After his return to Rome Marcus Aurelius was once more at leisure to prosecute zealously the affairs of peace, for which he had so great a liking. The administration was admirable, its only defect being that the mildness of the emperor’s disposition inclined him to laxity in dealing with the governors of the senatorial provinces. Apart from certain other matters (such as the matter of the Italian magistrates and the judicial powers of the high imperial officials at Rome), the care of the alimentary institution was the object of his peculiar interest. It is not improbable (though open to question) that at this time he placed this institution under the charge of a consular alimentary prefect specially appointed. The work hitherto done by the district prefects was handed over to the Italian magistrates, and the curators of the highways were commissioned, on the one hand, to guard against exactions on the part of customs officials, and on the other, to superintend the Italian grain markets and arrange for the supply and sale of corn.
The serious financial straits in which the empire was involved during the critical years of the war on the Danube were not without their effect on the alimentary institution. The emperor had already allowed the weight of the gold piece to fall to 7.3 gr. and the proportion of alloy in the denarius to rise to 25 per cent.; and he seems now to have found it necessary to call in from the landowners the capital set aside for the support of the institution and to divert the interest to the public treasury; a precedent which was hereafter to prove very injurious. Nevertheless Marcus Aurelius was so able an economist that no later than the year 176 he was able to relieve the burdens of the nation by the remission of all debts and arrears due to the public treasury (for a period of forty-six years). Meanwhile the population of the capital was gratified by repeated donations of money and corn during the lean years.
The emperor endeavoured to modify the sanguinary character of the gladiatorial shows by requiring the combatants to have buttons on their foils, and the appointment of a prætor tutelaris was a proof of his special care for interests of minors. Moreover, while following the levelling policy of his two predecessors in the extension of Latin and Roman citizenship to all parts of the empire, he was careful to lay the foundation of a more accurate knowledge of the statistics of his dominions.[m]
“Amid these records of gentleness and forbearance,” says Miss Zimmern, “it seems strange to read that Marcus Aurelius permitted a cruel persecution of the Christians. Among the victims of this reign were Justin Martyr and Polycarp, and numbers suffered in a general persecution of the churches at Lyons and Vienna. It must not, however, be forgotten that the persecution was political rather than religious. Of the true teaching of Christianity Marcus Aurelius knew little and cared less; but its followers, in refusing to acknowledge a religion which included the emperors among its deities, became rebels against the existing order of things, and therein culpable.”[n]
The well-meant labours of Aurelius were interrupted by grievous calamities. In Asia, earthquakes were a veritable scourge; and the year 178 in particular was marked by frightful destruction on the Ionian coasts, especially at Samos, Chios, Miletus, and the magnificent city of Smyrna. Liberal assistance was sent to the last-named place at the entreaty of P. Ælius Aristides (born 117 or 129) of Adriani in Bithynia.
But the emperor’s gravest anxieties were for the future. The hand of death had lain heavy on his family, nor was the heir-presumptive to the throne a son likely to rejoice his father’s heart. Marcus Lucius Ælius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus was born at Lanuvium on August 31, 161, and invested with the title of Cæsar on October 12, 166. But the boy was ill-endowed by nature, and the efforts of his father, and of the other able men about him (such as Cornelius Fronto, and Galen, the famous physician, who had lived in Rome from 169 onwards as his physician in ordinary, and died about 200 A.D.) were unsuccessful in fitting him for the duties of his high station. Commodus, though by no means free from evil tendencies, was not exactly vicious, but he was stupid, timid, lacking in initiative, and therefore likely to be swayed by his immediate surroundings. This was not the kind of man the empire needed at this juncture. Nevertheless, Marcus Aurelius could not summon up resolution enough to exclude him from the succession. On the contrary, Commodus was invested with tribunician authority in the year 177, and in order to secure his succession he was called upon, thus early, to take his place at his father’s side as augustus.
LAST CAMPAIGNS AND DEATH OF AURELIUS
The whole imperial power was only too soon to pass into the hands of this sinister being. The middle Danube, where Pertinax had been in command and had been succeeded, on his appointment to the governorship of Mœsia, by the two Quintilii, was the centre of constant disorders. The German tribes were inflamed afresh by the exaction of the hard conditions of peace, and by the year 177 the flames of war had burst forth again. In 178 Marcus Aurelius was once more forced to take the field in person. He therefore married his son to Crispina, daughter of the consular Caius Bruttius Præsens (if, indeed, the marriage had not taken place in the previous year), and set forth with him to the Danube on the fifth of August.
The Danube provinces were at this time very strongly fortified, and the river was extremely well guarded as far as Ratisbon on the west. Its waters were navigated by a powerful fleet divided into squadrons corresponding to the three principal harbours of Laureacum, Arelape Comagenæ, and Carnuntum. The emperor had raised two legions to occupy Noricum and Rætia. In Noricum the central point of the military frontier was at Laureacum, and the highway of the Danube had now been completed. The valleys and roads leading to the Danube were no less strongly fortified than those which led to the Rhine. Above Laureacum the forts of Lentia (on the Schlossberg of Linz) and Joviacum (Schlögen near Haibach) commanded the surrounding country, and below the central fortress the great road to Vindobona was guarded by the castellum of Lacus Felicis (of which the wall may still be seen at Oehling on the Url), which was capable of accommodating three cohorts, by Elegium (on the crags of Wallsee), and by the fortified camp of Arelape at the mouth of the Erlaf. Beyond these came the castle of Namare on the crags of Melk, the castella of Trigisamum (Traismauer), Faviana (Mautern), and Comagenæ (Tulln), and lastly of Citium (Zeiselmauer), at the foot of the forest of Vindobona. The next section of the Pannonian Danube was even more thoroughly protected. Vindobona was flanked by several forts, and close to this strong fortress was Carnuntum, its main bulwark, a mighty quadrangle close upon the steep bank of the river, raised far aloft above the torrent stream and looking across its turbid waves and green islands to the boundless stretches of the Marchfeld. The passage of the Danube was guarded by a barbican (at Stopfenreut).