caligula and Nero,
only he could not as yet display the same cruelty as they did, being
kept under by Marcus.—Aurelius was also unhappy in his wife Faustina,
the daughter of Antoninus; yet more than he himself was aware of: he
loved her dearly, especially as the mother of his children; but she was
by no means worthy of him. He had perhaps the good fortune of having
never been awakened from his delusion as to her real character, always
seeing her as he wished to see her. It is also possible that her morals
may have been drawn in darker colours than her actions would warrant;
yet there cannot be any doubt as to what her feelings were.
Against the Parthians, he sent L. Verus, that he might give him an
opportunity of deserving well of the empire. But Verus stayed at
Antioch, and in four campaigns he only once crossed the Euphrates. His
generals, Statius Priscus, Avidius Cassius, and Martius Varus, carried
on the war in a very brilliant manner: they decided it in the three last
campaigns, and Cassius even conquered Seleucia. To the Parthians a peace
was granted, the conditions of which, however, are not known to us.
When Verus returned from the East to Europe, this part of the world, for
the first time after several centuries, was visited by the plague. The
last mention of a real plague had been in the year of the city 461; in
the year 167 after Christ, the eastern pestilence made its appearance,
spreading over Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Gaul, in short, over the whole
of the West: perhaps Africa alone was not reached by it. It swept away
countless victims; and there is no doubt but that the epoch in
literature and art which marks the reign of Antoninus, is owing to this
plague. A similar effect was produced by the epidemic in the
Peloponnesian War on Athens, and by the black death in the year 1348 on
Germany and Florence.
What rendered M. Aurelius’ reign most unfortunate, besides the plague,
which had been occasioned by the Parthian war, was the war with the
German nations. Since the days of Augustus, the Germans on the borders
only had made inroads against the Romans, whose frontier reached beyond
the whole of the country south of the Maine, even as far as the
Spessart: Franconia, Swabia, and the Palatinate on the other side,[50]
were Roman; and the Romans went from Frankfort to Ratisbon on highways
which they themselves had laid down. The old inhabitants of these
southern countries were either wholly Gauls, or at least outnumbered by
Gallic settlers: the population, however, was but scanty. At the time
when Tacitus wrote, there was evidently a peace, and even much
intercourse with some of the tribes, as for instance, with the
Hermunduri: during the whole of the first century, only the Sigambri and
the Bructeri had taken a share in the risings of the nations on this
side of the Rhine, and that was in the reign of Vespasian. This may have
still been the case under Hadrian, who already gave yearly subsidies to
the peoples there. When Pius was on the throne, a war against the Chatti
is spoken of, which on the side of the Romans was a defensive one. It
was evidently the advance of the Sclavonic nations from the East, which
set the Germans in motion: in the reign of Marcus, they had broken up
everywhere; and while they were flying from the enemy, they threw
themselves on the Romans. Then did the Marcomanni come forth most
gallantly, though indeed it was for the last time: they were at length
either annihilated, or they were changed into tribes of a different
name. The Marcomanni, Quadi, Chatti, and a number of other peoples,
together with the Sarmatians, who were strangers and otherwise hostile
to them, for the first time, broke through the Roman frontier from Dacia
to Gaul, and cut their way to Rhætia and Aquileia. Xiphilinus throws
little or no light on this: with the help of coins alone, which from the
time of Hadrian are a very good guide, something may be made out; but
even then there is great uncertainty. It is clear that the war against
the Marcomanni had two different epochs, which were interrupted by a
truce or a peace, in which the places taken were given up: the second
war broke out in the last years of Marcus. On the magnificent bas
reliefs of the monumental column erected to M. Aurelius, which, however,
is very much damaged, there are many representations which tell
favourably for the Romans; as for instance, barbarous princes who made
their submission to him. One cannot believe that this was invented to
flatter him, as he never would have tolerated anything of the kind.
There is no doubt but that the war during the last years turned out a
victorious one for the Romans; yet it was full of immense difficulties
for them. If Marcus had lived longer, he would certainly have made
Marcomannia and Sarmatia a province.
The progress of this war was interrupted by the rebellion of Avidius
Cassius. This Avidius Cassius is a remarkable man; yet we are so much in
the dark as to these times, that we do not even know his descent.
According to some, he was a native of Cyprus or Syria; but it is more
generally thought that he was sprung from the _gens Cassia_, either in
the male line, or through a woman of that house who had married into his
father’s family: the latter case was possible, even if he was a native
of the East. It is, however, somewhat unlikely that an Asiatic should
have had the chief command of an army. So long as the Latin language was
spoken, it mattered not from what country a man came, whether he was a
Spaniard, an African, or a Roman; but it was otherwise with the peoples
of the East, who spoke Greek: that these should have risen to the
highest offices, is not to be believed. Cassius was distinguished as a
commander. The discipline of the Roman army had long fallen off, and the
legions seem at that time to have been recruited from the military
colonies and from the _limes_: this was owing to the long peace under
Hadrian, and to the unwarlike rule of the pious Antonine. It was
particularly in the East, that the legions had degenerated. They
remained stationary in the same place; and being constantly recruited,
whilst the veterans of course were discharged, they became a sort of
resident janissaries in the border countries. This was quite a senseless
arrangement, and one cannot understand how Trajan could have tolerated
such a thing. They should have been kept in camps; but they were most of
them quartered in the towns, as at Antioch, and elsewhere. Syria is an
exceedingly fine and lovely country, and there they became thoroughly
demoralized. Yet among these very legions, Cassius had at this time
restored discipline; and he had led them to victory in a war against the
Parthians who had made a most successful attack: these last, though they
likewise had degenerated, had still an excellent cavalry. The proconsuls
in the senatorial provinces were changed; but the _legati pro Prætore_
in the imperial ones very often remained the whole of their lives in the
same province: thus also Cassius remained here a very long time, and was
highly popular throughout the East, even as far as Egypt. He was yet
perhaps more so with the people than with the army, in which, though the
best men were proud of him as a distinguished commander, he practised a
Cassian _severitas_. By part of his army, and by the population, he was
proclaimed emperor, as a report is said to have got abroad that M.
