Marcus Antoninus Philosophus

Marcus Antoninus—a man who philosophized throughout his whole life and who in holiness of life surpasses all princes—had as father Annius Verus, who died while praetor; as grandfather Annius Verus, twice consul and prefect of the City, enrolled among the patricians by the censors Vespasian and Titus; as paternal uncle Annius Libo, the consul; as paternal aunt Galeria Faustina Augusta; as mother Domitia Lucilla, daughter of Calvisius Tullus, twice consul; as paternal great-grandfather Annius Verus of praetorian rank, made a senator from the municipality of Succubitanum in Spain; as maternal great-grandfather Catilius Severus, twice consul and prefect of the City; and as paternal grandmother Rupilia Faustina, daughter of Rupilius Bonus, a man of consular rank. Marcus was born at Rome on the sixth day before the Kalends of May, on the Caelian Hill in the gardens, when his grandfather was consul for the second time, together with Augur. His family, tracing back to its origin, is proved to draw its blood from Numa, as Marius Maximus relates; and likewise from the Sallentine king Malemnius, son of Dasummus, who founded Lupiae. He was brought up in the place in which he was born, and in the house of his grandfather Verus near the houses of the Laterani. He had also a younger sister, Annia Cornificia, and a wife, Annia Faustina, his cousin. Marcus Antoninus at the beginning of his life had the name of Catilius Severus, his maternal great-grandfather; but after the death of his father he was called by Hadrian Annius Verissimus, and after assuming the man's toga Annius Verus; and his father being dead, he was adopted and brought up by his paternal grandfather.

He was serious from his earliest infancy; and when he had passed the years which are fostered by the help of nurses, he was handed over to great teachers and attained to the knowledge of philosophy. He used as his masters for the first rudiments Euphorion the grammarian and Geminus the comic actor, and Andron, who was both musician and geometer—to all of whom, as authorities in their disciplines, he showed the greatest deference. He used besides as grammarians the Greek Alexander of Cotiaeum, and the Latin masters Trosius Aper and Pollio and Eutychius Proculus of Sicca. He used as orators the Greeks Aninius Macer, Caninius Celer, and Herodes Atticus, and the Latin Cornelius Fronto; but of these he showed most deference to Fronto, for whom he even requested a statue in the senate. Proculus, moreover, he advanced even to the proconsulate, taking the burdens upon himself. To philosophy he gave himself vehemently, and indeed while still a boy. For when he entered his twelfth year, he took up the dress of a philosopher, and thereafter the discipline of endurance, since he studied in a cloak and slept on the ground; but, with his mother scarcely prevailing, he reclined on a little couch strewn with skins. He used also as master Apollonius of Chalcedon, the Stoic philosopher, with whom a connection by marriage to Commodus had been destined for him.

So great, moreover, was his zeal for philosophy that, when he had already been admitted to the imperial house, he nevertheless came to the house of Apollonius for the sake of learning. He heard also Sextus of Chaeronea, the nephew of Plutarch, and Junius Rusticus, Claudius Maximus, and Cinna Catulus, all Stoics. As a student of the Peripatetic school he heard Claudius Severus, and especially Junius Rusticus, whom he both revered and followed—a man who was powerful both at home and in war, and most skilled in the Stoic discipline. With him he shared all his counsels, public and private; to him he always gave a kiss before the praetorian prefects; him he designated consul for the second time; and for him, after his death, he requested statues from the senate. So great, moreover, was the honor he showed to his masters that he kept golden images of them in his shrine, and always honored their tombs by visits, with sacrifices and flowers. He studied law also, hearing Lucius Volusius Maecianus. And he expended so much work and labor on his studies that he impaired his body; and in this alone was his boyhood reproached. He frequented also the public schools of the declaimers, and loved among his fellow-students chiefly, of the senatorial order, Seius Fuscianus and Aufidius Victorinus, and of the equestrian order, Baebius Longus and Calenus, toward whom he was most generous, and so much so that those whom, on account of the quality of their life, he could not set over the commonwealth, he kept enriched.

He was brought up in the lap of Hadrian, who, as we have said above, called him Verissimus, and who conferred on him at the age of six the honor of a public horse, and in his eighth year enrolled him in the college of the Salii. In the priesthood of the Salii he received an omen of empire: when all were throwing crowns onto the sacred couch according to custom, some lodged in one place, some in another; but his, as if fitted by a hand, settled on the head of Mars. He was in that priesthood both leader and seer and master, and he inaugurated and de-inaugurated many, with no one prompting him, since he had learned all the chants himself. He assumed the man's toga in his fifteenth year, and at once the daughter of Lucius Ceionius Commodus was betrothed to him by the will of Hadrian; and not long after he was prefect of the Latin Festival, in which honor he showed himself most distinguished in acting on behalf of the magistrates and at the banquets of the prince Hadrian. After this he yielded the whole paternal patrimony to his sister, when his mother called him to a division; and he answered that he was content with the goods of his grandfather, adding that his mother too, if she wished, might confer her own patrimony on his sister, lest the sister be inferior to her husband. He was, moreover, of such indulgence that he was sometimes compelled either to go to the hunts, or to go down to the theatre, or to be present at the spectacles. He gave attention, besides, to painting, under the master Diognetus. He loved boxing, wrestling, running, and fowling, and played ball excellently, and hunted. But from all these pursuits the study of philosophy drew him away and rendered him serious and grave—yet not so that the courtesy in him was wholly abolished, which he showed especially to his own household, then to his friends, and even to those less known to him, since he was frugal without obstinacy, modest without sloth, and grave without gloom.

