“I am ready,” cried he, “to meet Avidius before the senate, and before you; and to yield him up the empire, without the effusion of blood, or striking a blow, if it shall be thought good for the people. But Avidius will never submit to such a tribunal; he who has been faithless to his benefactor can never rely upon any man’s professions. He will not even, in case of being worsted, rely upon me. And yet, my fellow-soldiers, my only fear is, and I speak it with the greatest sincerity, lest he should put an end to his own life; or lest some, thinking to do me a service, should hasten his death, the greatest hope that I have is to prove that I can pardon the most outrageous offences; to make him my friend, even in spite of his reluctance; and to show the world that civil wars themselves can come to a happy issue.” In the meantime Avidius, who well knew that desperate undertakings must have a speedy execution, endeavoured to draw over Greece to his assistance; but the love which all mankind bore the good emperor frustrated his expectations; he was unable to bring over a single city to espouse his interests. This repulse seemed to turn the scale of his former fortunes. His officers and soldiers began now to regard him with contempt; so that they at last slew him, in less than four months after their first revolt. His head was brought to the emperor, who received it with regret, and ordered it an honourable interment. The rest of the conspirators were treated with great lenity; some few of them were banished, but recalled soon after. This clemency was admired by some, and condemned by others; but the emperor little regarded the murmurs or the applause of the multitude; guided only by the goodness of his own disposition, he did what to him seemed right, content and happy in self-approbation. When some took the liberty of blaming his conduct, telling him that Avidius would not have been so generous had he been conqueror, the emperor replied in this sublime manner: “I never served the gods so ill, or reigned so irregularly, as to fear Avidius could ever be conqueror.”
AN IMPERIAL TOUR AND A TRIUMPH
[175-177 A.D.]
Though Avidius was no more, yet Aurelius was sensible that he had still some enemies remaining, whom he was willing to win over. He therefore took a journey into the East, where, in all places, he at once charmed them with his affability, raised their admiration by his clemency, instructed them by precept, and improved them by his example. The better to prevent such revolts for the future, he ordained that as Avidius was a native of the country in which he rebelled, no person, for the time to come, should command in the place where he was born. In this journey the empress Faustina was unexpectedly seized with a violent distemper, and died. She was a woman whose wanton life gave great scandal to the dignity of her station; however, her passive husband either could not or at least affected not to see her enormities, but willingly admitted the ill-deserved honours which the senate importunately decreed to her memory.
On his way to Rome he visited Athens, where he conferred many honours on the inhabitants, and established professors in all the sciences, with munificent salaries for their ease. Upon landing in Italy he quitted his soldier’s habit, as also did all his army, and made his entry into Rome in the gown which was worn in peace. As he had been absent almost eight years, he distributed to each citizen eight pieces of gold, and remitted all the debts due to the treasury for sixty years past. At the same time he nominated his son Commodus to succeed him in the empire, and made him a partner in his triumphal entry at the close of 176.[b]
At this time the senate erected an equestrian statue of Marcus, of which Merivale speaks in the following eloquent terms:
“Of all the Cæsars whose names are enshrined in the page of history, or whose features are preserved to us in the repositories of art, one alone seems still to haunt the eternal city in the place and the posture most familiar to him in life. In the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which crowns the platform of the Campidoglio, imperial Rome lives again. Of all her consecrated sights it is to this that the classical pilgrim should most devoutly repair; this of all the monuments of Roman antiquity most justly challenges his veneration. For in this figure we behold an emperor, of all the line the noblest and the dearest, such as he actually appeared; we realise in one august exemplar the character and image of the rulers of the world. We stand here face to face with a representative of the Scipios and Cæsars, with a model of the heroes of Tacitus and Livy. Our other Romans are effigies of the closet and the museum; this alone is a man of the streets, the Forum, and the Capitol. Such special prominence is well reserved, amidst the wreck of ages, for him whom historians combine to honour as the worthiest of the Roman people.”[l]
Besides this, a group of monuments expressive of their homage was erected in the Via Lata (a part of the Flaminian way) on the Field of Mars. The dedicatory inscription and some bas-reliefs have come down to us from a triumphal arch which was not destroyed until the year 1662; the most important of them being some bas-reliefs representing the apotheosis of Faustina. The marble column of Marcus Aurelius, in what is now the Piazza Colonna, is still standing. It measures 29.55 metres in height, inclusive of the base, capital, plinth and abacus, and consists of twenty-eight blocks. A spiral staircase of 190 steps go up in the interior, and the abacus was originally surmounted by a bronze statue of the emperor. Round the shaft, as in Trajan’s column, runs a spiral band of reliefs, containing twenty rows of figures one above the other, and representing the wars of the Romans against the tribes of the Danube. In design and execution, however, these sculptures, which were not finished until the reign of the emperor’s successor, fall far short of the excellence of the earlier work. The representation of motion is often exaggerated, the outlines and draperies are harsh and clumsy, and the profile of the relief is coarser than in Trajan’s column.
The statue was probably carried off by the Byzantine emperor, Constans II, in the year 663 A.D. The column was struck by lightning in 1589, and was restored by Pope Sixtus V, and surmounted by a statue of Paul the apostle in gilded bronze. A temple of Marcus Aurelius probably stood to the west of it, on what is now Monte Citorio.
[177-180 A.D.]