CHAP. LXVI.

STOICISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

545

the commonwealth with the earnestness and bravery of the great captains of old; nor were the efforts of the imperator ill-supported by the conduct of the men and their officers. But the conditions of the warfare he maintained were against him. It is evident that the resources of the empire were reduced; the armies of strangers and mercenaries which he led were not endowed with the martial vigor of the old Italian militia. The races against whom they contended were fairly matched with them in personal courage, perhaps even in discipline, and probably far exceeded them in numbers as well as in the audacity which naturally belongs to the lusty youth of nations. It became from this time manifest that the tide of victory had turned, and that the fortunes of the Germans and the Scythians were in the ascendant. This tide of barbarian victory could not but continue henceforth to flow, however it might occasionally be baffled and retarded. In the long period which followed before the final overthrow of the empire Rome did not want for brave defenders, nor even for military triumphs; but her action from henceforth was only on the defensive, and her defence was crippled by innumerable reverses, unnerved by her growing sense of weakness and constant anticipation of defeat. Such gloomy anticipations had already dawned on the sensitive mind of Aurelius. He was conscious, even before the mass of his countrymen, of the downward course on which the empire had entered.

The despondency of the philosophic emperor is strongly marked in the book of "Meditations," in which he closely analyzes his own character and motives. The system of the Stoics, of which sect he was the last representative, was eminent for the self-inspection which it inculcated. In the mind of Aurelius Stoicism became more than ever a matter of conscience and a religion. The situation in which he found himself, and the necessity for active exertion it imposed upon him, gave it in his hands a practical tendency; and he thus escaped from the slough of mere quietism into which its precepts might most naturally have led him. Stoicism, the last religion of the Greek and Roman world, had approached very near to the furthest development of Buddhism. It was hastening to the abysss of the Nirvana, or self-annihilation. It was at this point of its downward course that it was overtaken and ejected from the world by the growth of Christianity. Of this young and vigorous rival it was naturally jealous-jealous of its spread and progress, and irritated at its hopeful and inspiring dogmas. The fastidious pride of the Roman philosopher could not brook the simple creed on which the Christian leaned, and by which he ruled himself in action. To live for the state, to subject every passion to the will and interests of the state, was the

546

ages.

The em

highest social duty in the eyes of the Roman, and especially in the eyes of the Roman emperor. When the people denounced the new believers as offenders against the majesty of the gods of Rome, Aurelius was not unwilling to punish them, as offenders against her civil principles. He gave his sanction to the most general persecution the Christians had yet suffered; the cruel martyrdoms they endured amid the shouts of an infuriated populace, which at every event of military defeat, of inundation or pestilence, devoted them "to the lions," are only too well attested; it is but too certain that the last and purest teaching of heathen morality issued in a deadly conflict with the truth in Jesus Christ. From this period the history of Rome dwindles again, for the most part, within the narrow limits of its earliest perors, as we shall see, are almost uniformly nominated by the armies on the frontiers, and govern Rome and the empire from the camps; the Senate, often reluctant and sometimes rebellious, continues to represent their authority in the city; but amid the little scope which is given to its action it plays but a trifling part in the movements of the world around it. The ideas of the time are almost wholly moulded by the speculations of Eastern philosophy, and Christianity, derived itself from an Oriental birthplace, leads the way in directing men's minds generally to inquiry into the nature of the Deity. Morality among the Christians was a simple rule of obedience to a written law, and hardly required or admitted of scientific demonstration; but the Scriptures of the New Testament seemed to draw the veil at least partially from the deepest mysteries of Theosophy, and so far they fell in with the prevalent objects of interest in the Oriental mind, which was beginning to dominate entirely over both Greece and Rome.

CHAP. LXVII.

REIGN OF COMMODUS.

547

CHAPTER LXVII.

The reign of Commolus.-He is assassinated and replaced by Pertinax.Discontent of the prætorians.-The empire offered for sale.-Didius Julianus accepted by the prætorians and imposed on the Senate.-Pescennius Niger, Septimus Severus, and Clodius Albinus each invested with the purple by their respective armies.-Severus marches to Rome, overthrows Julianus, defeats and slays Niger, and lastly Albinus.-His long and active reign. He dies at Eburacum, in Britain.-His sons Caracalla and Geta succeed him.-Geta murdered by his brother.-Reign of Caracalla.— He is assassinated in the camp. - Macrinus becomes emperor. (A.D. 180-217.)

M. AURELIUS was among the most virtuous of men, but there was an inherent weakness in his character, of which some traces appear in his writings, but which were manifested more plainly to his countrymen in the indulgence with which he overlooked the vices of his empress, and allowed himself to nominate a worthless son as his successor. Few could believe that he was really blind to the folly and dissoluteness of the young Commodus, whom he recommended to the Senate on his death-bed, at the same time that he left him virtually in command of the all-powerful army on the Danube. He may have felt, indeed, that it was his first duty to avert from the empire the perils of a disputed succession. Commodus was accepted at least without a murmur both in the camp and the city. He hastened to renounce the fatigues of warfare, and at once purchased a peace which was not perhaps unacceptable to his weary veterans, while the Senate rejoiced to receive back into their bosom the child of a much-honored emperor. The young prince, indeed, veiled for a season the most odious features of his character. He proposed to place himself in public affairs under the guidance of the Sophists and legists to whose care his father had committed him. For three years he continued to suffer the government to be conducted under the constitutional forms which the Antonines had respected, and it was only in the interior of the palace, and among his familiar associates, that he indulged in the vicious excesses of a Nero or a Caligula.

