Historia Augusta

The father of Hadrian was Aelius Hadrianus, surnamed Afer, a cousin of the Emperor Trajan; his mother was Domitia Paulina, a native of Cadiz; his sister was Paulina, the wife of Servianus i , his wife was Sabina, and his great-grandfather's grandfather was Marullinus, the first of his family to be a Roman senator.

Hadrian was born in Rome i on the ninth day before the Kalends of February in the seventh consulship of Vespasian and the fifth of Titus

Bereft of his father at the age of ten, he became the ward of Ulpius Trajanus, his cousin, then of praetorian rank, but afterwards emperor, and of Caelius Attianus i , a knight.

He then grew rather deeply devoted to Greek studies, to which his natural tastes inclined so much that some called him "Greekling."

He returned to his native city in his fifteenth year and at once entered military service, but was so fond of hunting that he incurred criticism for it, and for this reason Trajan recalled him from Italica.

Thenceforth he was treated by Trajan as his own son, and not long afterwards he was made one of the ten judges of the inheritance-court i , and, later, tribune of the Second Legion, the Adjutrix i .

After this, when Domitian's principate was drawing to a close, he was transferred to the province of Lower Moesia i .

There, it is said, he heard from an astrologer the same prediction of his future power which had been made, as he already knew, by his great-uncle, Aelius Hadrianus, a master of astrology.

When Trajan was adopted i by Nerva, Hadrian was sent to convey to him the army's congratulations and was at once transferred to Upper Germany.

When Nerva died, he wished to be the first to bring the news to Trajan, but as he was hastening to meet him he was detained by his brother-in law, Servianus, the same man who had revealed Hadrian's extravagance and indebtedness and thus stirred Trajan's anger against him. He was further delayed by the fact that his travelling-carriage had been designedly broken, but he nevertheless proceeded on foot and anticipated Servianus' personal messenger.

And now he became a favourite of Trajan's, and yet, owing to the activity of the guardians of certain boys whom Trajan loved ardently, he was not free from ... which Gallus fostered.

Indeed, at this time he was even anxious about the Emperor's attitude towards him, and consulted the Vergilian oracle. This was the lot given out: i

But who is yonder man, by olive wreath
Distinguished, who the sacred vessel bears?
I see a hoary head and beard. Behold
The Roman King whose laws shall stablish Rome
Anew, from tiny Cures' humble land
Called to a mighty realm. Then shall arise

Others, however, declare that this prophecy came to him from the Sibylline Verses.

Moreover, he received a further intimation of his subsequent power, in a response which issued from the temple of Jupiter at Nicephorium and has been quoted by Apollonius of Syria, the Platonist.

Finally, through the good offices of Sura i , he was instantly restored to a friendship with Trajan that was closer than ever, and he took to wife the daughter of the Emperor's sister i — a marriage advocated by Plotina i , but, according to Marius Maximus i , little desired by Trajan himself.

He held the quaestorship in the fourth consulship of Trajan and the first of Articuleius, and while holding this office he read a speech of the Emperor's to the senate and provoked a laugh by his somewhat provincial accent. He thereupon gave attention to the study of Latin until he attained the utmost proficiency and fluency.

After his quaestorship he served as curator of the acts of the senate, and later accompanied Trajan in the Dacian war on terms of considerable intimacy, seeing, indeed, that falling in with Trajan's habits, as he says himself, he partook freely of wine, and for this was very richly rewarded by the Emperor.

He was made tribune of the plebs in the second consulship of Candidus and Quadratus,

and he claimed that he received an omen of continuous tribunician power during this magistracy, because he lost the heavy cloak which is worn by the tribunes of the plebs in rainy weather, but never by the emperors. And down to this day the emperors do not wear cloaks when they appear in public before civilians.

In the second Dacian war, Trajan appointed him to the command of the First Legion, the Minervia, and took him with him to the war; and in this campaign his many remarkable deeds won great renown.

Because of this he was presented with a diamond which Trajan himself had received from Nerva, and by this gift he was encouraged in his hopes of succeeding to the throne.

He held the praetorship in the second consulship of Suburanus and Servianus, and again received from Trajan two million sesterces with which to give games.

Next he was sent as praetorian legate to Lower Pannonia, where he held the Sarmatians in check, maintained discipline among the soldiers, and restrained the procurators,who were overstepping too freely the bounds of their power.

