REIGN OF ANTONINUS PIUS, A.D. 138-161.
This excellent man was born at Lanuvium, September 19th, A.D. 86, but his family came from the town of Nemausis (Nismes), in Gaul. Soon after his accession to the empire he married his daughter Faustina to Marcus Aurelius, procured for him the tribunitian and proconsular power from the Senate, and made him his associate in the labors of the government. His tranquil and prosperous reign is the most pleasing period in the history of the Roman Empire. The world enjoyed a general peace, and the emperor endeavored, by every wise measure, to secure the prosperity of his subjects. Like Numa, to whom he has often been compared, Antoninus was the peacemaker between distant nations, who were accustomed to submit their differences to him, and to abide implicitly by his award. He checked the persecutions to which the Christians had been exposed in former reigns, and to him Justin Martyr addressed his apology for Christianity. He watched carefully the conduct of the provincial governors, and applied the public revenues to founding schools, repairing roads and harbors, and encouraging every where industry and trade. When Asia and Rhodes were devastated by an earthquake, Antoninus expended large sums in relieving the sufferers by that calamity, as well as those who were reduced to indigence by the great fires which nearly destroyed Carthage, Narbonne, and Antioch, in A.D. 153. He appointed teachers of rhetoric in various cities of the empire, conferred honors and emoluments upon men of letters, and in A.D. 141 founded a charity-school for orphan girls, whom he styled Puellæ Alimentariæ Faustinianæ, in memory of his wife Faustina, who had died the year before. Faustina, however, does not seem to have merited his esteem, and the emperor was well acquainted with her faults; yet he generously overlooked them while she lived, and upon her death paid unusual honors to her memory. His piety, his devotion to the national religion, and his various virtues, seem to have won for him universal love and veneration, and his successors during the next century assumed the name of Antoninus as their worthiest title.
Antoninus made no attempt to extend the boundaries of the empire. The barbarous races who were now beginning to swarm upon the frontiers, the Germans and the Dacians, were held in check; and although the Brigantes made several inroads into Britain, they were defeated by A. Lollius, the Legate, in A.D. 141; and a wall of turf was raised beyond the former wall built by Agricola to check the incursions of the Caledonians. This peaceful reign, however, seems to have increased the general indolence of the people, and the martial spirit of the Roman soldiers declined in the idleness of their stationary camps. After a reign of twenty-three years, Antoninus died, March 7th, A.D. 161, in his villa at Lorium, aged seventy-five years.
REIGN OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS, A.D. 161-180.
He was succeeded by Aurelius, who was born at Rome A.D. 121. This prince is known as the Philosopher; and the wish of Plato that philosophers might be kings, or kings philosophers, seems to have been fulfilled at his accession. Aurelius had been from his youth a lover of truth. His morals and his intellect were trained by the purest and wisest men of his age. He had studied under Herodes Atticus and Cornelius Fronto, two famous rhetoricians, and also under the Stoic philosophers Junius Rusticus and Apollonius; and he had been constantly employed by his adopted father Antoninus as an associate in all his useful and benevolent designs. His health was, however, delicate, and he now admitted to a share in the empire his adopted brother, L. Verus, who possessed a vigorous constitution, but was addicted to licentious pleasures.
The general peace which had prevailed during the reign of Marcus Antoninus was forever passed away, and the world was in future to be desolated by almost perpetual hostilities. The Parthian king Vologeses III. having invaded the eastern provinces, and cut to pieces a Roman legion, L. Verus was sent to oppose his advance; but upon arriving at Antioch, Verus remained there, plunged in dissipation, while his brave lieutenant Avidius Cassius drove back the Parthians, invaded Mesopotamia, destroyed Seleucia, and penetrated to Babylon. Another Roman general conquered Armenia, and restored the legitimate king Soæmus to his throne. At the close of the war, Verus, A.D. 166, returned to Rome, and triumphed. His army brought the plague with it from the East, which now desolated Italy and Rome. Many illustrious men died; but the famous physician Galen (Claudius Galenus), who had come from Pergamus to Rome, was now enabled to exhibit his uncommon professional skill. This pestilence lasted for several years.
Verus died of intemperance A.D. 171, and Aurelius prevailed upon the Senate to rank him among the gods. He now marched against the Marcomanni, but was defeated in a great battle, and, in order to provide a new army, sold the imperial plate and jewels. He now took up a position at Sirmium (Sirmich), and endeavored to wear out the barbarians by skirmishes and sudden attacks, without venturing far from his strong-hold. At length, however, upon one occasion, having been drawn into a defile, the Roman army was relieved by a fierce storm of thunder and rain, which terrified the barbarians. Tradition attributes this sudden storm to the prayers of a Christian legion. The barbarians now submitted, and withdrew beyond the Danube.
Soon after, an insurrection broke out in Syria, where Avidius Cassius, at the instigation, it is said, of the emperor's wife Faustina, had proclaimed himself emperor. But Cassius, by his severity, disgusted his own soldiers, and was assassinated by a centurion. Aurelius lamented this event, since it deprived him of an opportunity of showing clemency to an erring friend. He at once set out for the East, and there freely forgave all those who had conspired against him. He took the young family of Cassius under his protection, and ordered the papers of that officer to be destroyed, lest they might disclose the names of the conspirators. Faustina, who had accompanied her husband to Cilicia, died soon after, it is said, by her own hand.