The young profligate might have worn away his life in debauchery, without affecting the general spirit of a just and moderate government; but a crisis abruptly intervened. His sister Lucilla, widow of the younger Verus, chafed at the inferior rank

to which her husband's decease consigned her. She concerted a plot against his life, and the assassin whom she had armed proclaimed, in aiming the blow, that it was the Senate that sent it. The attempt was frustrated, but the suspicions thus excited continued to rankle in the mind of Commodus, and from this time forth he conceived a deadly enmity against the whole body of the Senate. He revived and encouraged the machinations of the delators, who denounced to him the most eminent of the number. He rid himself one by one of the distinguished men who were administering the state in his name, and devolved the government upon an upstart favorite named Perennis, who soon requited his confidence by conspiring to supplant him. Perennis might hope to lead against the emperor the legions of Illyria, which were commanded by his son; but he was anticipated by the army of the still more distant Britain, which laid a formal complaint against him, and demanded his overthrow. Another revolt was planned by Maternus, and might have easily succeeded, but it chanced to be prematurely disclosed. The fall of Perennis only opened the post of minister to the freedman Cleander, who busied himself solely in amassing plunder from the nobles and people. The recurrence of a pestilence and famine excited the populace to a formidable sedition. They clamored for the head of the minister— a new feature in the history of the city-and Commodus, after the manner of an Oriental sultan, gladly ransomed his life by the sacrifice of his wretched favorite.

The soldiers and the citizens were satisfied by these periodical concessions; the Senate suffered in silence; Commodus was allowed to protract his odious reign for a period of sixteen years. History recounts many instances of his barbarous tyranny, but it alighted mostly on those nearest to him. The cities and the provinces enjoyed an immunity from his caprices, and his position was secured by the amusements he lavished upon the populace. The passion for the sports of the amphitheatre, which prompted him to descend in person into the arena and contend, under due protection, with the wild beasts, or to slay whole hecatombs with bow or javelin from a secure eminence, made him no doubt a favorite with the multitude. The citizens had lost the last remnant of sensibility with which they had turned in disgust from the personal exhibitions of Nero. Commodus fought as a gladiator seven hundred and fifty times, but there was no Tacitus or Juvenal to be shocked at such an atrocity. He claimed the title of Hercules, which he inscribed on his colossal statue; and assuredly to slay a hundred lions with a hundred arrows was a labor worthy of the victor of Nemea. The death-stroke by which this despicable tyrant at last fell-despicable alike for his abject tastes and for his

CHAP. LXVII.

BRIEF REIGN OF PERTINAX.

549

A.D. 192.

want of all higher and worthier feelings-was dealt at last by the hand of an assassin suborned by his own household. Marcia, his favorite concubine, concerted the deed with Eclectus his chamberlain, and Lætus, the prefect of the prætorians, all equally apprehensive of his capricious cruelty; at the same moment they put forth a successor in the person of Pertinax, prefect of the city, a veteran and distinguished senator. The prætorians readily accepted the nominee of their own commander, the Senate were rejoiced at the compliment paid to their political importance, nor did the people withhold their acclamations.

Pertinax brought to the throne a character resembling that of Galba, but his mind was more polished by intellectual cultivation, and he had less of the tincture of camp manners and discipline. He was no doubt an excellent specimen of the statesman of the day; he had had experience of military rule in the provinces, but at the same time he was versed in civil affairs, and had held divers offices in the city. But he was not fresh from the camps, and had no military following. The emperor who was not at the head of powerful legions lay now at the mercy of the prætorians. This was the force which Commodus, when he relinquished the command of the army, had sedulously bribed and flattered. The prætorians had kept him on the throne in audacious defiance of the Senate. Pertinax himself had submitted to the indignity of buying their support with an ample donative; but as soon as they discovered that he was resolved to enforce their ancient discipline, and keep them under control, they became discontented, sullen, and seditious. The first care of the new emperor was directed to the recall of banished nobles, and the redress of the injuries they had suffered; he had found the treasury empty, and he devoted himself to recruiting the finances by legitimate methods; he once more repudiated the delators, and determined to direct his administration on principles of equity and economy. The wealthier of the senators breathed again, confidence revived, and the empire seemed to be entering on a period of renewed prosperity. But all depended actually upon the humor of the prætorians; and the prætorians, as we have seen, were adverse. Within three months from the death of Commodus they broke out in open revolt. Their prefect Lætus was disappointed at falling short of the elevation he had expected under a prince whom he had himself raised to power; but it was the soldiers rather than the officers who rose in arms against Pertinax, attacked the palace, to which they were admitted by their comrades on guard at the gates, and when the emperor came forth and sought to overawe them by his intrepid courage, after a short pause fell furiously upon him and slew him. They carried his head in triumph to the camp as a