While these things were thus, after the death of Lucius Caesar, Hadrian was seeking a successor to the empire; and since Marcus was not considered suitable, being eighteen years old, Hadrian chose Antoninus Pius, the husband of Marcus's aunt, for adoption on this condition: that Pius should adopt Marcus for himself, yet in such a way that Marcus too should adopt for himself Lucius Commodus. Indeed, on the day on which Verus was adopted, he saw in his dreams that he had shoulders of ivory, and, when he inquired whether they were fit to bear a burden, he found them stronger than usual. But when he learned that he had been adopted by Hadrian, he was more terrified than gladdened, and, being ordered to move into Hadrian's private house, he withdrew unwillingly from his mother's gardens. And when his household asked him why he passed sadly into a royal adoption, he discoursed on the evils which empire contains within itself. Then for the first time, instead of Annius, he began to be called Aurelius, because he had passed by the right of adoption into the Aurelian, that is, Antoninus's, family. In his eighteenth year, therefore, having been adopted in the second consulship of Antoninus, now his father, he was designated quaestor, Hadrian granting an exemption on account of his age. Having been adopted into the court house, he showed to all his kinsmen as much reverence as he had shown as a private citizen; and he was no less thrifty and careful of his own property than a parent in a private house, willing to act, speak, and think according to the rule of his father.

When Hadrian had died at Baiae, and Pius had set out to convey his remains, Marcus, left at Rome, performed the funeral rites for his grandfather and, as a private quaestor, gave a gladiatorial show. After the death of Hadrian, Pius at once, through his own wife, sounded out Marcus, and—the betrothal having been dissolved which he had wished to be contracted with the daughter of Lucius Ceionius Commodus . . . to one still of unequal age—after deliberation Marcus said that he was willing. These things being thus done, Pius designated Marcus, still quaestor, consul along with himself, and bestowed on him the appellation of Caesar, and made him a sevir over the squadrons of the Roman knights, though already consul-designate, and sat beside him as he gave the sevirales' games with his colleagues, and ordered him to move into the Tiberian house, and, though he resisted, adorned him with court dignity, and, at the senate's command, received him into the colleges of the priests, and designated him consul for a second time, while he himself entered his fourth consulship at the same moment. During these same times, although he was occupied with such great honors, and although, in order to be formed for governing the state of the commonwealth, he was present at his father's acts, he frequented his studies most eagerly. After this he took Faustina to wife, and, a daughter having been born, was given the tribunician power, and the proconsular command outside the city was added, with the right of a fifth motion. And he had such weight with Pius that he never readily promoted anyone without him. But Marcus was most obsequious to his father, although there were not lacking those who whispered some things against him—and before the rest Valerius Homullus, who, when he had seen Lucilla, Marcus's mother, venerating an image of Apollo in the garden, whispered: "She now prays that you may close your day and her son may rule." This availed nothing at all with Pius; so great was Marcus's probity and

so great his modesty in the imperial partnership. He had, moreover, such care for his reputation that even as a boy he always admonished his procurators not to do anything too arrogantly; and, returning inheritances bequeathed to him, he sometimes refused them in favor of the nearest of kin. In the end, for twenty-three years he so conducted himself in his father's house that his love for him grew daily, and in so many years he was absent from him, on the various occasions, no more than two nights. For this reason Antoninus Pius, when he saw the end of his life at hand, having summoned his friends and the prefects, commended and confirmed Marcus to all as his successor to the empire; and at once, having given the tribune the watchword of "equanimity," he ordered the golden Fortune, which used to be in his bedchamber, to be carried over to Marcus's bedchamber. The part of his mother's goods he handed over to Ummidius Quadratus, his sister's son, because she had already died. After the death of the deified Pius, being compelled by the senate to take up the public government, he designated his brother as his partner in the empire, whom he called Lucius Aurelius Verus Commodus and named Caesar and Augustus; and from then on they began to rule the commonwealth equally, and then for the first time the Roman empire began to have two Augusti, since he shared with another the empire left to himself. Soon he himself took the name of Antoninus, and, as if he were the father of Lucius Commodus, he called him Verus too, with the name of Antoninus added, and betrothed his own daughter Lucilla to his brother. On account of this union they ordered that boys and girls of new names be enrolled for the receipt of the grain-dole. The things, then, having been done which had to be done in the senate, they went together to the praetorian camp and promised the soldiers twenty thousand sesterces each on account of the partnership of the empire, and to the rest in proportion. They placed their father's body in the tomb of Hadrian, with a magnificent funeral observance; and soon, a public mourning having followed, the order of the funeral was likewise carried out at public expense. And both pronounced the eulogy of their father from the rostra, and appointed for him a flamen from among his kinsmen and Aurelian fellows from among his closest friends.

