Part 24 (1/2)
[Footnote 78: This mausoleum, begun by Hadrian, is now the Castle of St.
Angelo.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Reverse of a bra.s.s Coin of Antoninus Pius.]
REIGN OF ANTONINUS PIUS, A.D. 138-161.
This excellent man was born at Lanuvium, September 19th, A.D. 86, but his family came from the town of Nemausis (Nismes), in Gaul. Soon after his accession to the empire he married his daughter Faustina to Marcus Aurelius, procured for him the tribunitian and proconsular power from the Senate, and made him his a.s.sociate in the labors of the government.
His tranquil and prosperous reign is the most pleasing period in the history of the Roman Empire. The world enjoyed a general peace, and the emperor endeavored, by every wise measure, to secure the prosperity of his subjects. Like Numa, to whom he has often been compared, Antoninus was the peacemaker between distant nations, who were accustomed to submit their differences to him, and to abide implicitly by his award.
He checked the persecutions to which the Christians had been exposed in former reigns, and to him Justin Martyr addressed his apology for Christianity. He watched carefully the conduct of the provincial governors, and applied the public revenues to founding schools, repairing roads and harbors, and encouraging every where industry and trade. When Asia and Rhodes were devastated by an earthquake, Antoninus expended large sums in relieving the sufferers by that calamity, as well as those who were reduced to indigence by the great fires which nearly destroyed Carthage, Narbonne, and Antioch, in A.D. 153. He appointed teachers of rhetoric in various cities of the empire, conferred honors and emoluments upon men of letters, and in A.D. 141 founded a charity-school for orphan girls, whom he styled _Puellae Alimentariae Faustinianae_, in memory of his wife Faustina, who had died the year before. Faustina, however, does not seem to have merited his esteem, and the emperor was well acquainted with her faults; yet he generously overlooked them while she lived, and upon her death paid unusual honors to her memory. His piety, his devotion to the national religion, and his various virtues, seem to have won for him universal love and veneration, and his successors during the next century a.s.sumed the name of Antoninus as their worthiest t.i.tle.
Antoninus made no attempt to extend the boundaries of the empire. The barbarous races who were now beginning to swarm upon the frontiers, the Germans and the Dacians, were held in check; and although the Brigantes made several inroads into Britain, they were defeated by A. Lollius, the Legate, in A.D. 141; and a wall of turf was raised beyond the former wall built by Agricola to check the incursions of the Caledonians. This peaceful reign, however, seems to have increased the general indolence of the people, and the martial spirit of the Roman soldiers declined in the idleness of their stationary camps. After a reign of twenty-three years, Antoninus died, March 7th, A.D. 161, in his villa at Lorium, aged seventy-five years.
REIGN OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS, A.D. 161-180.
He was succeeded by Aurelius, who was born at Rome A.D. 121. This prince is known as the Philosopher; and the wish of Plato that philosophers might be kings, or kings philosophers, seems to have been fulfilled at his accession. Aurelius had been from his youth a lover of truth. His morals and his intellect were trained by the purest and wisest men of his age. He had studied under Herodes Atticus and Cornelius Fronto, two famous rhetoricians, and also under the Stoic philosophers Junius Rusticus and Apollonius; and he had been constantly employed by his adopted father Antoninus as an a.s.sociate in all his useful and benevolent designs. His health was, however, delicate, and he now admitted to a share in the empire his adopted brother, L. Verus, who possessed a vigorous const.i.tution, but was addicted to licentious pleasures.
The general peace which had prevailed during the reign of Marcus Antoninus was forever pa.s.sed away, and the world was in future to be desolated by almost perpetual hostilities. The Parthian king Vologeses III. having invaded the eastern provinces, and cut to pieces a Roman legion, L. Verus was sent to oppose his advance; but upon arriving at Antioch, Verus remained there, plunged in dissipation, while his brave lieutenant Avidius Ca.s.sius drove back the Parthians, invaded Mesopotamia, destroyed Seleucia, and penetrated to Babylon. Another Roman general conquered Armenia, and restored the legitimate king Soaemus to his throne. At the close of the war, Verus, A.D. 166, returned to Rome, and triumphed. His army brought the plague with it from the East, which now desolated Italy and Rome. Many ill.u.s.trious men died; but the famous physician Galen (Claudius Galenus), who had come from Pergamus to Rome, was now enabled to exhibit his uncommon professional skill. This pestilence lasted for several years.
Verus died of intemperance A.D. 171, and Aurelius prevailed upon the Senate to rank him among the G.o.ds. He now marched against the Marcomanni, but was defeated in a great battle, and, in order to provide a new army, sold the imperial plate and jewels. He now took up a position at Sirmium (Sirmich), and endeavored to wear out the barbarians by skirmishes and sudden attacks, without venturing far from his strong-hold. At length, however, upon one occasion, having been drawn into a defile, the Roman army was relieved by a fierce storm of thunder and rain, which terrified the barbarians. Tradition attributes this sudden storm to the prayers of a Christian legion. The barbarians now submitted, and withdrew beyond the Danube.
Soon after, an insurrection broke out in Syria, where Avidius Ca.s.sius, at the instigation, it is said, of the emperor's wife Faustina, had proclaimed himself emperor. But Ca.s.sius, by his severity, disgusted his own soldiers, and was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a centurion. Aurelius lamented this event, since it deprived him of an opportunity of showing clemency to an erring friend. He at once set out for the East, and there freely forgave all those who had conspired against him. He took the young family of Ca.s.sius under his protection, and ordered the papers of that officer to be destroyed, lest they might disclose the names of the conspirators. Faustina, who had accompanied her husband to Cilicia, died soon after, it is said, by her own hand.