In return for these services he was made consul. While he was holding this office he learned from Sura that he was to be adopted by Trajan, and thereupon he ceased to be an object of contempt and neglect to Trajan's friends.

Indeed, after Sura's death Trajan's friendship for him increased, principally on account of the speeches which he composed for the Emperor.

He enjoyed, too, the favour of Plotina, and it was due to her interest in him that later, at the time of the campaign against Parthia, he was appointed the legate of the Emperor.

At this same time he enjoyed, besides, the friendship of Sosius Papus and Platorius Nepos,both of the senatorial order, and also of Attianus, his former guardian, of Livianus, and of Turbo, all of equestrian rank.

And when Palma and Celsus, always his enemies, on whom he later took vengeance, fell under suspicion of aspiring to the throne, his adoption seemed assured;

and it was taken wholly for granted when, through Plotina's favour, he was appointed consul for the second time.

That he was bribing Trajan's freedmen and courting and corrupting his favourites all the while that he was in close attendance at court, was told and generally believed.

On the fifth day before the Ides of August, while he was governor of Syria, he learned of his adoption by Trajan, and he later gave orders to celebrate this day as the anniversary of his adoption.

On the third day before the Ides of August he received the news of Trajan's death, and this day he appointed as the anniversary of his accession.

There was, to be sure, a widely prevailing belief that Trajan, with the approval of many of his friends, had planned to appoint as his successor not Hadrian but Neratius Priscus, even to the extent of saying to Priscus: "I entrust the provinces to your care in case anything happens to me".

And, indeed, many aver that Trajan had purposed to follow the example of Alexander of Macedonia and die without naming a successor. Again, many others declare that he had meant to send an address to the senate, requesting this body, in case aught befell him, to appoint a ruler for the Roman empire, and merely appending the names of some from among whom the senate might choose the best.

And the statement has even been made that it was not until after Trajan's death that Hadrian was declared adopted, and then only by means of a trick of Plotina's; for she smuggled in someone who impersonated the Emperor and spoke in a feeble voice.

On taking possession of the imperial power Hadrian at once resumed the policy of the early emperors, and devoted his attention to maintaining peace throughout the world.

For the nations which Trajan had conquered began to revolt; the Moors, moreover, began to make attacks, and the Sarmatians to wage war, the Britons could not be kept under Roman sway, Egypt was thrown into disorder by riots, and finally Libya and Palestine showed the spirit of rebellion.

Whereupon he relinquished all the conquests east of the Euphrates and the Tigris, following, as he used to say, the example of Cato, who urged that the Macedonians, because they could not be held as subjects, should be declared free and independent.

And Parthamasiris, appointed king of the Parthians by Trajan, he assigned as ruler to the neighbouring tribes, because he saw that the man was held in little esteem by the Parthians.

Moreover, he showed at the outset such a wish to be lenient, that although Attianus advised him by letter in the first few days of his rule to put to death Baebius Macer, the prefect of the city, in case he opposed his elevation to power, also Laberius Maximus, then in exile on an island under suspicion of designs on the throne, and likewise Crassus Frugi, he nevertheless refused to harm them.

Later on, however, his procurator, though without an order from Hadrian, had Crassus killed when he tried to leave the island, on the ground that he was planning a revolt.

He gave a double donative to the soldiers in order to ensure a favourable beginning to his principate.

He deprived Lusius Quietus of the command of the Moorish tribesmen, who were serving under him, and then dismissed him from the army, because he had fallen under the suspicion of having designs on the throne; and he appointed Marcius Turbo, after his reduction of Judaea, to quell the insurrection in Mauretania.

After taking these measures he set out from Antioch to view the remains of Trajan, which were being escorted by Attianus, Plotina, and Matidia.

He received them formally and sent them on to Rome by ship and at once returned to Antioch; he then appointed Catilius Severus governor of Syria, and proceeded to Rome by way of Illyricum.

Despatching to the senate a carefully worded letter, he asked for divine honours for Trajan. This request he obtained by a unanimous vote; indeed, the senate voluntarily voted Trajan many more honours than Hadrian had requested.

In this letter to the senate he apologized because he had not left it the right to decide regarding his accession, explaining that the unseemly haste of the troops in acclaiming him emperor was due to the belief that the state could not be without an emperor.

