The

retire into the Venetian territory, where Verus was seized with apoplexy, and expired at Altinum, at the age of 39 (a.d. 169). Aurelius returned to Rome to pay the honours of an apotheosis to the brother whose faults he had never ceased to bear with, and then hastened back to his army at Carnuntum. Though no longer embarrassed by the indolent reluctance of his colleague, the philosopher found himself wanting in the qualities of a great general; and the officers, on whose advice he unreservedly threw himself. found fault at one time with his severity, at another with the studies with which he relieved his military cares during a five years' war. Of the details of this long contest with the united forces of the German, Sarmatian, and Scythian tribes, the Marcomanni and Quadi, the Iazyges and Alani, and many others, we have little information. The winter was the favourite season for the inroads of the barbarians; and Dion has left us a vivid account of a battle upon the frozen Danube, where the Romans could only keep their footing by standing upon their shields. decisive battle at length fought with the Quadi in the year 174 has attained peculiar celebrity from the ascription of the victory to a sudden storm, which supplied the Romans with water at the same time that it discomfited the barbarians. That some such event occurred is attested by the sculptures on the column of Aurelius (a monument similar and but little inferior to that of Trajan), which represents Jove sending forth rain and thunderbolts. We might leave the poet Claudian to conjecture whether the deliverance was earned by the piety of Marcus or by the incantations of the Chaldæans in his army, had it not been claimed, both in ancient and modern times, for the prayers of a body of Christian soldiers, who were thenceforth designated as the Thundering Legion. It is the less needful to insist here upon the vital distinction between the real miracles, which formed the divine credentials of the first teachers of a new faith, and their pretended repetitions after the completion of the historic testimony to the truth had left no more room for them, or on the uniform failure of the latter before those tests which only clear the former of all doubt, since this particular wonder is now given up even by those Protestants who insist on the perpetuity of miraculous powers in

The column, which is adorned, just like that of Trajan, with a spiral bas-relief of the victories of Aurelius over the Marcomanni and Sarmatians, is represented on medals as surmounted by a statue of the emperor, which had long disappeared, when it was replaced by Sixtus V. with the image of St. Paul, as Trajan's column was crowned with that of St. Peter.

the church. But we need not hesitate to believe that there was in the Roman army a band of Christian soldiers, whose religion made them the most faithful servants even of a persecuting emperor, and who gained their famous title by their proof of what has been confirmed by every age down to our own, that pure devotion is the most fruitful spring of genuine heroism. One such victory, however, was quite inadequate to quell the immense hosts of Germans and Sarmatians, whom the increasing pressure of the Scythian tribes urged, wave upon wave, across the feeble barrier of the Danube; and the emperor was called from the scene of action by domestic troubles and the foulest treason.

His elder son Annius died after a long decline; and Commodus, though the pupil of the sage Fronto, began from early youth to display his vicious nature. The empress Faustina, not content with imitating the vices of her mother, and receiving the same forbearance, is said to have conspired against her husband's power and life, at the very time when she accompanied him to the field and was saluted by the victorious legions as the Mother of Camps. Perceiving how the fatigues of war had told upon the health of Aurelius, enfeebled by his sedentary life, she is said to have offered her hand to Avidius Cassius, whose imagination had long been inflamed with the idea of emulating his ancestor, Longinus the tyrannicide. Cassius united to the ability which had saved Syria from the Parthians a stern severity modelled upon republican precedents, but intolerable to the soldiers of the empire. A sudden rumour of the death of Aurelius precipitated the conspiracy. Cassius announced himself to the legions as the new emperor; what followed is differently related; but all agree that he was soon put to death by his own officers, and his head was brought to Aurelius. The emperor pitied his fate; lamented that he had lost the opportunity of forgiving him; protected his family; and enjoined upon the Senate to deal mercifully with his accomplices.

Before the news of the rebel's fall arrived, Aurelius, who was in Pannonia, had sent for his son Commodus, invested him with the

* While abstaining from the discussion of matters purely theological, we may point out, in passing, how much the question is darkened by the common confusion between miracles, or supernatural acts, wrought expressly as the attestation of a divine mission, and those extraordinary, but not necessarily supernatural, exhibitions of divine power, whether for the deliverance or chastisement of men, which are more properly called special providences. The habitual inaccuracy of common language calls every wonder a miracle, and even so flatly contradicts the special sense of the word as to talk of the miracles of science, that is, the supernatural phenomena of nature.

manly dress, and designated him for the consulship. He then set out for the East, accompanied by Faustina, who died at Halala at the foot of Taurus. Still emulating the generous affection of Antoninus, Aurelius asked the Senate for divine honours to his unfaithful wife, and commemorated her by one of the few charitable foundations of antiquity, the Faustinian institution for orphan girls. Having received at Antioch the enthusiastic greetings of the legions, and restored order to the province, Aurelius proceeded to Alexandria, where he attended the lectures of the professors in the dress of a private citizen. Thence he sailed to Athens, and caused himself to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, "to prove himself without sin."* Here he instituted what would be called in the language of our day an international school of learning, by providing salaried teachers of all sciences for people of all languages. He landed at Brundisium in the autumn of 176, and the year ended with his triumph over the Sarmatians (Dec. 23rd, A.D. 176). Commodus, who was associated in this honour, received the tribunitian power in the following year, in which the name of Aurelius was disgraced by the great persecution of the Christians in Gaul.†