It is remarkable that this philosophic emperor should have permitted a cruel persecution of the Christians in A.D. 177, perhaps at the instigation of the Stoic philosophers--the only blot upon his general humanity and benevolence. Among the victims of this persecution was Justin Martyr, the author of the Apologies for Christianity, addressed to Antoninus, as well as to Aurelius himself. Toward the close of his reign, having become convinced of the falseness of the charges made against the Christians, Aurelius became once more tolerant and philosophic.
In A.D. 176 the emperor triumphed at Rome for his various successes. He gave a donation of eight pieces of gold to every citizen, and made his son Commodus his colleague. In the mean time the barbarians in the interior of Europe, moved by a general impulse, began to press upon the frontiers of the empire, and from this time seem never to have ceased their inroads until the final destruction of the Roman power. Aurelius marched, A.D. 177, to the frontier, defeated the barbarians in various engagements, and had perhaps proved the savior and second founder of Rome, when he was seized with a fever at Vindobona (Vienna), A.D. 180, and died after a few days' illness. He was the last of the Roman emperors who labored for the welfare of his people. He was, no doubt, the greatest and wisest of them all, and he united the different talents of a man of learning, a fine writer, a skillful soldier, and a benevolent, judicious ruler. His ”Meditations,” which have made him known to posterity, are among the most delightful productions of the human intellect, while his private character seems to have been no less attractive than his writings.
REIGN OF M. COMMODUS ANTONINUS, A.D. 180-192.
The depraved Commodus succeeded his virtuous father at the age of twenty. He had been educated with singular care, but was wholly given up to coa.r.s.e sensuality. The people, however, still hoped that he might be worthy of his father, and received him, upon his accession, with loud expressions of joy. For a short time he concealed his true disposition; but his sister Lucilla, jealous of her brother's wife Crispina, formed a conspiracy against him in A.D. 182, and he escaped with difficulty from the hand of the a.s.sa.s.sin. From this moment he threw off all disguise, and indulged his natural vices without restraint. He put to death the most ill.u.s.trious men of the time, encouraged informers and false accusations, and filled Rome with terror. In the midst of these cruelties he often sang, danced, or played the buffoon in public, fought as a gladiator in the circus, and ordered the people to wors.h.i.+p him as a second Hercules. His lieutenant Marcellus, in A.D. 184, defeated the Caledonians, after they had pa.s.sed the long wall of Hadrian, and had ravaged the northern part of Britain; and in A.D. 191 an invasion of the Frisians was repelled. Commodus, however, paid no attention to the affairs of the empire. In A.D. 189 Italy suffered from a pestilence and famine, when the people of Rome rose against the emperor's praefect, Cleander, and tore him to pieces. Commodus still continued his murders, and was at last a.s.sa.s.sinated by the directions of his mistress, Marcia, whose death he had resolved upon. He died December 31st, A.D. 192. The Senate ordered his memory to be held infamous, and his body to be dragged by iron hooks through the streets, and then to be thrown into the Tiber; but his successor Pertinax prevailed that it should be placed in the mausoleum of Hadrian. Such was the son of Marcus Aurelius.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Commodus.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Pertinax.]
CHAPTER XLII.
FROM PERTINAX TO DIOCLETIAN. A.D. 192-284.
Pertinax, an aged senator of consular rank, and now Praefect of the city, was summoned by the conspirators, who came to his house late at night, after the murder of Commodus, to ascend the vacant throne. He was one of the few friends and ministers of Marcus Aurelius who yet survived, and, having filled many important offices, had always been distinguished for firmness, prudence, and integrity. The rumor was spread that Commodus had died of apoplexy, and that Pertinax had succeeded him; but the Praetorian Guards were dissatisfied at his election. The Senate, however, confirmed the choice of the conspirators, and Pertinax lived among his own order rather as an equal than a master. His manners were simple, his mode of life frugal, and he sought to revive the pleasing simplicity of the early Republic.
Pertinax administered justice with strictness, released those who had been left in prison by Commodus, reformed the finances and introduced economy, redivided the uncultivated lands among those who would till them, removed oppressive restrictions upon trade, and deserved the respect of the wiser portion of his subjects.
But the Praetorians were never reconciled to his rule, and on the 28th of March, A.D. 193, eighty-six days after his election, they broke into the imperial palace, and struck down the emperor with innumerable blows.
His head was separated from his body, and, being placed upon a lance, was carried in triumph to the Praetorian camp, while the people silently lamented the death of this virtuous ruler.
The soldiers, meanwhile, proclaimed from the ramparts of their camp that the throne of the world would be sold at auction to the highest bidder.
Didius Julia.n.u.s, a wealthy Senator, whose age had not quenched his vanity and ambition, offered about a thousand dollars to each man for the possession of the prize. He was declared emperor, and, surrounded by the armed Praetorians, was carried to the Senate, who were forced to accept the selection of the soldiers. But the Senators and the people felt deeply the disgrace of their country, and even the Praetorians were ashamed of their unworthy choice. Julia.n.u.s found himself on the throne of the world without a friend.