Verus

I know that very many have dedicated the life of Marcus and Verus to literature and to history in such a way that they gave Verus first to be made known to readers, following not the order of ruling but of living; but I, because Marcus began to reign first, then Verus, who died while Marcus survived, have believed that Marcus should be celebrated first and thereafter Verus. So then, Lucius Ceionius Aelius Commodus Verus Antoninus—who by the will of Hadrian was called Aelius, and by his union with Antoninus was called Verus and Antoninus—is placed neither among the good nor among the bad princes. It is established that he did not bristle with vices, nor abound in virtues; that he lived, moreover, not in his own free principate but under Marcus, in an empire of like and equal majesty, from whose discipline he differed by the wantonness of his manners and the excess of his looser life. For he was of a simple character and one who could disguise nothing. His natural father was Lucius Aelius Verus, who, adopted by Hadrian, was the first to be called Caesar, and, established in that same station, died. His grandfather and great-grandfather and likewise very many of his ancestors were of consular rank. Lucius was born at Rome during the praetorship of his father, on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of January—the day on which Nero too was born, who obtained the empire. His paternal origin was mostly from Etruria, his maternal from Faventia.

Born of this lineage, his father being adopted by Hadrian, he passed into the Aelian family; and when his father, the Caesar, died, he remained in Hadrian's family, by whom he was given to Aurelius to be adopted—since Hadrian had wished Pius to be his son and Marcus his grandson, providing sufficiently for posterity—and indeed on this condition, that Verus should receive the daughter of Pius, who, however, was given to Marcus, for this reason: that Verus still seemed unequal in age, as we have set forth in the Life of Marcus. He took as wife, however, Marcus' daughter Lucilla. He was reared in the house of Tiberius. He heard the Latin grammarian Scaurinus, son of Scaurus, who was Hadrian's grammarian; among the Greeks, Telephus and Hephaestion and Harpocration; the rhetoricians Apollonius, Caninius Celer, and Herodes Atticus; the Latin Cornelius Fronto; the philosophers Apollonius and Sextus. All these he loved uniquely, and was loved by them in turn; nor yet was he gifted for letters. He loved, however, in his boyhood to make verses, afterward speeches; and he is indeed said to have been a better orator than poet—nay, to speak more truly, a worse poet than rhetorician. Nor are there lacking those who say that he was aided by the talent of his friends, and that those very writings of his, such as they are, were by others; since he is said always to have had with him many eloquent and learned men. He had as tutor Nicomedes. He was self-willed and too cheerful and most becomingly suited to all delights, games, and jests. After his seventh year, transferred into the Aurelian family, he was shaped by Marcus' character and authority. He loved hunting, the wrestling-schools, and all the exercises of youth, and was a private man in the imperial house for twenty-three years.

On the day on which Verus received the toga of manhood, Antoninus Pius, on the occasion on which he was dedicating his father's temple, was generous to the people. The same man also sat in the middle, between Pius and Marcus, when as quaestor he gave a show to the people. After his quaestorship he was at once made consul with Sextius Lateranus. Some years later he was made consul a second time with his brother Marcus. For a long time, however, he was both a private man and lacked that distinction with which Marcus was adorned. For he neither sat in the senate before his quaestorship, nor was carried on a journey with his father, but with the prefect of the guard; nor was any other title of honor attached to him than that he was called the son of Augustus. He was studious too of the games of the circus, no otherwise than of the gladiatorial show. When he was being shaken by such great errors of delights and luxury, he seems to have been retained by Antoninus for this reason: that his father had ordered him to pass into the adoption of Pius in such a way that he should call him grandson. To him, so far as it appears, he showed loyalty, not love. Yet Antoninus Pius loved the simplicity of his character and the purity of his living, and exhorted him to imitate his brother also. When Pius had died, Marcus conferred everything upon him, the partnership too of imperial power being granted, and made him his consort, though the senate had conferred the empire on him alone.

The empire, then, being given, and the tribunician power granted, the honor of the consulships too being conferred, he ordered him to be called Verus, transferring his own name to him, since before he was called Commodus. Lucius indeed, repaying Marcus, if he undertook anything, was as obedient as a legate to a proconsul or a governor to an emperor; for first of all he spoke before the soldiers on behalf of both, and on account of the agreement of the empire he conducted himself gravely and after the manner of Marcus. But when he had set out into Syria, he was made infamous not only by the license of his looser life but even by adulteries and the loves of young men; since he is said to have been of such great luxury that even, after he returned from Syria, he set up a cook-shop at home, to which he would turn aside after Marcus' banquet, all kinds of base persons serving him. He is said too to have gamed at dice the whole night through, since he had conceived that vice in Syria, and to have been so great a rival of the vices of Gaius and Nero and Vitellius that he wandered at night through taverns and brothels, his head covered with a common traveler's hood, and reveled with rascals, started brawls, concealing who he was, and often returned beaten, with a bruised face, and was recognized in the taverns, though he hid himself. He used too to throw very large coins into the cook-shops, with which he broke the cups. He loved also the charioteers, favoring the Green. He held too the combats of gladiators rather frequently at his banquet, drawing out his dinners into the night and falling asleep on the dining-couch, so that, lifted with the bedding, he was carried into his bedchamber. He was of very little sleep and of most easy digestion.

