The Castle of St. Angelo in 1490
The Meeting of St. Ursula and the Pope
From the painting by Carpaccio,
In the Academy of Fine Arts, Venice
St. Ursula and her bridegroom are kneeling to receive the benediction of the Pope, who stands in the foreground, his train of cardinals and bishops stretching behind him. This ancient castle is intimately connected with the criminal history of Rome from the earliest days, by turns a tomb, a chapel, a prison and a fortress.
says Gibbon, “are probably the only periods of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.” Antoninus Pius “has been justly denominated a second Numa. The same love of religion, justice and peace was the distinguishing characteristic of both princes. But the situation of the latter opened a much larger field for the exercise of these virtues. Numa could only prevent a few neighbouring villages from plundering each other’s harvests; Antoninus diffused order and tranquillity over the greater part of the earth.... In private life he was an amiable as well as a good man. The native simplicity of his virtue was a stranger to vanity and affectation. He enjoyed with moderation the conveniences of his fortune and the innocent pleasures of society; he was fond of the theatre and not insensible to the charms of the fair sex, and the benevolence of his soul displayed itself in a cheerful serenity of temper.”
The manner of his death was of a piece with his life. He had fallen ill at his villa and “after ordering the golden statue of fortune to be transferred to his successor, he gave the countersign ‘Equanimity’ to the tribune of his guard, turned over as to sleep and passed calmly out of life at the ripe age of seventy-four—a cheerful, dignified man, the calm and noble philosopher, the generous and clement ruler, who said to himself ‘Malle se unum civem servare quam mille hostes occidere.’ ‘I had rather save one citizen than kill a thousand enemies.’ ”
At the death of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius took Lucius Verus into partnership with him as emperor. This Lucius Verus was the son of the Ælius Verus already mentioned, who died prematurely. Lucius married Lucilla, the eldest daughter of Antoninus Pius. He was a vicious, unworthy creature, sunk in dissipation and self-indulgence, but he possessed one cardinal virtue, that of dutiful reverence for his wiser colleague, to whom he willingly abandoned the onerous cares of ruling. He was wholly unlike his colleague, being entirely given over to luxury and ease, averse to strenuous labour, a fop and voluptuary; he dressed extravagantly, sprinkled his hair with gold dust and took his midday siesta on a couch stuffed with rose leaves, with lilies strewn over him. He prefigured that notorious sybarite Heliogabalus, who liberally rewarded the inventor of a new sauce, and if it failed to please him, ordered its author to eat nothing else until he had discovered another more agreeable to the imperial palate. The highest aim of Lucius Verus seemed to be the concoction of a pasty which should become a favourite dish at the imperial table. Nevertheless, when occasion arose he acquitted himself well as a soldier, showing courage and skill as a leader in the field. Marcus Aurelius, to wean him from his consuming passion for debauchery, employed him at the head of the Pannonian legions at a distance from Rome, but after the few first successes, his vicious cravings regained their ascendency, and this although Marcus Aurelius surrounded him with wise senators and competent comrades. Lucius Verus preferred to leave the conduct of operations to his generals. While they won victories in the East, he went slowly through Greece and Lesser Asia dancing and feasting and revelling at Corinth, Athens, and the various pleasure-loving cities he found by the way. He spent his summers at Daphne and his winters at Laodicea. The dissolute life he lived in Syria was checked but not cured by his marriage with Lucilla, who came to Ephesus to meet him: he still loved his old debauched life; passed whole nights at the gaming table or in rambling through the streets disguised, frequenting the lowest haunts or the worst quarters. He was passionately devoted to the sports of the circus and was a noted chariot driver. An ardent worshipper of horses, he was fond of feeding a favourite horse with raisins and nuts. He took the horse everywhere with him, gorgeously bedecked with purple trappings, until its death, when he buried it with great solemnity in the Vatican and raised a golden statue to its memory. When he returned from the East he was accompanied by a train of actors, musicians and buffoons, and shared a great triumph and all its attendant honours, to which he had no claim, with his brother emperor. He brought also from the East the pestilence we now know as the plague, which ravaged Rome and greatly weakened the Roman army. Lucius Verus died suddenly of apoplexy on his return from a campaign against the Marcomanni which had been far from successful. Beyond doubt he paid the last penalty for his excesses which had become more and more shameless and ungovernable. Marcus Aurelius strongly disapproved of his conduct but did not go beyond silent reproof; he must be quite exonerated from the charge that was laid against Lucilla, who was said to have poisoned her worthless husband from shame at his misconduct, not unmixed with jealousy of Faustina, the base wife of Marcus Aurelius, whose amours were barefaced and innumerable. Lucius Verus died at Altinun in Venetia, but his ashes were brought to Rome for interment in the mausoleum of Hadrian.