Later, when the senate offered him the triumph which was to have been Trajan's, he refused it for himself, and caused the effigy of the dead Emperor to be carried in a triumphal chariot, in order that the best of emperors might not lose even after death the honour of a triumph.

Also he refused for the present the title of Father of his Country, offered to him at the time of his accession and again later on, giving as his reason the fact that Augustus had not won it until late in life.

Of the crown-money for his triumph he remitted Italy's contribution, and lessened that of the provinces, all the while setting forth grandiloquently and in great detail the straits of the public treasury.

Then, on hearing of the incursions of the Sarmatians and Roxolani, he sent the troops ahead and set out for Moesia.

He conferred the insignia of a prefect on Marcius Turbo after his Mauretanian campaign and appointed him to the temporary command of Pannonia and Dacia.

When the king of the Roxolani complained of the diminution of his subsidy, he investigated his case and made peace with him.

A plot to murder him while sacrificing was made by Nigrinus, with Lusius and a number of others as accomplices, even though Hadrian had destined Nigrinus for the succession; but Hadrian successfully evaded this plot.

Because of this conspiracy Palma was put to death at Tarracina, Celsus at Baiae, Nigrinus at Faventia, and Lusius on his journey homeward, all by order of the senate, but contrary to the wish of Hadrian, as he says himself in his autobiography.

Whereupon Hadrian entrusted the command in Dacia to Turbo, whom he dignified, in order to increase his authority, with a rank analogous to that of the prefect of Egypt. He then hastened to Rome in order to win over public opinion, which was hostile to him because of the belief that on one single occasion he had suffered four men of consular rank to be put to death. In order to check the rumours about himself, he gave in person a double largess to the people, although in his absence three aurei had already been given to each of the citizens.

In the senate, too, he cleared himself of blame for what had happened, and pledged himself never to inflict punishment on a senator until after a vote of the senate.

He established a regular imperial post, in order to relieve the local officials of such a burden.

Moreover, he used every means of gaining popularity. He remitted to private debtors in Rome and in Italy immense sums of money owed to the privy-purse, and in the provinces he remitted large amounts of arrears; and he ordered the promissory notes to be burned in the Forum of the Deified Trajan, in order that the general sense of security might thereby be increased.

He gave orders that the property of condemned persons should not accrue to the privy-purse, and in each case deposited the whole amount in the public treasury.

He made additional appropriations for the children to whom Trajan had allotted grants of money.

He supplemented the property of senators impoverished through no fault of their own, making the allowance in each case proportionate to the number of children, so that it might be enough for a senatorial career; to many, indeed, he paid punctually on the date the amount allotted for their living.

Sums of money sufficient to enable men to hold office he bestowed, not on his friends alone, but also on many far and wide,

and by his donations he helped a number of women to sustain life.

He gave gladiatorial combats for six days in succession, and on his birthday he put into the arena a thousand wild beasts.

The foremost members of the senate he admitted to close intimacy with the emperor's majesty.

All circus-games decreed in his honour he refused, except those held to celebrate his birthday.

Both in meetings of the people and in the senate he used to say that he would so administer the commonwealth that men would know that it was not his own but the people's.

Having himself been consul three times, he reappointed many to the consulship for the third time and men without number to a second term;

his own third consulship he held for only four months, and during his term he often administered justice.

He always attended regular meetings of the senate if he was present in Rome or even in the neighbourhood.

In the appointment of senators he showed the utmost caution and thereby greatly increased the dignity of the senate, and when he removed Attianus from the post of prefect of the guard and created him a senator with consular honours, he made it clear that he had no greater honour which he could bestow upon him.

Nor did he allow knights to try cases involving senators whether he was present at the trial or not.

For at that time it was customary for the emperor, when he tried cases, to call to his council both senators and knights and give a verdict based on their joint decision.

Finally, he denounced those emperors who had not shown this deference to the senators.

On his brother-in law Servianus, to whom he showed such respect that he would advance to meet him as he came from his chamber, he bestowed a third consulship, and that without any request or entreaty on Servianus' part; but nevertheless he did not appoint him as his own colleague, since Servianus had been consul twice before Hadrian, and the Emperor did not wish to have second place.

And yet, at the same time, Hadrian abandoned many provinces won by Trajan, and also destroyed, contrary to the entreaties of all, the theatre which Trajan had built in the Campus Martius.

