Part 113

A few years of peace ensued, which Trajan endured with patient reluctance; and many great public works undertaken during the interval show his genius for civil as well as for military administration. … But his presence was soon required in the East, and he joyfully hailed the opportunity thus offered him for gaining fresh laurels. The real object of this expedition was ambition—the pretext, that Exedarius, or Exodares, king of Armenia, had received the crown from the king of Parthia, instead of from the Emperor of Rome, as Tiridates had from the hands of Nero. For this insult he demanded satisfaction. Chosroes, the king of Parthia, at first treated his message with contempt; but afterwards, seeing that war was imminent, he sent ambassadors with presents to meet Trajan at Athens, and to announce to him the deposition of Exedarius, and to entreat him to confer the crown of Armenia upon Parthamasiris, or Parthamaspes. Trajan received the ambassadors coldly, told them that he was on his march to Syria, and would there act as he thought fit. Accordingly he crossed into Asia, and marched by way of Cilicia, Syria, and Seleucia to Antioch. {2712} The condemnation of the martyr bishop St. Ignatius marked his stay in that city [A. D. 115]. It seems strange that the persecution of the Christians should have met with countenance and support from an emperor like Trajan; but the fact is, the Roman mind could not separate the Christian from the Jew. The religious distinction was beneath their notice; they contemplated the former merely as a sect of the latter. The Roman party in Asia were persuaded that the Jews were meditating and preparing for insurrection; and the rebellions of this and the ensuing reign proved that their apprehensions were not unreasonable. Hence, at Antioch, the imperial influence was on the side of persecution; and hence when Pliny, the gentle governor of Pontus and Bithynia, wrote to Trajan for instructions respecting the Christians in his province, his 'rescript' spoke of Christianity as a dangerous superstition, and enjoined the punishment of its professors if discovered, although he would not have them sought for. Having received the voluntary sub·mission of Abgarns, prince of Osrhoene in Mesopotamia, he marched against Armenia. Parthamasiris, who had assumed the royal state, laid his diadem at his feet, in the hopes that he would return it to him as Nero had to Tiridates. Trajan claimed his kingdom as a province of the Roman people, and the unfortunate monarch lost his life in a useless struggle for his crown. This was the commencement of his triumphs: he received the voluntary submission of the kings of Iberia, Sarmatia, the Bosphorus, Colchis, Albania; and he assigned kings to most of the barbarous tribes that inhabited the coast of the Euxine. Still he proceeded on his career of conquest. He chastised the king of Adiabene, who had behaved to him with treachery, and took possession of his dominions, subjugated the rest of Mesopotamia, constructed a bridge of boats over the Tigris, and commenced a canal to unite the two great rivers of Assyria. His course of conquest was resistless; he captured Seleucia, earned the title of Parthicus by taking Ctesiphon, the capital of Parthia [A. D. 116], imposed a tribute on Mesopotamia, and reduced Assyria to the condition of a Roman province. He returned to winter at Antioch, which was in the same winter almost destroyed by an earthquake. Trajan escaped through a window, not without personal injury. … The river Tigris bore the victorious Emperor from the scene of his conquest down to the Persian Gulf; he subjugated Arabia Felix, and, like a second Alexander, was meditating and even making preparations for an invasion of India by sea; but his ambitious designs were frustrated by troubles nearer at hand. Some of the conquered nations revolted, and his garrisons were either expelled or put to the sword. He sent his generals to crush the rebels; one of them, Maximus, was conquered and slain; the other, Lusius Quietus, gained considerable advantages and was made governor of Palestine, which had begun to be in a state of insurrection.

See JEWS: A. D. 116.