Though wearied in body and mind with incessant wars, Aurelius was not permitted to end his days in philosophic calmness. The irruptions of the Marcomanni, the Sarmatians, and their allies, again called him to the Danube, as soon as he had celebrated the nuptials of Commodus with Crispina; and Commodus accompanied his father. The details of this, as of the former war, are almost unknown. Some successes were gained; but, considering the disgraceful peace which followed the death of Aurelius, we cannot believe the statement, that the great league of the barbarians was almost broken up. Whether, however, from an assured triumph or an impending defeat, the emperor was snatched away by a fever, to which his exhausted frame succumbed, either at Sirmium or Vindobona (Vienna) on the 17th of March, A.D. 180, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and the twentieth of his reign. Dion Cassius expressly affirms that his end was hastened by poison administered by the physicians in the interest of Commodus.

MARCUS AURELIUS COMMODUS ANTONINUS AUGUSTUS- for the new emperor exchanged his prænomen of Lucius for his father's -was only nineteen years old when he succeeded to the imperial dignity. The events of his reign of nearly thirteen years are "Ut se innocentem probaret." Capitol. c. 27.

+ See Chapter XL.

summed up by the Augustan historian in victories over the Moors and Dacians, the restoration of order in Pannonia, and the suppression of rebellions among the provincials in Britain, Germany, and Dacia. This enumeration of external wars and internal troubles is a confession that the empire had now entered upon the downward course. While the skilful generals of Commodus, like those of Domitian, postponed the fatal day by their successes upon the frontiers, his personal character and rule form almost an exact parallel to those of Nero. Like his prototype, he had as yet given little ground for alarm, save by his indulgence in licentious pleasures; but his weak nature only needed the impulse of suspicion to break forth into cruelty. Eager to return to the pleasures of the capital, he purchased a peace from the barbarians, an act of humiliation which marks the decisive turn in the tide of Roman empire. The Italians, dispirited by the long war, were easily persuaded that the young emperor brought back an honourable peace: an enthusiastic reception was accorded to the graceful son of the beloved Aurelius; and there were doubtless some who welcomed the gay youth as a relief from the austere virtue of his father. No notice seems to have been taken of his omission, which soon became fearfully significant, of the vow recorded by every emperor since Domitian, to hold the lives of senators as sacred; but his clemency to Manilius, the secretary of Avidius Cassius, when discovered after a long concealment, seemed a pledge that he would follow in their steps. The excesses of Commodus and his dissolute companions were not severely judged so long as he left the government to his father's trusted counsellors. "The dregs of Romulus" were indulged to the full with largesses and games, and to those who were blind to the necessary result of the emperor's profusion, his beginnings promised liberty and peace.

Commodus had scarcely reigned three years, when all was changed by a plot formed against his life by his sister Lucilla, the widow of Verus, through jealousy of the influence of his wife Crispina. This true daughter of the profligate Faustina found accomplices and tools among her lovers; but the plot was frustrated by the vanity or treachery of the hired assassin. Instead of striking first and boasting afterwards, he rushed upon Commodus in a dark corridor of the amphitheatre with the cry, The Senate sends you this. Seized by the guards, he betrayed the conspirators but his first words roused all the rage of Commodus against the dreaded order. The "delators " sprang up again, like foul

weeds, in the warmth of the emperor's anger. Their first victims were the old ministers of Aurelius, under whose restraint the young prince chafed; and none of them escaped, but Pertinax, Victorinus, and Claudius Pompeianus, the virtuous husband to whom Lucilla had not dared to reveal her plot. The Senate, which the last five princes had cherished as the heart of the body politic, was again decimated as by Domitian. The rich, whose wealth was coveted by the extravagant prince and the needy informers, the virtuous, whose character put his to shame,-those whose eminent services piqued his jealousy,-were alike marked for slaughter, with all who could lament or avenge them. "Of these innocent victims of tyranny, none died more lamented than the two brothers of the Quintilian family, Maximus and Condianus, whose fraternal love has saved their name from oblivion and endeared their memory to posterity. Their studies and their occupations, their pursuits and their pleasures, were still the same. In the enjoyment of a great estate, they never admitted the idea of a separate interest: some fragments are now extant of a treatise which they composed in common; and in every action of life it was observed that their two bodies were animated by one soul. The Antonines, who valued their virtues, and delighted in their union, raised them in the same year to the consulship: and Marcus afterwards entrusted to their joint care the civil administration of Greece, and a great military command, in which they obtained a signal victory over the Germans. The kind cruelty of Commodus united them in death."*

This new reign of terror extinguished at a blow the freedom and dignity that the Senate had enjoyed for nearly a century, and proved that the attempt to revive the republic under an emperor had failed, for want of securities against imperial tyranny. Still the generals who had served Aurelius watched over the provinces and frontiers. Dacia was held against the renewed attacks of the barbarians by Clodius Albinus and Pescennius Niger, who became afterwards competitors with Severus for the empire (A.D. 182, 183). In Britain, a formidable irruption of the Caledonians across the wall of Antoninus was repulsed by Ulpius Marcellus (A.D. 184). The glories of these successes were assigned to Commodus, who assumed the title of Britannicus, and was saluted Imperator no less than seven times. But the spirit of disaffection was growing

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i. p. 225. The references to Gibbon are according to the edition of Dean Milman and Dr. W. Smith, 8 vols, Svo, London, 1854.