Having attained the empire, they both conducted themselves so courteously that no one missed the mildness of Pius, although Manilius, the mime-writer of his time, mocked them with impunity by his gibing. They gave their father a funeral show. Marcus gave himself wholly to philosophy too, courting the love of the citizens; but the first inundation of the Tiber—which under them was most grievous—interrupted that happiness and security of the emperor. This event both damaged many buildings of the city and destroyed very many animals and produced a most grievous famine—all which evils Marcus and Verus moderated by their own care and presence. There was at that time also the Parthian war, which Vologaesus, having prepared it under Pius, declared in the time of Marcus and Verus, having routed Attidius Cornelianus, who then administered Syria. A British war too was threatening, and the Chatti had burst into Germany and Raetia. And against the Britons Calpurnius Agricola was sent, against the Chatti Aufidius Victorinus. But to the Parthian war, with the senate consenting, his brother Verus was sent; he himself remained at Rome, because the affairs of the city demanded the emperor's presence. And Marcus indeed escorted Verus as far as Capua, with friends accompanying, and equipped him at the senate's charge, with the chiefs of all the offices added. But when Marcus had returned to Rome and learned that Verus was sick at Canusium, he hastened to see him, vows having been undertaken in the senate—which, after he had returned to Rome, having heard of Verus's crossing over, he at once paid. And Verus indeed, after he came into Syria, lived amid pleasures at Antioch and Daphne, and exercised himself with gladiatorial arms and hunts, although, waging the Parthian war through his legates, he was hailed as imperator—while Marcus at all hours bent himself to the acts of the commonwealth, and patiently, though very much against his will and unwillingly, bore his brother's pleasures. In the end, all things that were necessary for the war Marcus, stationed at Rome, both arranged and ordered.

Affairs were conducted prosperously in Armenia through Statius Priscus, Artaxata being captured, and the name Armeniacus was conferred on both princes—which Marcus at first, out of modesty, refused, but afterward accepted. When the war had been finished, each was called Parthicus; but this name too, conferred on him, Marcus repudiated, which afterward he accepted. The name of Father of the Country, conferred while his brother was absent, he deferred to his presence. In the middle of the war he conducted both Civica, the uncle of Verus, and his own daughter, who was to be married, entrusted to his sister and enriched, as far as Brundisium, and sent her to Verus, and at once returned to Rome, recalled by the talk of those who said that Marcus wished to claim for himself the glory of finishing the war, and was for that reason setting out into Syria. He wrote to the proconsul that no one should meet his daughter as she made her journey. Meanwhile he so safeguarded the cases concerning freedom that he was the first to order that each of the citizens should register his free-born children within thirty days before the prefects of the treasury of Saturn, the name being given. Throughout the provinces he established the use of public registers, before whom the same should be done concerning origins as was done at Rome before the prefects of the treasury, so that, if perchance anyone born in a province should plead a case concerning freedom, he might bring attestations from there. And he confirmed this whole law concerning claims to freedom, and passed others concerning bankers and auctions.

He gave the senate as judge in many investigations, and especially in those pertaining to himself. He ordered also that questions concerning the status of the deceased be raised within a five-year period. Nor did any of the princes show more deference to the senate. But, for the senate's honor, he delegated the settling of business to many private men of praetorian and consular rank . . . gave, so that the more their authority might grow with the exercise of justice. He enrolled many of his friends into the senate with aedilician or praetorian dignities. To many senators, but poor ones who were without reproach, he granted the dignities of tribune and aedile; nor did he choose anyone into the order except one whom he himself well knew. This too he granted to the senators: that, whenever a man's life was to be judged, he should deliberate in secret and so make it public, and that he should not permit Roman knights to be present at such cases. He was always present at the senate, when he could, even if there were nothing to be referred, if he was at Rome; but if he wished to refer anything, he came himself even from Campania. He frequently attended the elections too, even until night, and never withdrew from the senate-house until the consul said: "We detain you no longer, Conscript Fathers." For appeals made from the consul he gave a judge. To judiciary matters he applied singular diligence. He added court days to the calendar, so that he established two hundred and thirty days in the year for transacting business and adjudicating lawsuits. He was the first to create a guardianship-praetor—whereas before, guardians were sought from the consuls—so that the matter of guardians might be handled more carefully. As for curators, whereas before they were not given except under the Plaetorian law, either on account of wantonness or on account of dementia, he so decreed that all adults should receive curators, no reasons being given.