He himself marched to punish the revolted Hagareni (Saracens), whose city was called Atra, in Mesopotamia. … Trajan laid siege to it, but was obliged to raise the siege with great loss. Soon after this he was seized with illness. … Leaving his army therefore to the care of Hadrian, whom he had made governor of Syria, he embarked for Rome at the earnest solicitation of the Senate. On arriving at Selinus in Cilicia (afterwards named Trajanopolis), he was seized with diarrhœa, and expired in the twentieth year of his reign [August, A. D. 117]. … He died childless, and it is said had not intended to nominate a successor, following in this the example of Alexander. Hadrian owed his adoption to Plotina. … Dio positively asserts that she concealed her husband's death for some days, and that the letter informing the Senate of his last intentions was signed by her, and not by Trajan. Hadrian received the despatches declaring his adoption on the 9th of August, and those announcing Trajan's death two days afterwards. … As soon as he was proclaimed Emperor at Antioch, he sent an apologetic despatch to the Senate requesting their assent to his election; the army, he said, had chosen him without waiting for their sanction, lest the Republic should remain without a prince. The confirmation which he asked for was immediately granted. … The state of Roman affairs was at this moment a very critical one, and did not permit the new Emperor to leave the East. Emboldened by the news of Trajan's illness, the conquered Parthians had revolted and achieved some great successes; Sarmatia on the north, Mauritania, Egypt, and Syria on the south, were already in a state of insurrection. The far-sighted prudence of Hadrian led him to fear that the empire was not unlikely to fall to pieces by its own weight, and that the Euphrates was its best boundary. It was doubtless a great sacrifice to surrender all the rich and populous provinces beyond that river which had been gained by the arms of his predecessor. It was no coward fear or mean envy of Trajan which prompted Hadrian, but he wisely felt that it was worth any price to purchase peace and security. Accordingly he withdrew the Roman armies from Armenia, Assyria and Mesopotamia, constituted the former of these an independent kingdom, surrendered the two latter to the Parthians, and restored their deposed king Chosroes to his throne. … After taking these measures for establishing peace in the East, he left Catilius Severus governor of Syria, and returned by way of Illyria to Rome, where he arrived the following year. … A restless curiosity, which was one of the principal features in his character, would not permit him to remain inactive at Rome; he determined to make a personal survey of every province throughout his vast dominions, and for this reason he is so frequently represented on medals as the Roman Hercules. He commenced his travels with Gaul, thence he proceeded to Germany, where he established order and discipline amongst the Roman forces, and then crossed over to Britain. … It would be uninteresting to give a mere catalogue of the countries which he visited during the ensuing ten years of his reign. In the fifteenth winter of it he arrived in Egypt, and rebuilt the tomb of Pompey the Great at Pelusium. Thence he proceeded to Alexandria which was at that period the university of the world. … He had scarcely passed through Syria when the Jews revolted, and continued in arms for three years. …

See JEWS: A. D. 130-134.

{2713}

Hadrian spent the winter at Athens, where he gratified his architectural taste by completing the temple of Jupiter Olympius. … Conscious … of the infirmities of disease and of advancing years, he adopted L. Aurelius Verus, a man of pleasure and of weak and delicate health, totally unfit for his new position. … Age and disease had now so altered his [Hadrian's] character that he became luxurious, self-indulgent, suspicious, and even cruel: Verus did not live two years, and the Emperor then adopted Titus Antoninus, on condition that he should in his turn adopt M. Annius Verus, afterwards called M. Aurelius, and the son of Aurelius Verus." Hadrian's malady "now became insupportably painful, his temper savage even to madness, and many lives of senators and others were sacrificed to his fury. His sufferings were so excruciating that he was always begging his attendants to put him to death. At last he went to Baiæ, where, setting at defiance the prescriptions of his physicians, he ate and drank what he pleased. Death, therefore, soon put a period to his sufferings, in the sixty-third year of his age and the twenty-first of his restless reign [A. D. 138]. Antoninus was present at his death, his corpse was burnt at Puteoli (Pozzuoli), and his ashes deposited in the mausoleum (moles Hadriani) which he had himself built, and which is now the Castle of St. Angelo."

_R. W. Browne, History of Rome from A. D. 96, chapters 1-2._

ALSO IN: _C. Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, chapters 63-66 (volume 7)._

_T. Arnold and others, History of the Roman Empire (Encyclopædia Metropolitana). chapters 4-6._

[IMAGE: THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT UNDER TRAJAN (116) SHOWING ACQUISITIONS OF TERRITORY FROM THE ACCESSION OR AUGUSTUS. ROMAN TERRITORY AT THE ACCESSION OF AUGUSTUS. TERRITORY ACQUIRED TO THE ACCESSION or TRAJAN.

THE TEMPORARY CONQUESTS OF TRAJAN ARE SHOWN BY THE BORDER COLOR.

THE ACQUISITIONS OF THE DIFFERENT EMPERORS ARE INDICATED BY THE LETTERING.]

