Marcus Aurelius

Until the middle of the third century the empire managed to defend itself with some success. When Antoninus Pius died in 161 the succession was smooth. Marcus Aurelius, the nephew and son-in-law of the emperor, and his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, had been selected as successors by Hadrian and they had had the advantage of having been groomed for their roles. (Marcus Aurelius’ correspondence with his tutor, Fronto, survives.) However, while Marcus Aurelius had learned the conventions of court life, he had never been given any military command and at first he relied heavily on Verus, who appeared to have the dash needed for military action. Marcus Aurelius’ confidence was misplaced. When the Parthians invaded in 161, Verus was dispatched to the east to deal with them but he only managed to beat them off with difficulty. When the war was finally over in 166, the returning troops brought plague back into the empire and meanwhile a variety of German tribes, the Chatti, Marcomanni, and Quadi among them, had taken advantage of the weakened northern frontier to raid into the empire.

Verus died in 169 while on the northern frontier. Despite his inexperience Marcus Aurelius now took on the challenge of defending the empire in person and for most of his reign he was campaigning along the Danube borders. The invaders travelled deep into the empire. One German raid reached into northern Italy, another as far as the ancient shrine of Eleusis near Athens. Marcus Aurelius struck back with some success but in 175 a false report of his death encouraged an easterner, Avidius Cassius, to declare himself emperor and Marcus had to abandon the frontiers to deal with him, losing the advantage he had won. Luckily Cassius was murdered and Marcus Aurelius regained the initiative. When he died in 180 not only were the borders intact but there were Roman forces stationed in the territory of two of the major tribes, the Marcomanni and the Quadi. The empire had done more than merely defend itself. A major column, originally over 50 metres high, was erected in Rome after Marcus Aurelius’ death to commemorate the campaigns. The reliefs are not as fine as those on Trajan’s column but they provide a clear picture of the brutalities and triumphs of war. (The column, now crowned with a statue of the apostle Paul, stands in today’s Piazza Colonna.)

Something of Marcus Aurelius’ personality survives in his Meditations, random jottings put down in Greek, and never intended for publication, which he made while on campaign. They are grouped in twelve books compiled between 172 and 180 and, even though they are suffused with conventional Stoic philosophy, they show a man preoccupied with his own thoughts, seemingly hardly affected by external events. The Meditations have evoked a mixed response from later generations. Many readers find them cloying and sentimental and are depressed by the pervading sense of melancholy and preoccupation with death. Others are attracted by the sensitivity Marcus Aurelius shows for the unity of life around him (‘For all things are in a way woven together and all are because of this dear to one another’) and by his attempts to live as a good man in an evil world, taking the initiative in acting with kindliness and dignity whatever the response of others. To the senatorial class he was the perfect emperor, and it is particularly appropriate that one of the few great bronze statues of the Roman world that survives is that of him on horseback. (It was saved because later generations thought it was of the Christian emperor Constantine. Pollution has now taken its toll and the wonderfully restored original is permanently under cover, with a copy having taken its place in Piazza del Campidoglio on the Capitoline Hill where it had stood since the sixteenth century.)

Marcus Aurelius had made his son Commodus co-emperor three years before he died. In this he was reasserting the traditional desire of emperors to set in place a dynasty. However, the appointment was, said Marcus Aurelius’ admirers, the only failure of his life. Commodus was, according to the historian Dio Cassius, an eyewitness of events as a senator between the i8os and 229, ‘a greater curse to the Romans than any pestilence or crime’. (Sadly Dio’s careful account of these years is now known only through Byzantine summaries.) Commodus abandoned the idea of extending Roman rule over the frontiers, made peace, and returned to Rome. He was much condemned for this although in fact the peace held (thanks to resolute local governors and a policy of settling Germans on land in return for military service). Handsome and athletic, he then devoted himself to pleasure. Favourites took over power and an atmosphere of intrigue pervaded the court. The carefully cultivated aura of family piety encouraged by Antoninus was shattered. In its place Commodus attempted to create an image of himself as a divine emperor. He portrayed himself as Hercules, not in the guise adopted by Trajan, as a hero labouring on earth for humanity, but as a god who had already completed his labours and who stood alongside Jupiter. It aroused little support, and without allies in the army, the senate, or even within his family, he was acutely vulnerable. He was assassinated in 192.