Antonīnus
1.
Pius, or Titus Aurelius Fulvius Boionius
Antonīnus, a Roman emperor, A.D. 138-161, born near Lanuvium, A.D. 86,
adopted by Hadrian in 138, and succeeded the latter in the same year. The Senate conferred
upon him the title of
Pius, or “the dutifully
affectionate,” because he persuaded them to grant to his father Hadrian the
apotheosis and other honours usually paid to deceased emperors. The reign of Antoninus is
almost a blank in history—a blank caused by the suspension for a time of war,
violence, and crime. He was one of the best princes that ever mounted a throne, and all his
thoughts and energies were dedicated to the happiness of his people. He died in A.D. 161, in
his seventy-fifth year. He was succeeded by M. Aurelius, whom he had adopted, when he himself
was adopted by Hadrian, and to whom he gave his daughter Faustina in marriage.
2.
Marcus Annius (Verus) Aurelius, was born at Rome in the year A.D.
121. Upon the death of Ceionius Commodus, the emperor Hadrian turned his attention towards
Marcus Aurelius; but he being then too young for an early assumption of the cares of empire,
Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius, on condition that he in his turn should adopt Marcus
Aurelius. His father dying early, the care of his education devolved on his paternal
grandfather, Verus, who caused him to receive a general education; but philosophy so early
became the object of his ambition that he assumed the philosophic mantle when only twelve
years old. The species of philosophy to which he attached himself was the Stoic, as being
most connected with morals and the conduct of life; and such was the natural sweetness of his
temper that he exhibited none of the pride which sometimes attended the artificial elevation
of the Stoic character. This was the more remarkable, as all the honour and power that
Antoninus could bestow upon him became his own at an early period, since he was practically
associated with him in the administration of the Empire for many years. On his formal
accession to the sovereignty his first act was of a kind which at once proved his great
disinterestedness; for he immediately took Lucius Verus as his colleague, who had indeed been
associated with him by adoption, but who, owing to his defects and vices, had been excluded
by Antoninus from the succession, which, at his instigation, the Senate had confined to
Marcus Aurelius alone. Notwithstanding their dissimilarity of character, the two emperors
reigned conjointly without any disagreement. Verus took the nominal
guidance of the war against the Parthians, which was successfully carried on by the
lieutenants under him, and during the campaign married Lucilla, the daughter of his
colleague. The reign of Marcus Aurelius was more eventful than that of Antoninus. Before the
termination of the Parthian War, the Marcomanni and other German tribes began those
disturbances which more or less annoyed him for the rest of his life. Against these foes,
after the termination of hostilities with Parthia, the two emperors marched; but what was
effected during three years' war and negotiation, until the death of Verus, is little known.
The sudden decease of that unsuitable colleague by an apoplexy restored to Marcus Aurelius
the sole dominion; and for the next five years he carried on the Pannonian War in person,
without ever returning to Rome. During these fatiguing campaigns he endured all the hardships
incident to a rigorous climate and a military life with a patience and serenity which did the
highest honour to his philosophy. Few of the particular actions of this tedious warfare have
been fully described; although, owing to conflicting religious zeal, one of them has been
exceedingly celebrated. This was the deliverance of the emperor and his army from imminent
danger by a victory over the Quadi, in consequence of an extraordinary storm of rain, hail,
and lightning, which disconcerted the barbarians, and was, by the conquerors, regarded as
miraculous. The emperor and the Romans attributed the timely event to Iupiter Tonans; but the
Christians affirmed that God granted this favour on the supplications of the Christian
soldiers in the Roman army, who are said to have composed the Twelfth, or Meletine, Legion;
and, as a mark of distinction, we are informed by Eusebius that they received from an emperor
who persecuted Christianity the title of the “Thundering Legion.” The
date of this event is fixed by Tillemont as A.D. 174. The general issue of the war was that
the barbarians were repressed, but admitted to settle in the territories of the Empire as
colonists; and a complete subjugation of the Marcomanni might have followed had not the
emperor been recalled by the conspiracy of Avidius Cassius, who assumed the purple in Syria.
This usurper was quickly destroyed by a conspiracy among his own officers, and the clemency
shown by the emperor to his family was most exemplary. After the suppression of this revolt
he made a progress through the East, in which journey he lost his wife Faustina, daughter of
Antoninus Pius, a woman as dissolute as she was beautiful, but whose irregularities he never
seems to have noticed—a blindness or insensibility that has made him the theme of
frequent ridicule. While on this tour he visited Athens, and, like Hadrian, was initiated in
the Eleusinian Mysteries. His return to Rome did not take place until after an absence of
eight years, and his reception was in the highest degree popular and splendid. After
remaining in the capital for nearly two years, and effecting several popular reforms, he was
once more called away by the necessity of checking the Marcomanni, and was again successful,
but fell ill, at the expiration of two years, at Vindobona, now Vienna. His illness arose
from a pestilential disease which prevailed in the army; and it cut him off in the
fifty-ninth year of his age and nineteenth of his reign. His death occasioned universal
mourning throughout the Empire. Without waiting for the usual decree on the occasion
the Roman Senate and people voted him a god by acclamation, and his image was long afterwards
regarded with peculiar veneration.
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Marcus Aurelius. (Louvre.)
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Marcus Aurelius was no friend to the Christians, who were persecuted during the greater
part of his reign—an anomaly in a character so universally merciful and clement
that may be attributed to an excess of pagan devotion on his part, and still more to the
influence of the persons by whom he was surrounded. In all other points of policy and conduct
he was one of the most excellent princes on record, both in respect to the salutary
regulations he adopted and the temper with which he carried them into practice. Compared with
Trajan or Antoninus Pius, he possibly fell short of the manly sense of the one and the simple
and unostentatious virtue of the other—philosophy or scholarship on a throne always
more or less assuming the appearance of pedantry. The emperor was also himself a writer, and
his
Meditations (
Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν), in Greek
in twelve books, have descended to posterity. They are a collection of maxims and thoughts in
the spirit of the Stoic philosophy, which, without much connection or skill in composition,
breathe the purest sentiments of piety and benevolence. They were jotted down from time to
time in his leisure moments, and largely while he was in camp along the Danube during his
campaign against the Marcomanni. His theology, in general, seems pantheistic, the key-note
being the doctrine of a “natural unity,” including God, nature, and all
mankind.
Marcus Aurelius left one son, the brutal Commodus, and three daughters. Among the
weaknesses of this good emperor, his too great consideration for his son is deemed one of the
most striking; for, although he was unremitting in his endeavours to reclaim him, they were
accompanied by much erroneous indulgence, and especially by an early and ill-judged elevation
to titles and honours.
Good texts of the
Meditations are those of Gataker
(London,
1697) and Stich
(1882). See also the translation, with
notes, by Long
(1869); the French version by Pierron
(1878);
Renan's Marc-Aurèle (1882); and Watson's
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (N. Y., 1884).
3.
Bassiānus Caracalla. (See
Caracalla.)
4.
Liberālis. A mythological writer supposed to have lived
in the age of the Antonines, and to have been a freedman of one of them. He wrote a work
entitled
A Collection of Metamorphoses (
Μεταμορφωσέων
Συναγωγή), in forty-one chapters. Edition by Westermann
(Brunswick,
1839). See
Oder, De Antonino Liberali (1886).