ROME: A. D. 138-180. The Antonines. Antoninus Pius. Marcus Aurelius.

"On the death of Hadrian in A. D. 138, Antoninus Pius succeeded to the throne, and, in accordance with the late Emperor's conditions, adopted Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Commodus. Marcus had been betrothed at the age of 15 to the sister of Lucius Commodus, but the new Emperor broke off the engagement, and betrothed him instead to his daughter Faustina. The marriage, however, was not celebrated till seven years afterwards, A. D. 146. The long reign of Antoninus Pius is one of those happy periods that have no history. An almost unbroken peace reigned at home and abroad. Taxes were lightened, calamities relieved, informers discouraged; confiscations were rare, plots and executions were almost unknown. Throughout the whole extent of his vast domain the people loved and valued their Emperor, and the Emperor's one aim was to further the happiness of his people. He, too, like Aurelius, had learnt that what was good for the bee was good for the hive. … He disliked war, did not value the military title of Imperator, and never deigned to accept a triumph. With this wise and eminent prince, who was as amiable in his private relations as he was admirable in the discharge of his public duties, Marcus Aurelius spent the next 23 years of his life. … There was not a shade of jealousy between them; each was the friend and adviser of the other, and, so far from regarding his destined heir with suspicion, the Emperor gave him the designation 'Cæsar,' and heaped upon him all the honours of the Roman commonwealth. It was in vain that the whisper of malignant tongues attempted to shake this mutual confidence. … In the year 161, when Marcus was now 40 years old. Antoninus Pius, who had reached the age of 75, caught a fever at Lorium. Feeling that his end was near, he summoned his friends and the chief men of Rome to his bedside, and there (without saying a word about his other adopted son, who is generally known by the name of Lucius Verus) solemnly recommended Marcus to them as his successor; and then, giving to the captain of the guard the watchword of 'Equanimity,' as though his earthly task was over he ordered to be transferred to the bedroom of Marcus the little golden statue of Fortune, which was kept in the private chamber of the Emperors as an omen of public prosperity. The very first act of the new Emperor was one of splendid generosity, namely, the admission of his adoptive brother Lucius Verus into the fullest participation of imperial honours. … The admission of Lucius Verus to a share of the Empire was due to the innate modesty of Marcus. As he was a devoted student, and cared less for manly exercises, in which Verus excelled, he thought that his adoptive brother would be a better and more useful general than himself, and that he could best serve the State by retaining the civil administration, and entrusting to his brother the management of war. Verus, however, as soon as he got away from the immediate influence and ennobling society of Marcus, broke loose from all decency, and showed himself to be a weak and worthless personage. … Two things only can be said in his favour; the one, that, though depraved, he was wholly free from cruelty; and the other, that he had the good sense to submit himself entirely to his brother. … Marcus had a large family by Faustina, and in the first year of his reign his wife bore twins, of whom the one who survived became the wicked and detested Emperor Commodus. As though the birth of such a child were in itself an omen of ruin, a storm of calamity began at once to burst over the long tranquil State. An inundation of the Tiber … caused a distress which ended in wide-spread famine. Men's minds were terrified by earthquakes, by the burning of cities, and by plagues of noxious insects. To these miseries, which the Emperors did their best to alleviate, was added the horror of wars and rumours of wars. The Parthians, under their king Vologeses, defeated and all but destroyed a Roman army, and devastated with impunity the Roman province of Syria. The wild tribes of the Catti burst over Germany with fire and sword; and the news from Britain was full of insurrection and tumult. Such were the elements of trouble and discord which overshadowed the reign of Marcus Aurelius from its very beginning down to its weary close. As the Parthian war was the most important of the three, Verus was sent to quell it, and but for the ability of his generals—the greatest of whom was Avidius Cassius—would have ruined irretrievably the fortunes of the Empire. These generals, however, vindicated the majesty of the Roman name [A. D. 165-166 —see PARTHIA], and Verus returned in triumph, bringing back with him from the East the seeds, of a terrible pestilence which devastated the whole Empire [see PLAGUE: A. D. 78-266] and by which, on the outbreak of fresh wars, Verus himself was carried off at Aquileia. … Marcus was now the undisputed lord of the Roman world. … But this imperial elevation kindled no glow of pride or self-satisfaction in his meek and chastened nature. He regarded himself as being in fact the servant of all. … He was one of those who held that nothing should be done hastily, and that few crimes were worse than the waste of time. {2714} It is to such views and such habits that we owe the composition of his works. His 'Meditations' were written amid the painful self-denial and distracting anxieties of his wars with the Quadi and the Marcomanni [A. D. 168-180,—see SARMATIAN AND MARCOMANNIAN WARS OF MARCUS AURELIUS], and he was the author of other works which unhappily have perished. Perhaps of all the lost treasures of antiquity there are few which we should feel a greater wish to recover than the lost autobiography of this wisest of Emperors and holiest of Pagan men. … The Court was to Marcus a burden; he tells us himself that Philosophy was his mother, Empire only his stepmother; it was only his repose in the one that rendered even tolerable to him the burdens of the other. … The most celebrated event of the war [with the Quadi] took place in a great victory … which he won in A. D. 174, and which was attributed by the Christians to what is known as the 'Miracle of the Thundering Legion.' …