He guarded against public expenses and resisted the false charges of informers, a mark of disgrace being set upon false accusers. The accusations by which the treasury might be increased he scorned. Concerning public maintenance allowances he prudently devised much. He gave curators from the senate to many cities, in order that he might extend more widely the senatorial dignities. To the Italian cities in time of famine he gave grain from the city, and provided for the whole matter of the grain-supply. He regulated gladiatorial spectacles in every way. He regulated also the gifts to the stage, ordering that the actors should receive five gold pieces each, yet in such a way that no producer should exceed ten gold pieces. He took most diligent care also of the streets of the city and of the roads. He provided gravely for the matter of grain. Having appointed judges, he provided for Italy after that example by which Hadrian had ordered men of consular rank to render justice. For the Spaniards, exhausted by the levy for Italy, he provided with modesty, contrary even to the precepts of Trajan. He added laws also concerning the twentieth on inheritances, concerning the guardianships of freedmen, concerning maternal goods, and likewise concerning the successions of children to the maternal portion, and that provincial senators should possess a fourth part in Italy. He gave, besides, to the curators of regions and roads the power either to punish, or to send to the prefect of the City for punishment, those who had exacted anything from anyone beyond the regular taxes. He restored the old law rather than made a new one. He kept the prefects with him, by whose authority and at whose risk he always pronounced judgment. He used Scaevola especially as one skilled in law.

With the people, moreover, he dealt no otherwise than was done under a free state; and he was in all things most moderate in deterring men from evil, inviting them to good, rewarding them by his bounty, freeing them by his indulgence; and he made the bad good, the good the best. He even bore moderately the gibes of certain men. For when he admonished a certain Vetrasinus, a man of detestable reputation seeking honor, to clear himself from the people's opinions, and that man replied in turn that he saw many as praetors who had fought with him in the arena, he bore it patiently. And, lest he easily punish anyone, when a praetor had done certain things most wickedly, he did not order him to resign his praetorship, but committed the administration of justice to his colleague. In cases of profit he never favored the treasury as judge. Indeed, although he was steadfast, he was also modest. After his brother returned victorious from Syria, the name of Father of the Country was decreed to both, since Marcus, in Verus's absence, had conducted himself most moderately toward all senators and men. The civic crown, besides, was offered to both; and Lucius requested that Marcus triumph with him. Lucius requested, besides, that the sons of Marcus be called Caesars. But Marcus was of such moderation that, though he had triumphed together with Lucius, yet after Lucius's death he called himself only Germanicus, which he had earned by his own war. In the triumph, moreover, they conveyed with them the children of Marcus of either sex, yet in such a way that they carried also the unmarried girls. They watched too, in triumphal dress, the games decreed for the triumph. Among the other instances of his devotion, this moderation also is to be proclaimed: he ordered mattresses to be placed beneath the tightrope-walkers after a boy had fallen, whence even today a net is stretched out. While the Parthian war was being waged, the Marcomannic was born, which was long held in suspense by the skill of those present, so that, the Eastern war being now finished, the Marcomannic might be carried on. And when, in time of famine, he had intimated to the people concerning the war, his brother having returned after five years, he treated of it in the senate, saying that both emperors were necessary for the German war.

So great, moreover, was the terror of the Marcomannic war that Antoninus summoned priests from everywhere, performed foreign rites, purified Rome with every kind of lustration, and was delayed from his departure for war. He celebrated also, in the Roman rite, lectisternia for seven days. So great, moreover, was the pestilence that the corpses were carried out in carts and wagons. Then, too, the laws of Antoninus concerning burial and tombs were most stringent, since indeed they provided that no one should build a tomb adjoining his villa—which is observed even today. And the pestilence indeed consumed many thousands and many of the nobles, to the most distinguished of whom Antoninus set up statues. And so great was his clemency that he ordered the funerals of the common people to be conducted at public expense; and to a certain idle fellow—who, seeking with some accomplices an occasion for plundering the city, harangued from the top of a wild fig-tree in the Field of Mars, saying that fire would fall from heaven and the end of the world would come, if he himself, falling from the tree, were turned into a stork—when at the appointed time he had fallen down and released a stork from his bosom, and was brought before him and confessed, he granted pardon.

Yet both emperors set out in their war-cloaks, the Victuali and Marcomanni throwing all into confusion, while other tribes too, which had fled, driven on by the upper barbarians, were waging war unless they should be received. And this expedition was of no small profit, since they had come as far as Aquileia; for very many of the kings withdrew both with their own peoples and killed the authors of the disturbance. But the Quadi, having lost their own king, said that they would not confirm the man who had been created until it had pleased our emperors. Lucius, however, set out unwillingly, when very many were sending to the legates of the emperors, asking pardon for their defection; and Lucius indeed, because the praetorian prefect Furius Victorinus had been lost and part of the army had perished, thought they should return. But Marcus, judging that the barbarians were feigning both flight and the other things which displayed military security—doing this lest they be crushed by the mass of so great a preparation—thought they should press on. In the end, the Alps being crossed, they advanced further and arranged everything that pertained to the fortification of Italy and Illyricum. It was decided, moreover, at Lucius's urging, that, a letter being sent ahead to the senate, Lucius should return to Rome. On the road too, after they had begun the journey, Lucius, sitting with his brother in the carriage, was seized by apoplexy and died.