These measures, unpopular enough in themselves, were still more displeasing to the public because of his pretence that all acts which he thought would be offensive had been secretly enjoined upon him by Trajan.

Unable to endure the power of Attianus and formerly his guardian, he was eager to murder him. He was restrained, however, by the knowledge that he already laboured under the odium of murdering four men of consular rank, although, as a matter of fact, he always attributed their execution to the designs of Attianus.

And as he could not appoint a successor for Attianus except at the latter's request, he contrived to make him request it, and at once transferred the power to Turbo;

at the same time Similis also, the other prefect, received a successor, namely Septicius Clarus.

After Hadrian had removed from the prefecture the very men to whom he owed the imperial power, he departed for Campania, where he aided all the towns of the region by gifts and benefactions and attached all the foremost men to his train of friends.

But when at Rome, he frequently attended the official functions of the praetors and consuls, appeared at the banquets of his friends, visited them twice or thrice a day when they were sick, even those who were merely knights and freedmen, cheered them by words of comfort, encouraged them by words of advice, and very often invited them to his own banquets.

In short, everything that he did was in the manner of a private citizen.

On his mother-in law he bestowed especial honour by means of gladiatorial games and other ceremonies.

After this he travelled to the provinces of Gaul, and came to the relief of all the communities with various acts of generosity;

and from there he went over into Germany. Though more desirous of peace than of war, he kept the soldiers in training just as if war were imminent, inspired them by proofs of his own powers of endurance, actually led a soldier's life among the maniples, and, after the example of Scipio Aemilianus, Metellus, and his own adoptive father Trajan, cheerfully ate out of doors such camp-fare as bacon, cheese and vinegar. And that the troops might submit more willingly to the increased harshness of his orders, he bestowed gifts on many and honours on a few.

For he reestablished the discipline of the camp, which since the time of Octavian had been growing slack through the laxity of his predecessors. He regulated, too, both the duties and the expenses of the soldiers, and now no one could get a leave of absence from camp by unfair means, for it was not popularity with the troops but just deserts that recommended a man for appointment as tribune.

He incited others by the example of his own soldierly spirit; he would walk as much as twenty miles fully armed; he cleared the camp of banqueting-rooms, porticoes, grottos, and bowers,

generally wore the commonest clothing, would have no gold ornaments on his sword-belt or jewels on the clasp, would scarcely consent to have his sword furnished with an ivory hilt,

visited the sick soldiers in their quarters, selected the sites for camps, conferred the centurion's wand on those only who were hardy and of good repute, appointed as tribunes only men with full beards or of an age to give to the authority of the tribuneship the full measure of prudence and maturity,

permitted no tribune to accept a present from a soldier, banished luxuries on every hand, and, lastly, improved the soldiers' arms and equipment.

Furthermore, with regard to length of military service he issued an order that no one should violate ancient usage by being in the service at an earlier age than his strength warranted, or at a more advanced one than common humanity permitted. He made it a point to be acquainted with the soldiers and to know their numbers.

Besides this, he strove to have an accurate knowledge of the military stores, and the receipts from the provinces he examined with care in order to make good any deficit that might occur in any particular instance. But more than any other emperor he made it a point not to purchase or maintain anything that was not serviceable.

And so, having reformed the army quite in the manner of a monarch, he set out for Britain, and there he corrected many abuses and was the first to construct a wall, eighty miles in length, which was to separate the barbarians from the Romans.

And so, having reformed the army quite in the manner of a monarch, he set out for Britain, and there he corrected many abuses and was the first to construct a wall, eighty miles in length, which was to separate the barbarians from the Romans.

Moreover, his vigilance was not confined to his own household but extended to those of his friends, and by means of his private agents he even pried into all their secrets, and so skilfully that they were never aware that the Emperor was acquainted with their private lives until he revealed it himself.

In this connection, the insertion of an incident will not be unwelcome, showing that he found out much about his friends.

The wife of a certain man wrote to her husband, complaining that he was so preoccupied by pleasures and baths that he would not return home to her, and Hadrian found this out through his private agents. And so, when the husband asked for a furlough, Hadrian reproached him with his fondness for his baths and his pleasures. Whereupon the man exclaimed: "What, did my wife write you just what she wrote to me?"

And, indeed, as for this habit of Hadrian's, men regard it as a most grievous fault, and add to their criticism the statements which are current regarding the passion for malesc and the adulteries with married women to which he is said to have been addicted, adding also the charge that he did not even keep faith with his friends.

After arranging matters in Britain he crossed over to Gaul, for he was rendered anxious by the news of a riot in Alexandria, which arose on account of Apis; for Apis had been discovered again after an interval of many years, and was causing great dissension among the communities, each one earnestly asserting its claim as the place best fitted to be the seat of his worship.

During this same time he reared a basilica of marvellous workmanship at Nimes in honour of Plotina.

After this he travelled to Spain and spent the winter at Tarragona, and here he restored at his own expense the temple of Augustus.

To this place, too, he called all the inhabitants of Spain for a general meeting, and when they refused to submit to a levy, the Italian settlers jestingly, to use the very words of Marius Maximus, and the others very vigorously, he took measures characterized by skill and discretion.

At this same time, he incurred grave danger and won great glory; for while he was walking about in a garden at Tarragona one of the slaves of the household rushed at him madly with a sword. But he merely laid hold on the man, and when the servants ran to the rescue handed him over to them. Afterwards, when it was found that the man was mad, he turned him over to the physicians for treatment, and all this time showed not the slightest sign of alarm.

During this period and on many other occasions also, in many regions where the barbarians are held back not by rivers but by artificial barriers, Hadrian shut them off by means of high stakes planted deep in the ground and fastened together in the manner of a palisade.

He appointed a king for the Germans, suppressed revolts among the Moors, and won from the senate the usual ceremonies of thanksgiving.

The war with the Parthians had not at that time advanced beyond the preparatory stage, and Hadrian checked it by a personal conference.

After this Hadrian travelled by way of Asia and the islands to Greece, and, following the example of Hercules and Philip, had himself initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. He bestowed many favours on the Athenians and sat as president of the public games.

And during this stay in Greece care was taken, they say, that when Hadrian was present, none should come to a sacrifice armed, whereas, as a rule, many carried knives.

Afterwards he sailed to Sicily, and there he climbed Mount Aetna to see the sunrise, which is many-hued, they say, like the rainbow.

Thence he returned to Rome, and from there he crossed over to Africa, where he showed many acts of kindness to the provinces.

Hardly any emperor ever travelled with such speed over so much territory.

Finally, after his return to Rome from Africa, he immediately set out for the East, journeying by way of Athens. Here he dedicated the public works which he had begun in the city of the Athenians, such as the temple to Olympian Jupiter and an altar to himself; and in the same way, while travelling through Asia, he consecrated the temples called by his name.

Next, he received slaves from the Cappadocians for service in the camps.

To petty rulers and kings he made offers of friendship, and even to Osdroes, king of the Parthians. To him he also restored his daughter, who had been captured by Trajan, and promised to return the throne captured at the same time.

And when some of the kings came to him, he treated them in such a way that those who had refused to come regretted it. He took this course especially on account of Pharasmanes, who had haughtily scorned his invitation.

Furthermore, as he went about the provinces he punished procurators and governors as their actions demanded, and indeed with such severity that it was believed that he incited those who brought the accusations.

In the course of these travels he conceived such a hatred for the people of Antioch that he wished to separate Syria from Phoenicia, in order that Antioch might not be called the chief city of so many communities.

At this time also the Jews began war, because they were forbidden to practice circumcision.

As he was sacrificing on Mount Casius, which he had ascended by night in order to see the sunrise, a storm arose, and a flash of lightning descended and struck both the victim and the attendant.

He then travelled through Arabia and finally came to Pelusium, where he rebuilt Pompey's tomb on a more magnificent scale.

During a journey on the Nile he lost Antinous, his favourite, and for this youth he wept like a woman.

Concerning this incident there are varying rumours; for some claim that he had devoted himself to death for Hadrian, and others — what both his beauty and Hadrian's sensuality suggest.

But however this may be, the Greeks deified him at Hadrian's request, and declared that oracles were given through his agency, but these, it is commonly asserted, were composed by Hadrian himself.

In poetry and in letters Hadrian was greatly interested. In arithmetic, geometry, and painting he was very expert.

Of his knowledge of flute-playing and singing he even boasted openly. He ran to excess in the gratification of his desires, and wrote much verse about the subjects of his passion. He composed love-poems too.