See THUNDERING LEGION.

To the gentle heart of Marcus all war, even when accompanied with victories, was eminently distasteful; and in such painful and ungenial occupations no small part of his life was passed. … It was his unhappy destiny not to have trodden out the embers of this [the Sarmatian] war before he was burdened with another far more painful and formidable. This was the revolt of Avidius Cassius, a general of the old blunt Roman type, whom, in spite of some ominous warnings, Marcus both loved and trusted. The ingratitude displayed by such a man caused Marcus the deepest anguish; but he was saved from all dangerous consequences by the wide-spread affection which he had inspired by his virtuous reign. The very soldiers of the rebellious general fell away from him, and, after he had been a nominal Emperor for only three months and six days, he was assassinated by some of his own officers. … Marcus travelled through the provinces which had favoured the cause of Avidius Cassius, and treated them all with the most complete and indulgent forbearance. … During this journey of pacification, he lost his wife Faustina, who died suddenly in one of the valleys of Mount Taurus. History … has assigned to Faustina a character of the darkest infamy, and it has even been made a charge against Aurelius that he overlooked or condoned her offences. … No doubt Faustina was unworthy of her husband; but surely it is the glory and not the shame of a noble nature to be averse from jealousy and suspicion. … 'Marcus Aurelius cruelly persecuted the Christians.' Let us briefly consider this charge. … Marcus in his 'Meditations' alludes to the Christians once only, and then it is to make a passing complaint of the indifference to death, which appeared to him, as it appeared to Epictetus, to arise, not from any noble principles, but from mere obstinacy and perversity. That he shared the profound dislike with which Christians were regarded is very probable. That he was a cold-blooded and virulent persecutor is utterly unlike his whole character. … The true state of the case seems to have been this: The deep calamities in which during the whole reign of Marcus the Empire was involved, caused wide-spread distress, and roused into peculiar fury the feelings of the provincials against men whose atheism (for such they considered it to be) had kindled the anger of the gods. … Marcus, when appealed to, simply let the existing law take its course. … The martyrdoms took place in Gaul and Asia Minor, not in Rome. … The persecution of the churches in Lyons and Vienne happened in A. D. 177. Shortly after this period fresh wars recalled the Emperor to the North. … He was worn out with the toils, trials and travels of his long and weary life. He sunk under mental anxieties and bodily fatigues, and after a brief illness died in Pannonia, either at Vienna or at Sirmium, on March 17, A. D. 180, in the 59th year of his age and the 20th of his reign."

_F. W. Farrar, Seekers after God: Marcus Aurelius._

"One moment, thanks to him, the world was governed by the best and greatest man of his age. Frightful decadences followed; but the little casket which contained the 'Thoughts' on the banks of the Granicus was saved. From it came forth that incomparable book in which Epictetus was surpassed, that Evangel of those who believe not in the supernatural, which has not been comprehended until our day. Veritable, eternal Evangel, the book of 'Thoughts,' which will never grow old, because it asserts no dogma."

_E. Renan, English Conferences: Marcus Aurelius._

ALSO IN: _W. W. Capes, The Age of the Antonines._

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, chapters 67-68 (volume 7)._

_P. B. Watson, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus._

_G. Long, Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus, introduction._

ROME: A. D. 180-192. The reign of Commodus.