It was a custom of Marcus, moreover, at the spectacle of the circus games, to read and to listen and to subscribe documents, from which indeed he is often said to have been provoked by the people's jests. The freedmen Geminas and Agaclytus, moreover, had great power under Marcus and Verus. But Marcus was of such great holiness that he both concealed and defended the vices of Verus, although they displeased him most vehemently; and when Verus was dead, he called him deified, and relieved and advanced his aunts and sisters with honors and salaries decreed to them, and honored him with very many rites. He dedicated to him a flamen and Antoninian fellows and all the honors which are held for the deified. There is no prince whom grave rumor does not touch, to such a degree that even Marcus came into talk—that he so bore with Verus, or rather did away with him by poison, that he smeared part of a knife with poison and cut a sow's womb, offering the poisoned part for his brother to eat and reserving the harmless part for himself; or at least through the physician Posidippus, who is said to have let his blood unseasonably. Cassius revolted from Marcus after the death of Verus.

Marcus, moreover, was already of such great benignity toward his own people that, while he conferred all the ornaments of honors upon all his kinsmen, he conferred upon his son—and indeed a wicked and impure one—quickly the name of Caesar, and soon a priesthood, and at once the name of imperator and a share in the triumph and the consulship. At which time, indeed, while his son the emperor sat in the triumphal chariot, he ran on foot in the Circus. After the death of Verus, Marcus Antoninus held the commonwealth alone, much better and more fruitful in virtues, inasmuch as he was now hindered by none of Verus's errors—neither of the simplicity and hot truthfulness from which Verus labored by an inborn vice, nor of those things which displeased Marcus Antoninus especially from the very first time of his own life, whether of the habits of a depraved mind or of his morals. For he himself was of such great tranquillity that he never changed his countenance through grief or joy, devoted to the Stoic philosophy, which he had both received through all the best masters and gathered himself from every side. For Hadrian too had prepared this same man as his successor, had not his boyish age stood in the way—which indeed appears from the fact that he chose this same man as son-in-law for Pius, so that the Roman empire might come to him, as to a worthy man, whenever it should.

After this, therefore, he treated the provinces with enormous moderation and benignity. Against the Germans he conducted affairs successfully; the Marcomannic war in particular—but such as there has never been any memory of—he carried through, both by valor and also by good fortune, and that indeed at the very time when a grievous pestilence had destroyed many thousands both of the common people and of the soldiers. The Pannonias, therefore—the Marcomanni, Sarmatians, Vandals, and at the same time the Quadi being annihilated—he freed from servitude, and triumphed at Rome together with his son Commodus, whom he had already made Caesar, as we have said. But when he had exhausted his whole treasury for this war and could not bring himself to lay any extraordinary impost on the provincials, he held in the Forum of the deified Trajan an auction of the imperial ornaments, and sold golden cups and crystal and murrhine vessels, royal vessels too, and his wife's robe of silk and gold, jewels indeed, many of which he had found in a more sacred storeroom of Hadrian. And this sale was conducted for two whole months, and so much gold was raised that, having pursued the remainder of the Marcomannic war according to his wish, he afterward gave the buyers the power, if anyone wished to return what he had bought and recover his gold, to know that it was permitted; nor was he troublesome to anyone, whether he did not return what he had bought or returned it. Then he permitted men of higher rank to give banquets with the same elegance as he himself, and with similar attendants. In the public show, moreover, he was so magnanimous that he exhibited a hundred lions at one release, all killed by arrows.

When, therefore, he had reigned in the love of all, and was called and loved now brother, now father, now son, by others, as each one's age allowed, in the eighteenth year of his reign, in the sixty-first of his life, he closed his last day; and so great was the love for him on that day of the royal funeral that no one thought he ought to be mourned, all being certain that he, lent by the gods, had returned to the gods. In the end, before the funeral was held, as most say—a thing which had never been done before nor afterward—the senate and the people, not in separate places but in one assembly, called him a propitious god. This man, indeed, so great and of such a kind, and joined to the gods in life and in death, left behind his son Commodus; who, if he had been fortunate, would not have left a son. And it was indeed too little that all ages, all sexes, all conditions and dignities gave him divine honors—but for the fact that he too was judged sacrilegious who did not have his image in his own house, whoever through fortune was either able or bound to have it. In the end, even today in many houses statues of Marcus Antoninus stand among the household gods. Nor were there lacking men who, divining the future from dreams, proclaimed that he had foretold many things—and true things. Whence a temple too was established to him, priests called Antoniniani were given, and fellows and flamens and all the things which antiquity decreed for a consecrated shrine.

