[69] As epitomised by Xiphilinus.
It must have been with a heavy heart that he set out once more for Germany to face the dangerous rising of the Quadi and Marcomanni. To obtain soldiers sufficient to fill up the vacancies in his army which had been decimated by the plague, he was forced to enrol slaves; and to obtain money he had to sell the ornaments of the palace, and even some of the Empress's jewels. Immediately before he started his heart was wrung by the death of his little boy, the twin-brother of Commodus, whose beautiful features are still preserved for us on coins. Early in the war, as he was trying the depth of a ford, he was assailed by the enemy with a sudden storm of missiles, and was only saved from imminent death by being sheltered beneath the shields of his soldiers. One battle was fought on the ice of the wintry Danube. But by far the most celebrated event of the war took place in a great victory over the Quadi which he won in A.D. 174, and which was attributed by the Christians to what is known as the "Miracle of the Thundering Legion."
Divested of all extraneous additions, the fact which occurred,--as established by the evidence of medals, and by one of the bass-relievi on the "Column of Antonine,"--appears to have been as follows. Marcus Aurelius and his army had been entangled in a mountain defile, into which they had too hastily pursued a sham retreat of the barbarian archers. In this defile, unable either to fight or to fly, pent in by the enemy, burned up with the scorching heat and tormented by thirst, they lost all hope, burst into wailing and groans, and yielded to a despair from which not even the strenuous efforts of Marcus could arouse them. At the most critical moment of their danger and misery the clouds began to gather, and heavy shows of rain descended, which the soldiers caught in their shields and helmets to quench their own thirst and that of their horses. While they were thus engaged the enemy attacked them; but the rain was mingled with hail, and fell with blinding fury in the faces of the barbarians. The storm was also accompanied with thunder and lightning, which seems to have damaged the enemy, and filled them with terror, while no casualty occured in the Roman ranks. The Romans accordingly regarded this as a Divine interposition, and achieved a most decisive victory, which proved to be the practical conclusion of a hazardous and important war.
The Christians regarded the event not as providential but as miraculous, and attributed it to the prayers of their brethren in a legion which, from this circumstance, received the name of the "Thundering Legion." It is however now known that one of the legions, distinguished by a flash of lightning which was represented on their shields, had been known by this name since the time of Augustus; and the Pagans themselves attributed the assistance which they had received sometimes to a prayer of the pious Emperor and sometimes to the incantations of an Egyptian sorcerer named Arnuphis.
One of the Fathers, the passionate and eloquent Tertullian, attributes to this deliverance an interposition of the Emperor in favour of the Christians, and appeals to a letter of his to the Senate in which he acknowledged how effectual had been the aid he had received from Christian prayers, and forbade any one hereafter to molest the followers of the new religion, lest they should use against him the weapon of supplication which had been so powerful in his favour. This letter is preserved at the end of the Apology of Justin Martyr, and it adds that, not only are no Christians to be injured or persecuted, but that any one who informed against them is to be burned alive! We see at once that this letter is one of those impudent and transparent forgeries in which the literature of the first five centuries unhappily abounds. What was the real relation of Marcus to the Christians we shall consider hereafter.
To the gentle heart of Marcus, all war, even when accompanied with victories, was eminently distasteful; and in such painful and ungenial occupations no small part of his life was passed. What he thought of war and of its successes is graphically set forth in the following remark:--
"A spider is proud when it has caught a fly, and another when he has caught a poor hare, and another when he has taken a little fish in a net, and another when he has taken wild boars or bears, and another when he has taken Sarmatians. Are not these robbers, when thou examinest their principles?" He here condemns his own involuntary actions; but it was his unhappy destiny not to have trodden out the embers of this war before he was burdened with another far more painful and formidable.
This was the revolt of Avidius Cassius, a general of the old blunt Roman type, whom, in spite of some ominous warnings, Marcus both loved and trusted. The ingratitude displayed by such a man caused Marcus the deepest anguish; but he was saved from all dangerous consequences by the wide-spread affection which he had inspired by his virtuous reign.
The very soldiers of the rebellious general fell away from him; and, after he had been a nominal Emperor for only three months and six days, he was assassinated by some of his own officers. His head was sent to Marcus, who received it with sorrow, and did not hold out to the murderers the slightest encouragement. The joy of success was swallowed up in regret that his enemy had not lived to allow him the luxury of a genuine forgiveness. He begged the Senate to pardon all the family of Cassius, and to suffer this single life to be the only one forfeited in consequence of civil war. The Fathers received these proofs of clemency with the rapture which they deserved, and the Senate-house resounded with acclamations and blessings.
Never had a formidable conspiracy been more quietly and effectually crushed. Marcus travelled through the provinces which had favoured the cause of Avidius Cassius, and treated them all with the most complete and indulgent forbearance. When he arrived in Syria, the correspondence of Cassius was brought to him, and, with a glorious magnanimity of which history affords but few examples, he consigned it all to the flames unread.