Ten Caesars

by Barry Strauss

  In politics, they displayed many differences. Hadrian, like Augustus, was a practical genius, but without the patience to conciliate the Senate. In him, one senses a Caligula or Nero waiting to break out. Maybe Trajan sensed it too and found yet another reason to hesitate before choosing Hadrian as his successor.

  Hadrian had no alter ego or right-hand man; no one he trusted as Augustus trusted Agrippa, or Vespasian did Titus, or Trajan did Sura. But Hadrian promoted talent. He chose a philosopher as governor of Egypt, a scholar as his chief secretary, a jurist as a legal reformer, and a historian and military theorist as governor of Cappadocia in Asia Minor (today’s Turkey). These were all intellectuals, but to head the Praetorian Guard, Hadrian chose a bruiser who had risen from the rank of centurion. Hadrian was open minded but not easy to work for: he fired the chief secretary and the Praetorian prefect.

  Hadrian was vain and boastful about his multiple talents in culture and engineering (architecture, poetry, singing, playing the lyre, mathematics, military science, philosophy, sophistry), whereas Augustus was more discreet. In one of the few exceptions, Hadrian put the name of Agrippa on his rebuilt Pantheon and left off his own name, but the result accrued to Hadrian’s credit because it associated him with the era of Augustus.

  Augustus centered his personal life on his marriage and children and grandchildren, while Hadrian was primarily homosexual and had a love affair with a young Greek that would have scandalized Augustus, as it did some Romans of Hadrian’s day. Both created a new religion, but Augustus put the focus on his adoptive father, his family, and himself, not a dead Greek young man.

  Many observers see in the age of Hadrian the Roman Empire at its height. Hadrian largely succeeded in his goal of making the empire peaceful, prosperous, and more open. Under him, Rome and the Greek East were bursting with cultural production and artistic flowering. Some of the most famous surviving monuments of the ancient world date to his reign. Hovering above it all is Hadrian’s visage. He is not only one of the most often illustrated emperors in ancient art but also the most engaging: handsome, intelligent, by turns sympathetic and terrifying, philosophical-looking with his beard, military in his bearing, enigmatic in his expression.

  Hadrian left a rich legacy to his successor. Under Antoninus Pius, the empire was, if anything, more peaceful and prosperous than under Hadrian. Marcus Aurelius started out by continuing Hadrian’s border policies, but events got in his way.

  Perhaps that is not surprising, because Hadrian, for all his success, provokes a certain foreboding. He offered Greco-Roman elitism, border fortifications that were more show than substance, suppression of rebellion that left the survivors spiritually strong, and a new religion whose appeal was yet to be tested. Paganism’s rebirth would prove short lived. The system of frontier defenses would not hold off the enemies who lived beyond them. Nor would Romans long display the self-control not to scratch the old itch of expansion without end.

  Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue, detail.

  7

  MARCUS AURELIUS

  THE PHILOSOPHER

  This is a story about a statue and a book, for both explain what makes Marcus Aurelius different from every other Roman emperor.

  The statue is known to millions of tourists who come to Rome every year and make their way to the Campidoglio, the ancient Capitoline Hill that rises above the Roman Forum. There they see the famous gilded bronze figure of a man on horseback: Marcus Aurelius. Dignified and upright, and a little larger than life-size, he sits calmly astride the beast. With his right arm outstretched over the plaza, itself a Renaissance masterpiece of harmonious design, the emperor projects a unique and palpable serenity. Although dressed in civilian clothes, he symbolizes victory. Originally he stood for military triumph over a now-obscure barbarian tribe. Today Marcus seems to represent a different sort of victory: one over the forces of disorder and darkness within every soul.

  Look closely at the horseman’s face—preferably by entering the adjacent museum where the original statue stands; the one on the plaza is a replica. Wide eyed, smooth skinned, and surrounded by curly locks and a long beard, Marcus’s face has the stillness and otherworldliness of a Byzantine icon. There’s nothing here of the world-weariness of another ancient portrait of him: no sagging flesh on the cheeks, no little lines and bags under the eyes. The man on horseback is in his prime and a master of self-control. Or maybe master is the wrong word. He seems at one with his horse, as much a part of nature as its lord. It was fitting for someone who wrote that we should “think of the universe as one living being, with one substance and one soul.” In its expressiveness, the statue of Marcus offers a taste of the Rome that lay ahead: the eternal city whose power would reside in the spirit rather than the sword. And that brings us to the book.