Some say—and it seems even probable—that Commodus Antoninus, his successor and son, was not born of him but of an adultery, and they weave such a little tale in common report: that Faustina once, the daughter of Pius and the wife of Marcus, having seen some gladiators pass by, was inflamed with love of one of them, and, when she labored under a long sickness, confessed to her husband the love. When Marcus had referred this to the Chaldeans, their counsel was that the gladiator be killed and Faustina bathe herself with his blood and so lie with her husband. When this had been done, the love was indeed dissolved, but Commodus was born a gladiator, not a prince—he who, as emperor, exhibited nearly a thousand combats publicly, with the people looking on, as will be shown in his life. And this indeed is held probable from the fact that the son of so holy a prince was of such morals as no trainer of gladiators, no actor, no man of the arena, no one in short compounded from the filth of all disgraces and crimes. Many, moreover, relate that Commodus was altogether born of an adultery, since it is agreed enough that Faustina, at Caieta, chose lovers for herself both from sailors and from gladiators. About whom, when it was told to Marcus Antoninus that he should repudiate her, if he did not kill her, he is said to have replied: "If we dismiss the wife, let us also return the dowry." But what was held to be the dowry? The empire, which he had received from his father-in-law, having been adopted at the willing pleasure of Hadrian. So greatly indeed does the life, holiness, tranquillity, and devotion of a good prince avail, that no envy of any near relation discolors his fame. In the end, Antoninus—since he always kept his own morals and was not changed by the whispering of anyone—was not harmed by a son who was a gladiator, nor by an infamous wife; and he is held a god even now, as it has always seemed to yourselves, most sacred emperor Diocletian, and seems still, who venerate him among your divinities, not like the rest, but specially, and often say that you wish to be such in life and clemency as Marcus was—although in philosophy not even Plato could be such, were he to return to life. And these things indeed briefly and compressed.

But to Marcus Antoninus these things were done after his brother's death: first, his body was conveyed to Rome and placed in the tombs of the ancestors; then divine honors were decreed; next, when he gave thanks to the senate for having consecrated his brother, he secretly showed that all the warlike counsels by which the Parthians were overcome had been his own. He added, besides, certain things by which he showed that now at last he would conduct the commonwealth as if from the beginning, that man being removed who seemed the more lax; nor did the senate take it otherwise than Marcus had said, so that he seemed to be giving thanks because Verus had departed from life. Then to all his sisters and kinsmen and freedmen he showed the greatest deference of right, of honor, and of money. For he was most anxious about his own reputation, inquiring truly what each one said about him, and amending what seemed rightly reproached. Setting out for the German war, before the time of mourning had run its course, he gave his daughter to Claudius Pompeianus, a son of a Roman knight, an aged man of Antiochene stock and not sufficiently noble (whom he afterward made twice consul), although his daughter was an Augusta and the daughter of an Augusta; but both Faustina and she who was being given held these nuptials against their will.

When the Moors were laying waste almost all the Spains, affairs were well conducted through legates. And when the Bucolic soldiers had done many grievous things throughout Egypt, they were crushed through Avidius Cassius, who afterward seized the tyranny. In the very days of his departure, while staying at his retreat at Praeneste, he lost his son, by name Verus Caesar, seven years old, from a tumor cut out beneath the ear; whom he mourned no more than five days, and, having consulted physicians, restored himself to the public business. And because the games of Jupiter Optimus Maximus were on, he did not wish them to be interrupted by public mourning, and ordered that only statues be decreed for his dead son, and a golden image be carried in the circus games through the procession, and that his name be inserted in the Salian chant. With the pestilence still pressing, indeed, he most diligently restored the worship of the gods, and, as had been done in the Punic war, prepared slaves for the soldiery, whom, as volunteers, after the example of the volones, he called such. He armed gladiators too, whom he called "the obsequious." He even made soldiers of the brigands of Dalmatia and Dardania. He armed the Diogmitae too. He bought also auxiliaries of the Germans against the Germans. He prepared, besides, with all diligence, the legions for the German and Marcomannic war. And, lest he be troublesome to the provincials, he held, as we have said, an auction of the court furnishings in the Forum of the deified Trajan, in which, besides garments and cups and golden vessels, he sold also statues with paintings of great artists. He destroyed the Marcomanni in the very crossing of the Danube and gave back the booty to the

