THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES.
96--194.
Domitian is called the last of the twelve Cæsars, though all who came
after him called themselves Cæsar. He had no son, and a highly esteemed
old senator named Cocceius Nerva became Emperor. He was an upright man,
who tried to restore the old Roman spirit; and as he thought
Christianity was only a superstition which spoiled the ancient temper,
he enacted that all should die who would not offer incense to the gods,
and among these died St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who had been bred
up among the Apostles. He was taken to Rome, saw his friend St.
Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, on the way, and wrote him one of a set of
letters which remain to this day. He was then thrown to the lions in the
Colosseum.
It seems strange that the good Emperors were often worse persecutors
than the bad ones, but the fact was that the bad ones let the people do
as they pleased, as long as they did not offend them; while the good
ones were trying to bring back what they read of in Livy's history, of
plain living and high thinking, and shut their ears to knowing more of
the Christians than that they were people who did not worship the gods.
Moreover, Julius Trajanus, whom Nerva adopted, and who began to reign
after him in 98, did not persecute actively, but there were laws in
force against the Christians. When Pliny the younger was proprætor of
the province of Pontica in Asia Minor, he wrote to ask the Emperor what
to do about the Christians, telling him what he had been able to find
out about them from two slave girls who had been tortured; namely, that
they were wont to meet together at night or early morning, to sing
together, and eat what he called a harmless social meal. Trajan answered
that he need not try to hunt them out, but that, if they were brought
before him, the law must take its course. In Rome, the chief refuge of
the Christians was in the Catacombs, or quarries of tufa, from which the
city was chiefly built, and which were hollowed out in long galleries.
Slaves and convicts worked them, and they were thus made known to the
Christians, who buried their dead in places hollowed at the sides, used
the galleries for their churches, and often hid there when there was
search made for them.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA.]
Trajan was so good a ruler that he bears the title of Optimus, the Best,
as no one else has ever done. He was a great captain too, and conquered
Dacia, the country between the rivers Danube, Theiss, and Pruth, and the
Carpathian Hills; and he also defeated the Parthians, and said if he
had been a younger man he would have gone as far as Alexander. As it
was, the empire was at its very largest in his reign, and he was a very
great builder and improver, so that one of his successors called him a
wall-flower, because his name was everywhere to be seen on walls and
bridges and roads--some of which still remain, as does his tall column
at Rome, with a spiral line of his conquests engraven round it from top
to bottom. He was on his way back from the East when, in 117, he died at
Cilicia, leaving the empire to another brave warrior, Publius Ætius
Hadrianus, who took the command with great vigor, but found he could not
keep Dacia, and broke down the bridge over the Danube. He came to
Britain, where the Roman settlements were tormented by the Picts. There
he built the famous Roman wall from sea to sea to keep them out. He was
wonderfully active, and hastened from one end of the empire to the other
wherever his presence was needed. There was a revolt of the Jews in the
far East, under a man who pretended to be the Messiah, and called
himself the Son of a Star. This was put down most severely, and no Jew
was allowed to come near Jerusalem, over which a new city was built, and
called after the Emperor's second name, Ælia Capitolina; and, to drive
the Jews further away, a temple to Jupiter was built where the Temple
had been, and one to Venus on Mount Calvary.
But Hadrian did not persecute, and listened kindly to an explanation of
the faith which was shown him at Athens by Quadratus, a Christian
philosopher. Hadrian built himself a grand towerlike monument,
surrounded by stages of columns and arches, which was to be called the
Mole of Hadrian, and still stands, though stripped of its ornaments.
Before his death, in 138, he had chosen his successor, Titus Aurelius
Antoninus, a good upright man, a philosopher, and 52 years old; for it
had been found that youths who became Emperors had their heads turned by
such unbounded power, while elder men cared for the work and duty.
Antoninus was so earnest for his people's welfare that they called him
Pius. He avoided wars, only defended the empire; but he was a great
builder, for he raised another rampart in Britain, much further north,
and set up another column at Rome, and in Gaul built a great
amphitheatre at Nismes, and raised the wonderful aqueduct which is still
standing, and is called the Pont du Gard.
His son-in-law, whom he adopted and who succeeded him, is commonly
called Marcus Aurelius, as a choice among his many names. He was a deep
student and Stoic philosopher, with an earnest longing for truth and
virtue, though he knew not how to seek them where alone they could be
found; and when earthquake, pestilence and war fell on his empire, and
the people thought the gods were offended, he let them persecute the
Christians, whose faith he despised, because the hope of Resurrection
and of Heaven seemed weak and foolish to him beside his stern, proud,
hopeless Stoicism. So the aged Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, the last
pupil of the Apostles themselves, was sentenced to be burnt in the
theatre of his own city, though, as the fire curled round him in a
curtain of flame without touching him, he was actually slain with the
sword. And in Gaul, especially at Vienne, there was a fearful
persecution which fell on women of all ranks, and where Blandina the
slave, under the most unspeakable torments, was specially noted for her
brave patience.
Aurelius was fighting hard with the German tribes on the Danube, who
gave him no rest, and threatened to break into the empire. While
pursuing them, he and his army were shut into a strong place where they
could get no water, and were perishing with thirst, when a whole
legion, all Christian soldiers, knelt down and prayed. A cloud came up,
a welcome shower of rain descended, and was the saving of the thirsty
host. It was said that the name of the Thundering Legion was given to
this division in consequence, though on the column reared by Aurelius it
is Jupiter who is shown sending rain on the thirsty host, who are
catching it in their shields. After this there was less persecution, but
every sort of trouble--plague, earthquake, famine, and war--beset the
empire on all sides, and the Emperor toiled in vain against these
troubles, writing, meantime, meditations that show how sad and sick at
heart he was, and how little comfort philosophy gave him, while his eyes
were blind to the truth. He died of a fever in his camp, while still in
the prime of life, in the year 180, and with him ended the period of
good Emperors, which the Romans call the age of the Antonines. Aurelius
was indeed succeeded by his son Commodus, but he was a foolish
good-for-nothing youth, who would not bear the fatigues and toils of
real war, though he had no shame in showing off in the arena, and is
said to have fought there seven hundred and fifty times, besides killing
wild beasts. He boasted of having slain one hundred lions with one
hundred arrows, and a whole row of ostriches with half-moon shaped
arrows which cut off their heads, the poor things being fastened where
he could not miss them, and the Romans applauding as if for some noble
deed. They let him reign sixteen years before he was murdered, and then
a good old soldier named Pertinax began to reign; but the Prætorian
Guard had in those sixteen years grown disorderly, and the moment they
felt the pressure of a firm hand they attacked the palace, killed the
Emperor, cut off his head, and ran with it to the senate-house, asking
who would be Emperor. An old senator was foolish enough to offer them a
large sum if they would choose him, and this put it into their heads to
rush out to the ramparts and proclaim that they would sell the empire to
the highest bidder.
A vain, old, rich senator, named Didius Julianus, was at supper with his
family when he heard that the Prætorians were selling the empire by
auction, and out he ran, and actually bought it at the rate of about
£200 to each man. The Emperor being really the commander-in-chief, with
other offices attached to the dignity, the soldiers had a sort of right
to the choice; but the other armies at a distance, who were really
fighting and guarding the empire, had no notion of letting the matter
be settled by the Prætorians, mere guardsmen, who stayed at home and
tried to rule the rest; so each army chose its own general and marched
on Rome, and it was the general on the Danube, Septimius Severus, who
got there first; whereupon the Prætorians killed their foolish Emperor
and joined him.
[Illustration: MARCUS AURELIUS.]