During these years, the Romans experienced two miracles, which they displayed prominently in propaganda. First, a lightning bolt destroyed an enemy siege engine. Then, one hot summer, a weary legion found itself surrounded by the enemy and almost had to surrender because it had no water. Suddenly the skies opened, and the rain saved the Romans. Pagans and Christians immediately engaged in a polemic about whose prayers had won the favor of heaven.
Marcus probably intended to create two new provinces across the Danube in what is today Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. The purpose was both to contain the enemy and to shorten Rome’s line of defense, as well as replace an easily crossed river boundary with a more defensible land boundary farther north, in the Carpathian Mountains. But new provinces would have taxed Rome’s overstretched resources. Marcus’s plan died with him.
Marcus had much greater success in his other plan for dealing with the barbarians: settling them on land in the empire. He scattered them across provinces from Roman Germany (today’s southwestern Germany and Alsace), to Dacia (Romania), and including Italy. Although many attacked him for appeasement as well as for introducing dangerous barbarians within the boundaries of the empire, Marcus saw it differently. He believed that he had turned enemy soldiers into Roman farmers while also supplying a badly needed source of manpower.
In 175 Marcus reached a settlement with the German tribes that lived across the Danube. It was more of a truce than a peace, for by no means had Rome crushed its opponents. Still, they did return Roman prisoners. They also sent Marcus eight thousand cavalry to serve in the Roman army; most of them went to Britain to do frontier duty. To judge by a remarkable recent find, some of the cavalrymen were women. Archaeologists discovered near Hadrian’s Wall a pair of female skeletons that seem to have been horsewomen in this force. Although Romans did not allow women to serve in the military, certain so-called barbarians did. The Greeks and Romans thought of them as Amazons.
Marcus was not a natural soldier, but he did his job. Doing so was his duty, and Marcus was nothing if not devoted. He wrote in the Meditations: “Every moment, think steadily as a Roman and a man to do what you have in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and feeling of affection, and freedom, and justice; and to give yourself relief from all other thoughts.”
Marcus did his job, but he did not enjoy it. As he made clear in private, he had a low opinion of war and conquest. In fact, he compares victors to bandits: “A spider is proud when it has caught a fly, and another when he has caught a poor hare, and another when he has taken a little fish in a net, and another when he has taken wild boars, and another when he has taken bears, and another when he has taken Sarmatians [one of the German tribes]. Are not these robbers, if you examine their opinions?”
The wars brought sacrifice to Faustina as well as to Marcus. She had to sell some of her silk and jewelry in order to raise money for the Treasury. Worse, she spent years living with Marcus on the frontier. The cities of Carnuntum (in today’s Austria) and Sirmium (in today’s Serbia), where they made their base, might have both been provincial capitals and would know glory days in later years; but in this era, they were still garrison towns on the dark and chilly edge of the empire. It was a long way from the palace in Rome. Not since Agrippina the Elder served with her husband Germanicus in Germany and Syria 150 years earlier had an imperial woman lived in army headquarters on an active front. In 174 Marcus named Faustina Mother of the Camp (Mater Castrorum), making her the first empress to bear such a title. It boosted the public’s morale during a time of crisis but probably offered Faustina poor recompense for the comforts that she gave up.
In any case, Faustina was not the last empress to be called Mother of the Camp. Emergency and invasion on the frontier would became all too common in the future.
REBELLION
Avidius Cassius was the most successful general of Verus’s Parthian War. He was a man to watch, the son of an equestrian who outdid his father by becoming a senator. Under Verus, Avidius conquered the two great Parthian cities of Mesopotamia. Afterward, he served as suffect consul and governor of Egypt, his home province. Finally, he received a special command over all the provinces of the Roman East. Success like this might have gone to anyone’s head, especially someone who considered himself descended from the kings of Syria who followed Alexander the Great, as Avidius did.
In 175 he claimed the throne. He launched a serious rebellion, supported by most of the East, including such important provinces as Egypt and Syria. It recalls every emperor’s dilemma: entrust a glorious military task to someone else, and he might try to take your throne. But no emperor could do everything everywhere, and few emperors had sufficient military talent to serve competently as field commanders. Only rare ones, like Augustus, had a trusted friend to command the army while letting the emperor take the credit.
But in another way, Avidius’s revolt was unique. The sources say that Faustina wrote to him and encouraged his rebellion. It sounds like just another scandalous, misogynistic charge among many in the sources, but for once, scholars find it plausible—although certainly not proven. After all, Marcus was in poor health. Faustina did have reason for concern about her future and that of her children. Her sole surviving son, Commodus, was only thirteen, and he risked being eclipsed by his sister Lucilla’s husband. Perhaps Faustina wrote Avidius that she would support him if Marcus died, and he misunderstood, thinking it meant that Marcus was already dead.
So the revolt was on. Marcus’s old Greek tutor, the wealthiest man in Athens, sent Avidius his opinion in a one-word letter: emane¯s, Greek for “You are crazy!” In far-off Sirmium, meanwhile, Marcus gathered support and prepared to march eastward to put down the rebellion. Yet before he set off, a centurion brought the uprising to an end by killing Avidius, having probably heard that Marcus was still alive. The revolt lasted only three months and six days.
