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.