- turbances—disfigured these happier reigns, or supplied material
which would arrest the attention of the writer and reader. It is mainly from side sources that we learn enough of the character and government of the Antonines to justify the unfeigned admiration which in all times has been given to these two good and great princes.
The title "Pius," which was bestowed on the elder Antoninus by the Senate at the beginning of his reign, and by which he is universally known, was well deserved. His unfeigned devotion to the ancient Roman religion, his reputation for justice and wisdom, for clemency and sobriety, his stern morality, the high example he ever set in his private and public life—were admirably expressed in this title. His great predecessors—Emperors such as Vespasian and Titus, Trajan and Hadrian, possessed each of them some of these distinguishing characteristics, but only some; the lives of these famous Emperors being all more or less disfigured by regrettable flaws.
But the title "Pius" in the first instance seems to have been given to the first Antonine owing to the universal admiration of his generous and devoted behaviour to his adopted father and predecessor Hadrian, whom he tenderly watched over during his last sad years of ever increasing sickness and terrible life-weariness, and whose memory he protected with a rare and singular chivalry, if we may venture to use a beautiful and significant word which belongs to a later period in the world's history.
The sources, whence we derive our too scanty knowledge of this almost flawless life, besides the notices and details preserved in the abbreviations of the contemporary chronicles we have spoken of, comprise the comparatively recently recovered letters of Fronto, a famous philosopher and man of letters to whom Antoninus Pius entrusted the principal share in the training of his adopted son and successor known in history as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and more especially the noble and touching estimate of his works and days contained in the singular and exquisite little book written by his adopted son Marcus, generally known as his "Meditations."