Marcus was fortunate, and he didn’t want vengeance. He refused to look at Avidius’s severed head, which was sent to him. No doubt he approved of—and perhaps personally ordered—the burning of Avidius’s correspondence, which surely contained one if not many incriminating letters from Faustina.
The rebellion was over, but Marcus nonetheless decided to go east. It seemed prudent to show his subjects in the East their healthy emperor, in command of his household, and endowed with a strong son to succeed him.
GODDESS
In late 175 Marcus’s imperial procession stopped in a small town on the southern edge of the central Anatolian plateau, at the foot of the mountains (in today’s south central Turkey). About fifteen miles behind them lay the big, wealthy city of Tyana, graced only recently with splendid aqueducts under Trajan and Hadrian. Ahead of them lay the so-called Cilician Gates, a mountain pass that led to the Mediterranean. Alexander the Great’s army took this route, centuries earlier, on the way to conquering the Persian Empire.
The traveling party was not small. In addition to his wife, his son, and at least one of his daughters, the emperor had with him his so-called Companions (his closest advisors) and a large contingent of soldiers, including a force of barbarians. The purpose of the expedition was to mend fences in the East, to show the emperor to his subjects, both trustworthy and not, and to punish rebels.
Nobody knows what goes on in a marriage except the two people in it. It seems clear, though, that Marcus had forgiven Faustina for her possible role in fomenting the revolt. And yet doom came calling in the dusty town along the Roman road. It was there and not in a villa that Faustina, the Augusta, Mother of the Camp, daughter of Antoninus Pius, wife of Marcus Aurelius, mother of Commodus, died.
The sources suggest the possibility that Faustina committed suicide, but that seems unlikely. At forty-five, she had borne fourteen children and was possibly pregnant again. She also suffered from gout. The aftermath of Avidius’s revolt caused her stress. So natural causes seems likely.
In public, Marcus appeared grief stricken, and his private praise of Faustina in the Medita
tions confirms that state. The widower asked the Senate to deify his late wife, and he had coins struck stating that she was now among the stars. Meanwhile, he closed the door on the plot in which she was incriminated, asking the Senate to spare anyone suspected of taking part. “May it never happen,” he wrote to the senators, “that any one of you should be slain during my reign either by my vote or by yours.” He had resolved to forgive and forget.
Faustina was no doubt cremated where she died, however humble the surroundings. They would not stay humble! The village received the highest status that a city could hold, a colony of Roman citizens. It acquired a new name, Faustinopolis—Faustina City—and also received a temple in honor of the new goddess.
Faustina would have liked that, but she probably would have preferred the honors in Rome that the Senate voted in her memory. Those included an altar where every bride and groom married in the city had to make a sacrifice in her memory. Like her mother, she too had a charity for poor girls founded in her memory: the beneficiaries were called the New Faustina’s Girls. The Senate decreed silver images of Faustina and Marcus for the Temple of Venus and Rome, the great temple built by Hadrian. Best of all, a golden statue of Faustina had to be carried into the Colosseum when Marcus was present and placed in the special section where she used to watch the games, with all the most important women sitting around it.
Meanwhile, the cleanup after the Avidius Cassius revolt continued. A new law prohibited anyone from serving as governor of his native province.
On his way south toward Egypt, Marcus stopped in the Roman province of Palestine, which had supported the rebel Avidius. A Roman source said that the emperor found the Jews there so quarrelsome that he proclaimed them worse than the barbarians on the Danube frontier. The Talmud, on the other hand, suggests that Marcus gave an audience to Rabbi Judah I. He was not only patriarch but also editor of the Mishnah, the compilation of oral law that is still one of the most influential documents in the Jewish tradition. It is easy to imagine the philosophical Marcus in conversation with the erudite rabbi.
Before leaving the East, Marcus visited Athens, where he and Commodus were initiated into the Mysteries, following in the footsteps of Hadrian. Marcus had the shrine rebuilt after its destruction in 170, making this in effect a celebration of the return to normalcy. Marcus made time in Athens to appoint four professors of philosophy.
CO-EMPEROR
In 176 Marcus returned to Rome. He decided to make Commodus co-emperor, occupying Verus’s former position. Commodus was only fifteen, but an era of war and epidemic did not permit a prolonged adolescence. He had already accompanied his father on the northern front and in the East, so the boy had some experience of government. Besides, Marcus understood his responsibility to prepare for the succession. Yet he does not seem to have seriously considered the possibility that Commodus wasn’t up to the job.
While in Rome, Marcus issued important rulings on slaves, giving them with one hand what he took away with another. He protected slaves who were granted freedom in their master’s will from any third party who tried to keep them enslaved. By the same token, Marcus commanded governors and other public officials and security forces to help masters look for runaway slaves. The disorder of the era might have led to an increase in the number of such escaped slaves.
Christians ran the risk of being scapegoated for Rome’s troubles and of paying the price for the shortage of gladiators, who were being drafted into the army. Because arenas now found it hard to find fighters, the Senate allowed local authorities to purchase condemned criminals to use as gladiators. And how did the Romans increase the supply of condemned criminals? It seems that accusations against Christians increased.