  Marcus is not the only Roman emperor to have published a book. Others did, starting with Augustus, or, if we count him as an emperor, Julius Caesar. But none of their books has survived except for Caesar’s commentaries and the speeches, letters, and essays of the fourth-century emperor Julian. They are works of great interest, but none of them touches the heart the way Marcus’s book does. No other ruler of the ancient world bares his soul like Marcus. In fact, very few rulers in history do anything of the kind—at least not until our tell-all age, and maybe not even then. Marcus lives as a person.

  Marcus is the only emperor who wrote a self-help book. He didn’t write it with that goal in mind or even with the intention of publication. He meant to keep it private. (More on that later.) Nonetheless, his Meditations remains a bestseller today, a book cherished by millions, and a favorite of presidents and generals and of Hollywood too. Of all the books written during the Roman Empire, it is second in readership today only to the New Testament.

  He is as close to a philosopher-king as western history records. While Hadrian dabbled in Greek philosophy, Marcus lived and breathed it, particularly Stoicism. Yet like other Roman Stoics, Marcus viewed this Greek creed through a Roman lens. He saw it as a recipe for manliness, principle, and responsibility.

  Marcus reaped what Hadrian sowed. He made Roman culture more Greek than ever before. He also represented a great turnaround. In the first century AD, Stoic philosophers provided a major source of elite opposition to the emperors. Seventy years after Domitian expelled philosophers from Rome, a philosopher ruled the empire.

  In truth, it was a brief moment. With one later exception, Marcus was not only the first but also the last philosopher to rule Rome. Nor was Marcus simply a philosopher: he was an emperor. He could be harsh or capricious. He reinforced class distinctions. Persecution of Christians increased on the local level during his reign, and Marcus surely bears some responsibility. As a general, he was conscientious rather than outstanding. And yet Marcus was great because, more than any other emperor, he ruled through a commitment to justice and goodness. He aimed at humanity, steered clear of cruelty, and frequently sought compromise. He made duty his lodestar. Although he wanted to devote his reign to dispensing justice and putting into place reforms at home, Marcus spent most of it making war abroad. It pained him to do so, but he saved his complaints for his diary. In public, he was a rock.

  He needed to be. Rome suffered unprecedented disaster under Marcus. In addition to war on two foreign fronts and the invasion of northern Italy and Greece, Rome witnessed a devastating epidemic and the manpower shortage that followed, as well as natural disaster and financial overstretch. Only a man of Marcus’s strength of character could have coped with such threats—not that he did so perfectly.

  Marcus Aurelius ruled Rome as emperor for nineteen years, but he is a figure for the ages.

  THE CHOSEN

  Marcus was born in Rome on April 26, 121. His family belonged to the “Spanish Mafia,” like Trajan and Marcus’s distant cousin Hadrian. His ancestors had moved to Rome, where Marcus was raised. His name at birth was Marcus Annius Verus. He took the name Marcus Aurelius later, when he was adopted into the imperial family.

 
; Like many other Romans, Marcus lost his father early, when he was three. In principle, his paternal grandfather had the responsibility for his upbringing, with an assist from his maternal stepfather. In practice, his mother, Domitia Lucilla, played a large role. Marcus lived under her roof until his late teenage years.

  Domitia Lucilla was noble and rich. Her property included a big brickworks outside Rome. Well educated, she could read Greek as well as Latin. Even when Marcus was a young man, she used to sit on his bed and hold conversations with him before dinner. Marcus thanks her in his Meditations for teaching him “the fear of God, and generosity; and abstention, not only from doing ill but even from the very thought of doing it; and furthermore to live the simple life, far removed from the habits of the rich.” Although he thanks his grandfather first, for teaching him good morals and control of his temper, and his father second, for leaving him a reputation for modesty and manliness, Marcus has much more to say about his mother. Like so many Roman men, Marcus presented himself as someone shaped and molded in important ways by his mother.

  In 138 Marcus’s life changed when Hadrian adopted Antoninus as his son and successor and had Antoninus adopt both Lucius Verus and Marcus. After Antoninus became emperor later that year, Marcus moved into the palace on the Palatine.

  Marcus had a series of tutors, many of them eminent and learned men. The best known is the greatest Latin orator of the age, Marcus Cornelius Fronto. A North African of Berber origin and a Roman citizen, Fronto made a fortune in Rome as a lawyer. Antoninus Pius appointed him as tutor to his two adopted sons, Marcus and Verus. Fronto’s letters survive, including many between him and Marcus. They show the future emperor as a serious, talented, and sometimes carefree and even thoughtless young man who loved country life. He takes part in the grape harvest and, while on horseback, scatters a poor shepherd’s flock just for fun. The letters tend to exaggerate Fronto’s importance in Marcus’s eyes. Other teachers had a greater influence on the young man, but no letters from or to them survive.

  Marcus and Fronto write to each other in the stylized language of pederasty: love between man and boy. They said constantly how much they loved each other, sometimes in gushing terms. Some of this amounted to mutual flattery, and some of it showed off each writer’s ability to imitate the homoerotic language of the classical Greeks. It’s unlikely that Marcus and Fronto really were in love, let alone that they had a physical relationship. If they did, they would hardly have expressed it in letters that could be read by Marcus’s mother or by the educated slaves that formed part of the staff of a wealthy Roman household. Elite Romans frowned on homosexual relationships and could even prosecute relationships involving underage Roman citizens. In his Meditations, Marcus favored putting an end to the pursuit of boys.

  Fronto wanted Marcus Aurelius to become a rhetorician. The equivalent does not quite exist in contemporary American culture. Think of an Ivy League lawyer, raised in Europe until college, whose speeches combine fancy rhetoric with literary erudition and an insufferable number of learned references and arcane words. After years of studying rhetoric, Marcus declined the honor. He decided to become a student of philosophy instead. In ancient Rome just as today a philosopher was an intellectual who engaged in profound argument, but he was something different as well. For the ancients, philosophy offered a guide to living. A philosopher was something between a guru and a clergyman.

  To have a philosopher as heir to the throne might seem a paradox. In Rome, philosophy was best known for its opposition to the emperors, not for its support. Indeed, Marcus’s main philosophy teacher was the descendant of a philosopher executed by Domitian. But after Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian, the emperors no longer persecuted philosophers. Romans now enjoyed, as Tacitus said, “the rare happiness of times, when we may think what we please, and express what we think.”

  Although Marcus’s philosophy was eclectic, his main influence was Stoicism, which was in turn the most popular philosophy of the Roman elite. Stoicism taught that the world was governed by a rational principle, Logos, that guides all nature. By the pursuit of virtue, a good man would live according to nature. This austere doctrine was softened by a belief in the universe’s goodness and its government by divine providence, as well as in the brotherhood of mankind.

  Stoicism originated in Greece, but it appealed to the old Roman temperament because of its sternness and to Roman imperialism because of its universalism. Under the emperors, Stoicism gave men and women the courage to resist and the reason to do so too because it demonstrated the inner moral corruption that followed subjection to a higher power. And yet Stoicism did not reject monarchy per se but only overbearing and corrupt monarchy. A good emperor, who was liberal, moderate, law abiding, public spirited, and respectful of his subjects, could be a philosopher.

  So Marcus the philosopher was less an eccentric than a consummation. Enlightened by philosophy, he fulfilled the promise of the four Good Emperors who came before him.

  Like Hadrian, Marcus admired the philosophy of Epictetus. The Greek Stoic had every reason to emphasize mind over matter, as both his body and his status taught him the limits of the flesh. He was lame. An ex-slave from Asia Minor, he had belonged to one of Nero’s freedmen before eventually gaining his own freedom. After becoming a philosopher, Epictetus was exiled by Domitian—and chose to stay in exile even after that ruler’s death, when it was safe to return to Rome. Evidently Epictetus preferred a quiet, provincial life. The philosopher emphasized the importance of achieving inner freedom. His teaching influenced Marcus greatly.

