Other parts of the legend are just as vulnerable. Thus it is said that Faustina poisoned Verus when he boasted to his wife of his relations with her. He died a very natural death, as we shall see later. On the other hand, Dio, who lived shortly afterwards, and had no dislike for scandal, knows nothing whatever about this looseness on the part of the Empress, and there is nothing in Eutropius or Aurelius Victor. The only other writer who, in a general way, accuses Faustina of dissoluteness is the Emperor Julian (“Cæsars,” c. 28). We are therefore in a dilemma, and must not too readily speak of Faustina as a second Messalina. The quiet assumption of her guilt in Julian, and the fact that the stories in the “Augustan History” are professedly taken from Marius Maximus, an historical writer not far removed from her time, imply a very general belief in her guilt. In one place Capitolinus says (c. 23) that the Emperor “cleared her by his letters” of the charge of loose behaviour with actors, and in another represents him as saying, when he is urged to divorce her on account of her vices: “If we send away the wife, we must give up her dowry,” though the Empire could hardly be called Faustina’s dowry. In a third place, however, Capitolinus leaves it open whether Marcus “was ignorant of, or ignored,” his wife’s misconduct. For many writers, in fact, the attitude of Marcus is decisive. If such things had been done he must have known, and, with such knowledge, he could not have spoken so highly of his wife in his “Meditations,” and would not have dared to set up, in her memory, an altar on which the maidens of Rome should offer sacrifice before marriage.
The scale, in truth, is somewhat evenly balanced, yet one cannot easily conceive that the heavy charges of Marius Maximus and the deliberate verdict of Julian had no foundation. Whether from weakness, or from an excess of casuistry, Marcus Aurelius lacked decision or penetration in such matters. He married his daughter to a profligate, whom he afterwards deified, and he committed the Empire to a son who had given early promise of vice. His grave and ascetic ways probably repelled the gay and beautiful woman whom he had diplomatically married, and she seems to have sought relief. None of the busts, medallions, or coins, which more or less convey an image of her to us, suggest character or culture, but rather a weak control and a sensuous temper. From her Commodus derived the enfeebled will that put him at the mercy of his more dissolute courtiers, and the sensuality that made his short reign an indescribable debauch. Much as we should like to relieve Marcus Aurelius of the shame of having begotten such a monster, we must admit his parentage, and cast what blame there is on the mother.
In this unsatisfactory haze we must leave the conduct of the Empress during the years in which her husband wrought for the safety of the Empire, bequeathed his austere reflections to later ages, or contemplated the golden images of his teachers in his lararium. The triumphant return of Verus was quickly followed by years of gravest anxiety. In the pestilential East the legions had absorbed the germs of plague, had strewn them along their route, and had now disseminated them throughout Rome. Thousands of victims, rich and poor, succumbed to the subtle malady. Marcus vainly summoned the ministers of every religion and the medical men of all schools, and sacrificed those obscure Christians on whom popular anger was ever ready to visit a calamity. His trouble increased when it was announced that the fierce Marcomanni of the north had burst into the Empire, and were driving the Romans before them. With great energy he mustered the demoralized legions in the north, and set out with Verus against the enemy. In the middle of the war (168) Verus, who had repeatedly tried to return to the comfort of the capital, died. He had an apoplectic fit on the journey, and we may ignore the various suggestions that either Lucilla, or Faustina, or Marcus put an end to his useless career.
Marcus continued for several years the task of settling the frontier tribes. It seems that Faustina went with him on these arduous campaigns, though whether we may see in the circumstance any merit on her part, or a device of the Emperor to control her conduct, it is impossible to say. She at least earned a title—“Mother of the Camps” and “Mother of the Legions”—which is found on few coins of the Empresses. It is probable that her disorders belonged to an earlier date, before and in the early part of the Emperor’s reign. It is chiefly at Gaeta, the pretty bay on the coast where many Romans had villas, that Capitolinus places her familiarity with gladiators and sailors. Possibly the sobriety of her later years was accepted by her husband as an expiation, and held to justify his eulogy of her.
Those later years were full of trouble and anxiety. Not only did two of their children die, and their daughter Lucilla become the widow of a notorious profligate, but the gods seemed to have entered upon a contest with the virtue of Marcus Aurelius. A great earthquake shook the East, the plague left a blackened trail over the Empire and infested the camps, and other disasters were crowded into a few years. The treasury ran short, and Marcus was obliged to put up the Imperial treasures at auction to obtain funds for carrying on the war. His one consolation was that the Eastern frontier was tranquil, yet in the year 175 a messenger came to announce that his great general, Avidius Cassius, was in revolt, and claimed the Empire.
Verus, who must have felt the scorn of the stronger man, had warned Marcus years before that Cassius was dangerous, but the actual revolt is persistently connected in the chronicles with Faustina. Cassius had ambition, and had only been prevented by his father in earlier years from rising against Antoninus Pius. In 174 or 175, it is said by Dio, he received a message from Faustina, proposing that, in the event of Marcus dying, he should marry her, and occupy the throne. Shortly after this a false message reached him that Marcus was dead, and he at once announced to the legions that he assumed the Empire. The message was quickly contradicted, but Cassius thought it too late to retire, and he prepared for a struggle. Marcus sadly moved towards the East. Before he had gone far, however, he learned that the soldiers, who hated Cassius for his rigour, had put him to death.
The position of Faustina is once more in grave ambiguity. The writer on Cassius in the “Historia Augusta” gives the rumour implicating her, but rejects it. Unfortunately, his rejection is in this case no more weighty than his acceptance in others. He admits that his source, Marius Maximus, believes Faustina guilty, and ascribes it to “a wish to defame” the Empress. Except that the hatred of Commodus at Rome may have for some time been extended to the woman who had borne him, there is no clear reason why Maximus should calumniate Faustina. Dio, who lives very close to the time, gives it as a positive fact that Faustina secretly urged Cassius to marry her, and occupy the throne, if Marcus died. We may concur in the verdict of most of the writers on the matter. Marcus was ailing, delicate, and overburdened with work. It seemed to Faustina that he would not live long, and, as Commodus was a callow and unpromising youth, and by no means sure of succession, she sought an arrangement by which she should remain on the throne if her husband died.
It is not generally felt that there was anything gravely reprehensible in this, but a secret negotiation of such a character does not present her to us in an attractive light. Her subsequent zeal for the punishment of Cassius and his friends is equally unpleasant, even if we recall that she had no intention of raising him against the Emperor while he lived. Several letters which passed between Marcus and Faustina have been preserved in the “Historia Augusta,” from Marius Maximus, and there seems to be little ground to doubt their genuineness. They suggest that Marcus was in the habit of consulting with Faustina on matters of grave importance. “Come up to the Alban Mount,” he writes her, after telling of the sedition, “and by the favour of the gods, we will discuss the affair in safety.” Faustina replies:
“I will set out to-morrow for the Alban Mount, as you command, but I at once implore you, if you love your children, to visit these rebels with the utmost severity. The soldiers and their leaders have fallen into evil ways, and they will crush us if we do not coerce them.”
In another letter she presses him again: