Little soul, so tired and still,
Guest of this decaying flesh,
Whither, now, will thy flight be?
Pale and cold and reft of speech,
Never more to utter joke.
It was the note of the time-spirit, which was so strangely incarnated in Hadrian. He united in his person all the contradictions that were at strife in his era of change—asceticism and sensuality, public spirit and selfish sensibility, Stoicism and Cyrenaicism. He needed a stronger Empress. But the better spirit prevailed in him at the end, and the Stoics came to the throne.
CHAPTER X
THE WIVES OF THE STOICS
On the twenty-fifth of February, in the year 138, Hadrian had summoned the Senators to the palace. Verus was dead, and the whole world wondered on whom the erratic fancy of the ailing Emperor would rest next. Among the Senators was a distinguished, able, and amiable statesman and commander, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus, whose great merit had—as the long series of names implies—been richly rewarded by older relatives. He had been much consulted by Hadrian in his last years, and was respected by all. To the great relief of the Senate the wavering finger of the Emperor fell on this man, and he was acclaimed Cæsar. He attended Hadrian devotedly, prolonged the useless life which lingered between him and the throne, and—it was rumoured—saved many a noble head from execution in the last frenzies of Hadrian. Early in July that great traveller set out on his last journey, and Aurelius Antoninus—a name to which the Senate soon added the appellation of Pius—ascended the throne.
The new Empress of Rome was Annia Galeria Faustina, a matron in her thirty-fourth year, of an ancient and distinguished Italian family. It is of some interest to regard the extraction of Faustina. Through her the Imperial throne is about to pass once more to one of its most ignoble occupants, and Rome will sink rapidly from the reign of Marcus Aurelius to the riot of Commodus. The two opposing tendencies of Roman life meet in her family, and the Stoic succumbs to the Epicurean—or, rather, to the Sybaritic or Cyrenaic, for the gospel of Epicurus was one of dignity and sobriety. Rome might have said, in the later language of Goethe, as he depicted himself passing through a similar phase:
Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust.
One soul leaned to sloth, sensual and selfish indulgence: one, with larger horizon, was for temperance, vigour, and Imperial duty. The curious feature of this critical stage in the fortunes of Rome is that the two tendencies are developed within the same family, and the Stoic yields to the Sybarite. Annia Galeria Faustina was born of the same parents as the father of Marcus Aurelius, and was reared in the same atmosphere of old Roman virtue, or manliness, as the word signifies. The great-grandfather of Marcus Aurelius was Annius Verus, a Senator of great merit and of Spanish extraction. His son Annius Verus was twice consul, and both his sons in turn—the father and uncle of Marcus Aurelius—were promoted to the consulate. Everything we know of the family suggests a fine and sober patrician type, and confirms the beautiful picture of it given us by Marcus Aurelius in his “Meditations.”
The one element of possible weakness in the ancestry of the Faustinas and of Commodus is in the mother of Annia Galeria Faustina. Annius Verus had married Rupilia Faustina. Her family is obscure, and, though one must hesitate to trace to her this strain of weakness and vice on such slender grounds, one is disposed to believe that she was married for her beauty, and brought into that strong family the tainted germ which ripened in more than one of her descendants. It may, however, very well be that the strength of the stock was decaying—Marcus Aurelius himself was delicate—and its later descendants succumbed to the evil influences about them. A genealogical table will show how the fate of Rome hung on this family for more than a generation:—
