theory of Stoicism, and lived so abstemious and laborious a life, that he injured his health. It was from his Stoical teachers that he learned so many admirable lessons, to work hard, to deny himself, to avoid listening to slander, to endure misfortunes, never to deviate from his purpose, to be grave without affectation, delicate in correcting others, “not frequently to say to any one, nor to write in a letter, that I have no leisure,” nor continually to excuse the neglect of ordinary duties by alleging urgent occupations. Through all his Stoical training, Aurelius preserved the natural sweetness of his nature, so that he emerged from it the most lovable as well as the saintliest
of Pagans.Antoninus Pius reigned from 138 to 161 A.D., and the concord between him and his destined heir was so complete, that it is recorded that during these twenty-three years Marcus never slept oftener than twice away from the house of Pius. It is generally believed that Aurelius married Faustina in 146, at all events a daughter was born to him in 147. The two noblest of imperial Romans were associated both in the administration of the state and in the simple country occupations and amusements of the sea-side villa of Lorium, the birthplace of Pius, to which he loved to retire from the pomp and the wretched intrigues of Rome.
Antoninus Pius died of fever, 161 A.D., at his villa of Lorium at the age of seventy-five. As his end approached, he summoned his friends and the leading men of Rome to his bedside, and recommended to them Marcus, who was then forty years of age, as his successor, without mentioning the name of Commodus, his other adopted son, commonly called Lucius Verus. It is believed that the senate agreed with what appeared to be the wishes of the dying emperor, and urged Aurelius to take the sole administration of the empire into his hands. But at the very commencement of his reign, Marcus showed the magnanimity of his nature by admitting Verus as his partner in the empire, giving him the tribunitian and proconsular powers, and the titles Cæsar and Augustus. This was the first time that Rome had two emperors as colleagues. Verus proved to be a weak, self-indulgent man; but he had a high respect for his adoptive brother, and deferred uniformly to his judgment. Although apparently ill-assorted, they lived in peace; and Verus married Lucilla, the daughter of Aurelius. In the first year of his reign Faustina gave birth to twins, one of whom survived to become the infamous Emperor Commodus.
The early part of the reign of Aurelius was clouded by various national misfortunes: an inundation of the Tiber swept away a large part of Rome, destroying fields, drowning cattle, and ultimately causing a famine; then came earthquakes, fires, and plagues of insects; and finally, the unruly and warlike Parthians resumed hostilities, and under their king, Vologeses, defeated a Roman army and devastated Syria. Verus, originally a man of considerable physical courage and even mental ability, went to oppose the Parthians, but, having escaped from the control of his colleague in the purple, he gave himself up entirely to sensual excesses, and the Roman cause in Armenia would have been lost, and the empire itself, perhaps, imperilled, had Verus not had under him able generals, the chief of whom was Avidius Cassius. By them the Roman prestige was vindicated, and the Parthian war brought to a conclusion in 165, the two emperors having a triumph for their victory in the year following. Verus and his army brought with them from the East a terrible pestilence, which spread through the whole empire, and added greatly to the horrors of the time. The people of Rome seem to have been completely unnerved by the universal distress, and to have thought that the last days of the empire had come. Nor were their fears without cause. The Parthians had at the best been beaten, not subdued, the Britons threatened revolt, while signs appeared that various tribes beyond the Alps intended to break into Italy. Indeed, the bulk of the reign of Aurelius was spent in efforts to ward off from the empire the attacks of the barbarians. To allay the terrors of the Romans, he went himself to the wars with Verus, his headquarters being Carnuntum on the Danube. Ultimately, the Marcomanni, the fiercest of the tribes that inhabited the country between Illyria and the sources of the Danube, sued for peace in 168. The following year Verus died, having been, it is said, cut off by the pestilence which he had brought from Syria, although in that wicked age there were not wanting gossips malignant enough to say even of Marcus that he hastened his brother's death by poison.
Aurelius was thenceforth undisputed master of the Roman empire, during one of the most troubled periods of its history. Mr Farrar, in his Seekers after God, thus admirably describes the manner in which he discharged his multifarious duties:—“He regarded himself as being, in fact, the servant of all. It was his duty, like that of the bull in the herd, or the ram among the flocks, to confront every peril in his own person, to be foremost in all the hardships of war, and most deeply immersed in all the toils of peace. The registry of the citizens, the suppression of litigation, the elevation of public morals, the care of minors, the retrenchment of public expenses, the limitation of gladiatorial games and shows, the care of roads, the restoration of senatorial privileges, the appointment of none but worthy magistrates, even the regulation of street traffic, these and numberless other duties so completely absorbed his attention, that, in spite of indifferent health, they often kept him at severe labour from early morning till long after midnight. His position, indeed, often necessitated his presence at games and shows, but on these occasions he occupied himself either in reading, in being read to, or in writing notes. He was one of those who held that nothing should be done hastily, and that few crimes were worse than the waste of time.”
the death of his partner, two of the German tribes, the Quadi and the Marcomanni, renewed hostilities with Rome, and, for three years, Aurelius resided almost constantly at Carnuntum. that he might effectually watch them. In the end, the Marcomanni were driven out of Pauuonia. and were almost destroyed in their retreat across the Danube. In 174 Aurelius gained a decisive victory over the Quadi, to which a superstitious interest is attached, and which is commemorated by one of the sculptures on the Column of Antonine. The story is that the Roman army had been entangled in a defile, from which they were unable to extricate themselves, while at the same time they suffered intensely from thirst. In this extremity a sudden storm gave them abundance of rain, while the hail and thunder which accompanied the rain confounded their enemies, and enabled the Romans to gain an easy and complete victory. This triumph was universally considered at the time, and for long afterwards, to have been a miracle, and bore the title of “The Miracle of the Thundering Legion.” The Gentile writers of the period ascribed the victory to their gods, while the Christians attributed it to the prayers of their brethren in a legion to which, they affirmed, the emperor then gave the name of Thundering. Dacier, however, and others who adhere to the Christian view of the miracle, admit that the appellation of Thundering or Lightning (κεραυνοβόλος or κεραυνοφόρος) was not given to the legion because the Quadi were struck with lightning, but because there was
a figure of lightning on their shields. It has also been