provincials. All the tribes from the frontier of Illyricum as far as into Gaul had conspired—as the Marcomanni, Varistae, Hermunduri, and Quadi, Suebi, Sarmatians, Lacringes, and Buri, these and others, together with the Victuali, Osi, Bessi, Cobotes, Roxolani, Bastarnae, Alani, Peucini, Costoboci. A Parthian war too was threatening, and a British one. With great labor, therefore, even his own, he conquered the most savage tribes, the soldiers imitating him, the legates and the praetorian prefects also leading the army; and he received the Marcomanni into surrender, very many being transferred into Italy. He always, indeed, conferred with the leading men, not only on warlike matters but also on civil ones, before he did anything; and in the end this was always his chief opinion: "It is more just that I follow the counsel of so many such friends, than that so many such friends follow the will of me alone." Indeed, because Marcus seemed hard, from his training in philosophy, toward the labors of war and toward his whole way of life, he was gravely criticized; but to those who spoke ill he replied either by speech or by letter. And many nobles perished in the German, or Marcomannic—nay, in the war of very many tribes—to all of whom he set up statues in the Forum of Ulpius. Wherefore his friends frequently advised him to withdraw from the wars and come to Rome; but he scorned this and persisted, nor did he withdraw before he had ended all the wars. He made the provinces, according to the necessity of war, consular from proconsular, or proconsular from consular, or praetorian. He repressed also by his censure and authority the affairs disturbed among the Sequani. The affairs in Spain too were settled, which had been disturbed throughout Lusitania. Having summoned his son Commodus to the frontier, he gave him the man's toga; wherefore he distributed a largess to the people and designated him consul before the time.

If anyone was ever proscribed by the prefect of the City, he did not take it kindly. He himself was most sparing in the largess of public money, which is rather given to praise than to reproach; but yet he both gave moneys to good men and brought aid to failing towns and remitted tributes or taxes where necessity compelled. Though absent, he ordered vehemently that the pleasures of the Roman people be cared for by the richest producers. For there was this talk among the people, when he had carried off the gladiators to the war, that he wished, by removing their pleasures, to compel the people to philosophy. For he had ordered—lest commerce be hindered—that the pantomimes be exhibited later, on nine days. There was talk of the pantomimes loved by his wife, as we have said above; but he cleared up all these things in his own letters. The same Marcus forbade men to ride in the cities on horses or in carriages, and did away with mixed bathing. He composed the dissolute morals of the matrons and of the noble youths. He removed the rites of Serapis from the vulgarity of Pelusia. There was a rumor, indeed, that under the appearance of philosophers certain men harassed the commonwealth and private persons, which he cleared away.

This was the custom of Antoninus, that he punished all crimes with a lesser penalty than they are wont to be punished by the laws, although sometimes he remained inexorable against the manifest and against those guilty of grave crimes. The capital cases of honorable men he himself heard, and indeed with the highest fairness, so that he reproached a praetor who had heard the cases of defendants too quickly, and ordered him to hear them again, saying that it concerned their dignity that they be heard by one who judged on behalf of the people. He kept equity also toward captured enemies, and settled countless of the tribes on Roman soil. He wrung a thunderbolt from heaven by his prayers against an engine of the enemy, and obtained rain for his own men when they labored with thirst. He wished to make Marcomannia a province, he wished also to make Sarmatia, and would have done so, had not Avidius Cassius rebelled at that same time in the East. And he proclaimed himself emperor, as some say, with Faustina willing it, who despaired of her husband's health. Others say that, the death of Antoninus having been falsely reported, Cassius proclaimed himself emperor, when he had called Marcus deified. And Antoninus indeed was not much moved by the defection of Cassius, nor did he rage against his kinsfolk. But Cassius was judged a public enemy by the senate, and his goods proscribed through the

public treasury. Leaving, therefore, the Sarmatian and Marcomannic war, he set out against Cassius. There were disturbances at Rome too, as if Cassius were approaching in the absence of Antoninus. But Cassius was at once killed, and his head was brought to Antoninus. Marcus, however, did not exult at the killing of Cassius, and ordered his head to be buried. Maecianus too, the partner of Cassius, to whom Alexandria had been entrusted, the army killed; for he had even made himself praetorian prefect, who himself also was killed. Against those privy to the defection he forbade the senate to punish severely, and at the same time requested that no senator be killed during the time of his principate, lest his rule be polluted. He ordered also those who had been deported to be recalled, when very few centurions had been punished with death. He pardoned too the cities which had consented to Cassius; he pardoned also the Antiochenes, who had said many things against Marcus on behalf of Cassius. From them he had taken away both the spectacles and the public assemblies and every kind of gathering, against whom he sent a most grievous edict. That they were seditious, the speech of Marcus too indicates, set down in Marius Maximus, which he used among his friends. In the end, he did not wish to see Antioch when he made for Syria; for he did not wish to see Cyrrhus either, from which Cassius was. Afterward, however, he saw Antioch. He was at Alexandria, dealing clemently with these people.