But Marcus, knowing all these things well, dissembled them out of shame, that he might not reproach his brother. And his most notorious banquet indeed is reported to have been such, in which first twelve are said to have reclined—though there is the most well-known saying about the number of guests, that "seven make a banquet, but nine make a brawl." There were given the comely boys who served, to each guest; given too carvers and dishes to each one; given also living animals, of either tame or wild birds or quadrupeds, whose flesh had been set before them; given too cups to each, with each round of drinking—murrhine and crystal Alexandrian cups, as often as they drank. There were given also gold and silver and jeweled drinking-cups; crowns too were given, with golden ribbons interwoven and the flowers of an alien season; and vessels of gold with unguents in the shape of alabaster jars; and carriages with mules and muleteers, with silver fittings, that they might thus return from the banquet. The whole banquet is said to have been valued at six million sesterces. When Marcus heard of this banquet, he is said to have groaned and to have grieved over the public destiny. After the banquet they gamed with dice until daylight. And these things indeed after the Parthian War, to which Marcus is said to have sent him—either that he might not sin in the city before the eyes of all, or that he might learn frugality by traveling abroad, or that he might return more corrected through the fear of war, or that he might recognize that he was emperor. But how much he profited, both his other life and especially this dinner which we have related showed.

Of the games of the circus he had such great care that frequently from the province he both sent and received letters on account of the circus games; finally, even present and sitting with Marcus, he suffered many insults from the Blue partisans, because he most basely favored against them. For he had made a golden image of his Green horse Volucer, which he carried about with him; for which indeed he placed raisins and nuts in place of barley in the manger, and ordered it, covered with cloaks dyed with crimson, to be led to him into the house of Tiberius; and when it died, he made it a tomb on the Vatican. In honor of this horse it first began to be the case that golden coins or prizes were demanded for horses. In so great honor, moreover, was that horse, that a peck of gold pieces was often demanded for it by the people of the Green faction. As he was setting out to the Parthian War, Marcus accompanied him to Capua; and when from there he gorged himself through the villas of all, being seized by disease, he was ill at Canusium, whither his brother hastened to visit him. Many idle and base things in his life are uncovered even in time of war. For when, the legate being killed, the legions cut down, the Syrians plotting defection, the East was being laid waste, he was hunting in Apulia, and at Corinth and Athens was sailing amid concerts and songs, and lingered through each of the more renowned maritime cities of Asia, Pamphylia,

and Cilicia, dwelling among pleasures. After he came to Antioch, he indeed gave himself over to luxury, but his generals finished the Parthian War—Statius Priscus and Avidius Cassius and Martius Verus—over a four-year period, so that they reached Babylon and Media and recovered Armenia. And to him was acquired the name of Armeniacus, Parthicus, Medicus, which was conferred also on Marcus while he was living at Rome. Verus, however, passed the four years: the winter at Laodicea, the summer at Daphne, the rest of the time at Antioch. He was a laughingstock to all the Syrians, many of whose jokes spoken against him in the theater survive. He always admitted his home-born slaves into the dining-room at the Saturnalia and on festival days. Yet, urged by his companions, he set out to the Euphrates, following them. He returned also to Ephesus, to receive his wife Lucilla, sent by his father Marcus—and for this reason especially, lest Marcus should come with her into Syria and learn of his disgraceful deeds; for Marcus had said to the senate that he would conduct his daughter into Syria. The war indeed being finished, he gave the kingdoms to kings to rule, but the provinces to his companions. From there he returned to Rome for a triumph, unwillingly, because he was leaving Syria as if his own kingdom, and triumphed equally with his brother, the names which he had received in the army being taken up by the senate. He is said, moreover, at the bidding of a common mistress, to have put on a beard in Syria; whence many things were said against him by the Syrians.