Rome’s reality, therefore, consisted of the gloomy facts of disease, invasion, and persecution. On the Danube front, the enemy reopened its attack, adding to the empire’s grim mood. Still, when Marcus left Rome again in August 178 to go back to war, he left to a shining scene out of Plato’s Academy. A remarkable deputation thronged the emperor, as a later source reports:
Marcus possessed such wisdom, gentleness, integrity and learning that as he was about to march against the Marcomanni with his son Commodus, whom he had substituted as Caesar, he was surrounded by a throng of philosophers begging him not to commit himself to a campaign or to battle before he had explained some difficult and very obscure points of the philosophical systems.
Marcus also demonstrated his respect for the Senate and for traditional religion before leaving Rome. He swore an oath on the Capitoline Hill that he wasn’t responsible for the death of any senator. He also engaged in the old ritual of throwing a bloody spear to symbolize the righteousness of Rome’s attack on enemy territory.
However honorable Marcus’s fight, it proved difficult and frustrating. During another year and a half at the front, he struggled without achieving final victory.
MEDITATIONS
A personal record of these difficult years survives. Marcus wrote the Meditations alone in his tent on the northern frontier, among other places, during the years 172 to 180. Book 2 is labeled “On The River Gran, Among the Quadi” and book 3 “In Carnuntum,” while other books lack explicit locations.
He wrote the Meditations for himself, not for the public. These were private notebooks. An ancient editor called it To Himself. Meditations is a modern title. No one is sure just how the notebooks were eventually published. Possibly Marcus’s friends or one of his freedmen preserved and circulated the manuscript. The sentimental favorite is his daughter Cornificia. Marcus’s last surviving child, she was forced to commit suicide by a later emperor many years after Marcus’s death. Her last words were worthy of her father: “My poor, unhappy soul, trapped in an unworthy body, go forth, be free, show them that you are the daughter of Marcus Aurelius!”
Marcus wrote the Meditations not in Latin but in Greek. Greek was the language of philosophy, but Latin had served well enough for many earlier Roman philosophers. The use of Greek was another index of the growing prestige of the eastern half of the empire.
The Meditations is the last major work of Stoic philosophy in ancient times and the most loved today. It is certainly not because the work is upbeat. The focus is often on the vanity of human life and on death. Our lives, says Marcus, are as fleeting as a passing sparrow. Even the great men of the past have vanished: Augustus and his court are all gone, Alexander the Great and the man who groomed his horse have both returned to dust.
Marcus’s advice on how to face life’s challenges is not for the faint of heart. He writes:“Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly; but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters stands to rest.”
Yet Marcus offers a recipe for dignity and for achievement. He expresses deep respect for the natural world and deep faith in divine Providence, writing:
If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if you should be bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with your present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which you utter, you will live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
Marcus also shows remarkable respect for the wider world, looking even beyond the boundaries of the empire that he ruled. Ancient Stoicism had a strong element of cosmopolitanism, and Marcus expresses it well: “But my nature is rational and social; and my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus that is, Aurelius, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.”
Perhaps as much as anything else, Marcus appeals to us because he is all too human. He speaks often of the need for courage and manliness, but he admits his own weaknesses. He doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. He knew that he was tempted by the pomp, falseness, and flattery of court life, and he struggled against it constantly.
His biggest flaw, how
ever, was anger. Marcus admits freely and repeatedly that he has trouble controlling his temper. He found the people he worked with an endless source of disappointment in their shallowness and failings. Yet he knew that he had to rise above his disappointment and suppress his rage.
In short, Marcus seems less a remote and lifeless statue than someone we might know and admire. He speaks to us not as an artwork in a museum but as a counselor and even a friend.
COMMODUS
Marcus’s life ended where he had spent most of his last years: on Rome’s Danube frontier, probably at or near Sirmium. He died on March 17, 180, just short of his fifty-ninth birthday. Marcus suffered an illness, perhaps smallpox or possibly cancer. One source claims that although Marcus was ailing, his doctors finished him off in order to win favor with Commodus, who was also at the front. He alleges to have heard this information from a reliable authority, but we cannot be sure. Marcus’s body was cremated, and the ashes were returned to Rome and buried in Hadrian’s mausoleum.
If creating two new provinces was his life’s work, Marcus did not succeed. His son and successor preferred to make peace with the Germans and retreat to Rome. Yet Marcus hurt the enemy enough to buy Rome more than fifty years of peace on the northern frontier. Like others who enjoyed his leadership, he died, as one ancient admirer put it, “a beautiful death for the commonwealth.”
Later ancient sources, representing the point of view of the Senate and the Roman elite, remembered Marcus very fondly. As one author writes: “He showed himself to be of all virtues and of celestial character, and was thrust before public calamities like a defender. For indeed, if he had not been born to those times, surely, as if with one fall, all of the Roman state would have collapsed.”
Without question, Marcus was both the most humane of Rome’s emperors and, thanks to his own writing, the most human. But he was not the most successful. He was a philosopher but must be judged as an emperor.
Ten Caesars Page 25