Aurelius was dead. It was a misfortune for the empire that this report
was not true; for Cassius was perfectly equal to the management of
affairs, and the empire would thus have been spared the shameful reign
of Commodus. That Cassius should have dreamt of restoring the
republic,[51] is not to be believed of so able a general; but he meant
to govern the empire according to the principles of his predecessors.
Thirty days[52] had not passed, before Cassius was murdered by a
centurion, the tidings having come in the meanwhile that Marcus was
still alive: this murder plainly proves that part of the army disliked
the strictness of the general. The provinces unwillingly returned to
their obedience. That Faustina had a share in the rebellion of Cassius,
as a biographer wants to make us believe, has been most convincingly
disproved by others. The letters of Faustina and Marcus are very
interesting; but one is already shocked at their Latinity: several
obsolete forms are met with over and over again; as for instance,
_rebellio_ instead of _rebellis_, like the old _perduellio_ instead of
_perduellis_. There are, however, no historical sources more wretched
than the _Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_. They are without any exception
altogether silly; and they put together the most glaringly impossible
things, without being at all startled by it. To separate the several
_Vitæ_ from one another, is quite impossible.
M. Aurelius went to the East to set all right again. He forbore to
punish the rebellious provinces, although, the senate was very ready to
do so. His mildness was even shown towards the son of Cassius, whom he
wished to save, but who was murdered without his knowledge: the other
children he actually saved; and he would not allow their estates to be
confiscated. There are some remarkable letters of Cassius in which he
expressed his discontent at the rule of Marcus, whom he calls
_dialogista_. We cannot wonder at this: it is quite possible, that a
practical man of sterling ability, like Cassius, should have found that
Marcus, notwithstanding his private virtues, was not fit for his
dignity; for although the latter most conscientiously devoted himself to
public business, he had no heart for ruling, and was always much more
inclined towards other pursuits. There is another passage in his letters
worthy of attention, in which it is said, that Marcus was a
noble-hearted man, but that he was not able to judge of those about him;
so that any one who gave himself out to be a philosopher, would get hold
of him, and try under this disguise to serve his own ends. Just so was
Julian likewise taken in by any one who called himself a philosopher;
and so has been many a prince in our own times by the Tartuffes.
Some additional light is now thrown on the state of things under M.
Aurelius by the fragments of Fronto. These letters, however trifling
their literary value may be, are of very high historical importance. The
weakness of Marcus for many people, and above all for Faustina, shows
that he carried several of his virtues even to excess, more especially
his virtues as a husband and a father. Fronto lets himself be used as a
tool by Faustina to set aside the will of an old aunt, the younger
Matidia, because she had not left in it anything to the empress. Marcus
answers him in a remarkable note, in which he thanks him. We do not know
how the matter ended; but there can be no doubt that he really set aside
the will. This weakness must also have been displayed towards many other
persons besides Faustina.
In short, the condition of the empire at home was not good, and the
disasters abroad were great: the plague must have remained in Italy and
in the West; Africa it did not visit, as may be seen from the writings
of Tertullian. It is the same plague as that which is met with again
under Commodus; nor are there any grounds for doubting the statement of
Dio, who was a Roman senator, that two thousand men were buried every
day at Rome. The population had in some measure recovered its losses
since the times of Augustus, under whom it had very much dwindled, but
there was now again as awful a destruction of life.
The virtues of Marcus have certainly done much harm: even his great
favour and indulgence towards the senate had many evil consequences; for
the senate was bad. The Emperor died on the Marcomannian frontier in his
camp, March A. D. 180, after a reign of nineteen years, his son Commodus
being at that time nineteen years old. The only reproach ever made
against him, was that in his reign the exclusiveness of a court began to
show itself: the former emperors, down to Antoninus Pius, had still
looked upon themselves as being only as it were the first magistrates of
the state. This did not certainly come from one like him, who valued men
according to their intrinsic worth, but from the overbearing Faustina.
There were yet several excellent generals in the army, such as
Pescennius Niger in the East, and L. Septimius Severus on the Illyrian
frontier: in the administration, Helvius Pertinax was distinguished, who
afterwards became emperor. Claudius Severus also seems to have still
been alive; an excellent man he was, if we may judge from what is told
us by Marcus, on whom we may rely in this instance, although he was
elsewhere mistaken. There still was much intellectual life and
refinement lingering in the world, especially in the East: in Italy it
was waning fast. Gellius wrote in the reign of M. Aurelius, and indeed
only after the death of Fronto, which was brought on by the plague
somewhat about the year 169: (it is decidedly wrong to give it an
earlier date.) This book shows the grammatical and rhetorical tendency
which then prevailed: we see in a remarkable manner how the existing
institutions had no influence whatever on him.