He did much with the kings and confirmed peace, all the kings and the legates of the Persians meeting him. To all the eastern provinces he was most dear. Among many he left traces of philosophy. Among the Egyptians he conducted himself as a citizen and a philosopher in all the gymnasia, temples, and places. And though the Alexandrians had said many things against Cassius that were auspicious, yet he pardoned all and left his daughter among them. He lost his Faustina, who breathed her last at the roots of Mount Taurus, in the village of Halala, from the force of a sudden disease. He requested from the senate that they decree honors and a temple to Faustina, and she was eulogized—although she had labored gravely under a reputation for unchastity, of which Antoninus either knew nothing or pretended to know nothing. He established new Faustinian girls in honor of his dead wife, and rejoiced that Faustina was even called deified by the senate—whom he had kept with him even in the summer quarters, in order to call her Mother of the Camps. He made the village in which Faustina died a colony, and built a temple to her there. But this temple was afterward dedicated to Heliogabalus. He allowed Cassius himself, out of clemency, to be killed; he did not order him to be killed. Heliodorus, the son of Cassius, was deported, and the others received a free exile with a part of their goods. The sons of Cassius, moreover, received even more than half of their father's patrimony, and were aided with gold and silver, the women too with ornaments—so that Alexandria, the daughter of Cassius, and Druncianus, his son-in-law, had free power of wandering, entrusted to the husband of their aunt. In the end he grieved that Cassius was destroyed, saying that he had wished to conduct his rule without senatorial blood.

The Eastern affairs being arranged, he was at Athens and attended the initiation rites of Ceres, in order to prove himself innocent, and entered the sanctuary alone. Returning to Italy by ship, he suffered a most grievous storm. Coming to Italy through Brundisium, he both assumed the toga himself and ordered the soldiers to be in togas; nor were the soldiers ever in war-cloaks under him. As he came to Rome, he triumphed; and from there he set out for Lavinium. He then joined Commodus to himself as colleague in the tribunician power, gave a largess to the people and marvelous spectacles; then he corrected many civil matters, and set a limit to the expense of the gladiatorial show. The opinion of Plato was always in his mouth, that states would flourish if either philosophers ruled or rulers philosophized. He joined his son in marriage to the daughter of Bruttius Praesens, the nuptials being celebrated after the example of private persons; wherefore he also gave a largess to the people. Then, having turned to finishing the war, he died in the administration of that war, his son's morals now slipping away from his own rule. For three years afterward he waged war with the Marcomanni, Hermunduri, Sarmatians, and Quadi too; and, if he had survived one year, he would have made provinces of them. Two days before he breathed his last, having admitted his friends, he is said to have shown the same opinion concerning his son which Philip held concerning Alexander, when he thought ill of him—adding that he bore it exceedingly ill to be leaving his son surviving him. For Commodus already showed himself base and bloody.

His death, moreover, was of this kind: when he had begun to be ill, he summoned his son and first asked of him that he not despise the remnants of the war, lest he seem to betray the commonwealth; and when his son answered him that he desired health first, he permitted him to do as he wished, yet asking that he wait a few days and not set out at once. Then he abstained from food and drink, desiring to die, and increased his illness. On the sixth day, having summoned his friends and laughing at human affairs, but despising death, he said to his friends: "Why do you weep for me and not rather think of the pestilence and of the death common to all?" And when they wished to withdraw, groaning he said: "If you now dismiss me, I bid you farewell, going on before you." And when it was asked of him to whom he commended his son, he replied: "To you, if he shall be worthy, and to the immortal gods." The army, having learned of his bad health, grieved most vehemently, because they loved him singularly. On the seventh day he grew worse and admitted only his son, whom he at once dismissed, lest the disease pass into him. The son being dismissed, he covered his head as if wishing to sleep, but in the night he breathed out his soul. It is reported that he wished his son to die, when he saw that he would be such as he proved after his death—lest, as he himself said, he be like Nero, Caligula, and Domitian.

It was charged against him that he advanced his wife's adulterers—Tertullus and Tutilius and Orfitus and Moderatus—to various honors, although he had caught Tertullus even lunching with his wife. Concerning whom a mime said on the stage, in the presence of Antoninus, when the fool asked of a slave the name of the wife's adulterer, and the slave said three times "Tullus," and the fool still kept asking, the slave replied: "I have already told you three times (ter): he is called Tullus." And about this indeed the people said much, and others too said much, blaming the patience of Antoninus. Before the time of his death, indeed, before he returned to the Marcomannic war, he swore on the Capitol that no senator had been killed with his knowledge, since he said that he would have preserved even the rebels, had he known. For he feared and deprecated nothing more than a reputation for avarice, from which he clears himself in many letters. They charged him also with the fault that he was insincere and not so simple as he seemed, or as either Pius or Verus had been. They charged him also with the crime that he confirmed the court's arrogance by removing his friends from common society and from his banquets. To his parents he decreed consecration; the friends of his parents, even the dead ones, he adorned with statues. He did not quickly trust those who canvassed for office, but always long sought out what was true. Fabia strove that, Faustina being dead, she might enter into marriage with him. But he took to himself a concubine, the daughter of his wife's procurator, lest he set a stepmother over so many children.