It was his fate that he seemed to carry the plague with him into those provinces through which he returned all the way to Rome. And the pestilence is said to have arisen in Babylonia, where, from the temple of Apollo, out of a golden casket which a soldier had by chance cut into, a pestilent vapor escaped, and from there filled the Parthians and the world. But this was not by the fault of Lucius Verus but of Cassius, by whom, against faith, Seleucia—which had received our soldiers as friends—was stormed. Which indeed, among others, even Quadratus, the writer of the Parthian War, excuses, blaming the Seleucenes, who had first broken faith. Verus had this reverence for Marcus, that he shared with his brother the names which had been conferred on himself, on the day of the triumph which they celebrated together. Having returned from the Parthian War, Verus was of less regard toward his brother; for he both indulged his freedmen more dishonorably and arranged many things without his brother. To these was added that, as if he were leading some kings to a triumph, so he led actors out of Syria, the chief of whom was Maximinus, whom he called by the name of Paris. He built, moreover, a most notorious villa on the Clodian Way, in which for many days he himself reveled with great luxury, with his freedmen and his ill-matched friends, in whose presence there was no reverence; and he asked Marcus, who came, that he might show to his brother the venerable and imitable sanctity of his own character; and, residing five days in that same villa, he gave attention to continuous judicial inquiries, while his brother either feasted him or prepared banquets. He had also the actor Agrippus, whose surname was Memphius, whom too he had brought from Syria like a Parthian trophy, whom he named Apolaustus. He had brought with him also female lyre-players and flute-players and actors and mime-buffoons and jugglers and all kinds of slaves, on whose pleasure Syria and Alexandria are fed—so much so that he seemed to have finished not a Parthian but a theatrical war.

And that this diversity of life, and many other things, made quarrels between Marcus and Verus, the open truth did not show, but a hidden rumor had sown. But this was the chief matter: that, when Marcus had sent a certain Libo, his cousin, as legate into Syria, and that man bore himself more insolently than a modest senator, saying that he would write to his brother if he were in any doubt, and Verus, being present, could not endure it, and Libo had died of a sudden disease, with signs almost of poison present, it seemed to some—though not to Marcus—that he was thought to have been killed by Verus' treachery, which thing increased the rumor of quarrels. The freedmen had great power with Verus, as we said in the Life of Marcus—Geminas and Agaclytus, to whom, against Marcus' will, he gave the wife of Libo; finally, when the nuptials were celebrated by Verus, Marcus was not present at the banquet. Verus had also other base freedmen, Coedes and Eclectus and the rest, all of whom Marcus, after the death of Verus, cast off under the appearance of honor, Eclectus being retained, who afterward killed his son Commodus. To the German War—because Marcus was unwilling either to send Lucius to war without himself or to leave him in the city for the sake of his luxury—they set out together and came to Aquileia, and, against Lucius' will, crossed the Alps; while Verus at Aquileia only hunted and feasted, Marcus, however, looked after everything. Concerning that war, what was done through the envoys of the barbarians seeking peace, what through our generals, has been most fully discussed in the Life of Marcus. The war in Pannonia being settled, at Lucius' urging they returned to Aquileia; and because Lucius longed for the pleasures of the city, they hastened to the city. But not far from Altinum, suddenly in his carriage Lucius was seized by the disease which they call apoplexy, and, set down from the carriage, his blood being drawn, was conducted to Altinum, and, when he had lived three days mute, died at Altinum.

There was a report that he had even committed incest with his mother-in-law Faustina. And he is said to have been killed by the treachery of Faustina, his mother-in-law, oysters being sprinkled with poison, for this reason: that he had betrayed to her daughter the intimacy which he had had with the mother. Although even that tale which is set down in the Life of Marcus arose alien to the life of such a man, when many even assign the disgrace of his death to his wife, and for this reason: that Verus had indulged Fabia too much, whose power his wife Lucilla could not endure. So great indeed was the familiarity between Lucius and his sister Fabia, that rumor seized upon this too: that they entered into a plan to take Marcus out of life; and that, when this had been betrayed to Marcus by the freedman Agaclytus, Lucius was forestalled by Faustina, lest he should forestall. He was comely in body, cheerful in countenance, with his beard let down almost in barbarian fashion, tall and venerable, with his forehead drawn in toward the brows. He is said indeed to have had such great care of his fair hair that he sprinkled shavings of gold on his head, that his hair, made more brilliant, might grow fairer. He was rather impeded in his speech, most eager for dice, of a life always luxurious, and in most things a Nero, except for cruelty and mockery. He had, among his other apparatus of luxury, a crystal cup named Volucer, after the name of that horse which he loved, surpassing the measure of human drinking.

He lived forty-two years and reigned eleven years with his brother, and his body was carried into the tomb of Hadrian, in which his natural father, the Caesar, too was buried. Well known is the tale, which the life of Marcus does not admit, that Marcus held out to Verus a portion of a sow's womb smeared with poison, when he had cut it with a knife poisoned on one side. But it is monstrous that this should be thought of Marcus, although the things both contemplated and done by Verus deserve it. This we shall not leave in the middle, but, having cleared and refuted the whole, we reject it; since, even still, after Marcus, except for your clemency, Diocletian Augustus, not even flattery seems to have been able to fashion such an emperor.