Marcus Aurelius afterwards reigned alone, and with prudent energy faced successfully many serious trials,—insurrections in distant provinces, pestilence at home, inundations and earthquakes which devastated large sections of the Imperial City and ruined the great granaries on which depended the food supply of the teeming population. Fierce, intractable enemies threatened the empire closely and persistently throughout his life. Although by predilection a man of peace, he was a resolute soldier who fought many strenuous campaigns and brought many savage races into absolute submission. He could act with the sternest severity, but he showed extraordinary magnanimity to one insubordinate lieutenant, and treated rebellious provinces with extreme gentleness. He was so mild and merciful that under no provocation did he lose his temper, and his humanity showed itself in his concern for his fellow creatures; even for the gladiators whom he would not allow to practise fencing with sharp swords. His labours were incessant; his campaigns most arduous. For eight successive winters he warred upon the frozen banks of the Danube, and seriously injured his originally weak constitution by the hardships and unending anxieties he endured.
With all his great achievements and the conspicuous services he rendered to his country, his fame rests mainly on that delightful book of meditations embodying his serene philosophy which is still read and admired by the whole world. This “noblest, wisest, purest, most virtuous and self-denying gentleman that ever in any age wore the imperial robes,” died at Vienna A.D. 180, after a reign of twenty years. He met death quietly and with dignity, not as a calamity but as a blessing: “Turn me to the rising sun for I am setting,” he said to his attendants, and covering his head he composed himself for sleep. No man bore crosses with more fortitude and no man was more sorely tried.
Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius, lives in history as the most abandoned of her sex, and his son, Commodus, although educated with the utmost solicitude, was one of the most glaring instances of wasted effort. “The monstrous vices of the son,” says Gibbon, “have cast a shade on the purity of the father’s virtues.” It has been said that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy, when he chose a successor in his own family rather than in the republic. Nothing, however, was neglected by the anxious father, and by the men of virtue and learning whom he summoned to his assistance, to expand the narrow mind of young Commodus, to correct his growing vices and to render him worthy of the throne for which he was designed. But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous. The distasteful lesson of a grave philosopher was, in a moment, obliterated by the whisper of a profligate favourite, and Marcus himself blasted the fruits of this laboured education by admitting his son at the age of fourteen or fifteen to a full participation of the imperial powers. Yet Commodus was not as he has been represented, a tiger, born with an insatiate thirst for human blood and capable from his infancy of the most inhuman actions. “Nature had formed him of a weak rather than a wicked disposition. His simplicity and timidity rendered him the slave of his attendants, who gradually corrupted his mind. His cruelty, which at first obeyed the dictates of others, degenerated into habit and at length became the ruling passion of his soul.” He was wasteful and weakly extravagant, prodigal in his expenditure on his personal amusements, especially in gladiatorial exhibitions in which he himself engaged. He liked to pose as the Roman Hercules, and entered the arena to slay ostriches and panthers, the camel, leopard, elephant and the rhinoceros; he fought hundreds of times as a retiarius in combat with a secutor and stooped to receive a salary from the common fund for the gladiators in proof of his preëminence. He was slavishly fond of singing, dancing and playing the buffoon; he was a glutton and profligate who wallowed in the most sensuous abominations, and after the life of this monster and madman had been threatened by many plots, he was at last poisoned in his own palace by Marcia, his mistress, who, finding the drug too slow in action, caused him to be strangled by one of his gladiators. His body was refused burial by the Senate and thrown into the Tiber, but the Emperor Pertinax recovered it and had it secretly conveyed to the mausoleum. The memory of Commodus was branded with eternal infamy; it was ordered that his honours should be reversed; his titles erased from the public monuments; his statues thrown down; his body dragged with a hook into the stripping room of the gladiators and exposed to public contumacy.
The last occasion on which the tomb was used was for the interment of the Emperor Septimus Severus A.D. 211, an able, vigorous and just ruler who fought his way to the throne against two competitors; all three of them were generals of armies which supported their pretensions. Severus was at the head of the Pannonian legions, and occupied the country between the Danube and the Adriatic. He was nearest to Rome, so that, by using almost incredible expedition, he made successful head against his competitors, and was the first to advance and seize the city. He secured his position by many acts of cruelty, but when once safe, governed with justice and showed himself a man of character. He took Marcus Aurelius for his model, and was devoted to philosophy and study, but not averse to war. His last campaign was in Britain, and he undertook it in the vain hope of putting an end to the fierce quarrels existing between his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, who hated each other almost from birth. They were both poor commonplace creatures, devoid of talent and implacably jealous of each other, although their father treated them with studied impartiality and associated both with him on the throne so that Rome had three emperors at one and the same time. He carried both sons with him into Britain, where at an advanced age and suffering acutely from gout, he laid himself out for the complete conquest of the islands, even to their most northern extremities, but death overtook him at York. His remains were taken back to Rome to be honoured with a magnificent funeral and his ashes were laid in Hadrian’s tomb.