  Looking back on Fronto in later years, Marcus considered him less influential than his teachers in philosophy; nor did he have a word to say about Fronto’s lessons in rhetoric. In fact, Marcus criticized rhetoric as inferior to philosophy. Instead, he thanked Fronto for helping him learn about tyranny—its jealousy, duplicity, and hypocrisy—and about the lack of paternal affection in so-called patricians. Perhaps it was a gentle way of thanking Fronto for making Marcus an honest speaker rather than a trickster.

  ANTONINUS PIUS

  Antoninus had little experience of provincial administration or military service, but Hadrian did not expect his fifty-one-year-old successor to last long in power. It was Marcus whom the emperor really wanted, not only because Marcus was kin but also due to his exceptional strength of character. Hence Hadrian gave him the nickname Verissimus, “the Most Upright,” a play on Marcus’s family name before adoption, Verus. Marcus evidently did not return the compliment, since he leaves Hadrian out of the long list of friends and family whom he thanks in his Meditations.

  Antoninus surprised everyone by reigning for twenty-three years, longer than Hadrian. In fact, Antoninus ruled longer than any emperor since Augustus. A wit once said to Antoninus after seeing Marcus’s mother at prayer that she must have been asking for the emperor to die so that her son could replace him. The emperor’s response is unknown. In any case, Marcus had to wait until the age of forty before ascending to power.

  Antoninus came from a wealthy Roman family with roots in southern Gaul and political prominence founded on early support for Vespasian. He grew even richer by marrying the affluent Anna Galeria Faustina—Faustina the Elder. In spite of their combined fortunes, Antoninus began to worry about the expenses of his new position as soon as Hadrian adopted him. Shortly afterward, when Faustina the Elder complained about his stinginess to their household, Antoninus is said to have replied, “Foolish woman, now that we have gained an empire, we have lost even what we had before.”

  Antoninus took the nickname Pius, Latin for “faithful” or “loyal.” On the one hand, it referred to his insistence on making a reluctant Senate give divine honors to his adoptive father, Hadrian. On the other hand, it announced his commitment to his family members and to family values more generally. Not only did he take the unusual step of naming his wife Augusta when he became emperor, but Antoninus greatly increased the number of coins depicting the empress.

  In general, though, Ant
oninus was a conservative. Although not much of a builder, he did erect one structure that proclaimed him worthy of the country’s past. He built a Temple of the Deified Hadrian in Rome next to the Temple of Matidia and Marciana, which in turn bordered the Pantheon. A walker in Rome would have seen the names of Agrippa (on the Pantheon), Matidia, Marciana, and Hadrian in rapid succession. The intended conclusion was that Antoninus, Hadrian’s adopted and loyal son, had as legitimate a claim to rule as Augustus himself.

  Antoninus prized the Senate, and, unlike the often vicious Hadrian, he had excellent relations with it. Nor did he continue Hadrian’s travels. In fact, after becoming emperor, Antoninus never left Italy again. Although the frugal Antoninus limited his building projects, unlike Hadrian, he was a realist and frequently distributed money to the Roman plebeians and to the army. In 148 he put on marvelous games in honor of the nine hundredth anniversary of the founding of Rome. It was commonly believed at the time that Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BC, although we do not know the real date of the city’s foundation. As a result of these costly expenditures, Antoninus had temporarily to reduce the amount of silver in Roman coins.

  The provincial elite did not feel neglected by the emperor’s absence, not to judge from a famous speech of the era. Aelius Aristides, a wealthy Greek from northwestern Asia Minor and a Roman citizen, came to Rome and delivered an oration before Antoninus. He focused on the greatness of the Roman peace. Aristides praised the fair-mindedness that motivated Rome to share its citizenship with millions. “You conduct public business throughout the whole civilized world exactly as if it were one city-state,” he stated. He glorified Romans for making war a thing of the past within the empire, and for fostering agriculture, trade, and public building. Meanwhile, they protected the borders with something better than a wall: the Roman army. “The entire earth,” he stated, “has been made beautiful like a garden.”