He was also a connoisseur of arms, had a thorough knowledge of warfare, and knew how to use gladiatorial weapons.

He was, in the same person, austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable.

His friends he enriched greatly, even though they did not ask it, while to those who did ask, he refused nothing.

And yet he was always ready to listen to whispers about his friends, and in the end he treated almost all of them as enemies, even the closest and even those whom he had raised to the highest of honours, such as Attianus and Nepos and Septicius Clarus.

Eudaemon, for example, who had been his accomplice in obtaining the imperial power, he reduced to poverty;

Polaenus and Marcellus he drove to suicide;

Heliodorus he assailed in a most slanderous pamphlet;

Titianus he allowed to be accused as an accomplice in an attempt to seize the empire and even to be outlawed;

Ummidius Quadratus, Catilius Severus, and Turbo he persecuted vigorously

and in order to prevent Servianus, his brother-in law, from surviving him, he compelled him to commit suicide, although the man was then in his ninetieth year.

And he even took vengeance on freedmen and sometimes on soldiers.

And although he was very deft at prose and at verse and very accomplished in all the arts, yet he used to subject the teachers of these arts, as though more learned than they, to ridicule, scorn, and humiliation.

With these very professors and philosophers he often debated by means of pamphlets or poems issued by both sides in turn.

And once Favorinus, when he had yielded to Hadrian's criticism of a word which he had used, raised a merry laugh among his friends. For when they reproached him for having done wrong in yielding to Hadrian in the matter of a word used by reputable authors, he replied:

"You are urging a wrong course, my friends, when you do not suffer me to regard as the most learned of men the one who has thirty legions".

So desirous of a wide-spread reputation was Hadrian that he even wrote his own biography; this he gave to his educated freedmen, with instructions to publish it under their own names. For indeed, Phlegon's writings, it is said, are Hadrian's in reality.

He wrote Catachannae, a very obscure work in imitation of Antimachus.

And when the poet Florus wrote to him:

I don't want to be a Caesar,
Stroll about among the Britons,
Lurk about among the . . . .
And endure the Scythian winters,

he wrote back:

I don't want to be a Florus,
Stroll about among the taverns,
Lurk about among the cook-shops
And endure the round fat insects.

Furthermore, he loved the archaic style of writing, and he used to take part in debates.

He preferred Cato to Cicero, Ennius to Vergil, Caelius to Sallust; and with the same self-assurance he expressed opinions about Homer and Plato.

In astrology he considered himself so proficient that on the Kalends of January he would actually write down all that might happen to him in the whole ensuing year, and in the year in which he died, indeed, he wrote down everything that he was going to do, down to the very hour of his death.

However ready Hadrian might have been to criticize musicians, tragedians, comedians, grammarians, and rhetoricians, he nevertheless bestowed both honours and riches upon all who professed these arts, though he always tormented them with his questions.

And although he was himself responsible for the fact that many of them left his presence with their feelings hurt, to see anyone with hurt feelings, he used to say, he could hardly endure.

He treated with the greatest friendship the philosophers Epictetus and Heliodorus, and various grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, geometricians — not to mention all by name — painters and astrologers; and among them Favorinus, many claim, was conspicuous above all the rest.

Teachers who seemed unfit for their profession he presented with riches and honours and then dismissed from the practice of their profession.

Many whom he had regarded as enemies when a private citizen, when emperor he merely ignored; for example, on becoming emperor, he said to one man whom he had regarded as a mortal foe, "You have escaped".

When he himself called any to military service, he always supplied them with horses, mules, clothing, cost of maintenance, and indeed their whole equipment.

At the Saturnalia and Sigillaria he often surprised his friends with presents, and he gladly received gifts from them and again gave others in return.

In order to detect dishonesty in his caterers, when he gave banquets with several tables he gave orders that platters from the other tables, even the lowest, should be set before himself.

He surpassed all monarchs in his gifts. He often bathed in the public baths, even with the meanest crowd. And a jest of his made in the bath became famous.

For on a certain occasion, seeing a veteran, whom he had known in the service, rubbing his back and the rest of his body against the wall, he asked him why he had the marble rub him, and when the man replied that it was because he did not own a slave, he presented him with some slaves and the cost of their maintenance.

But another time, when he saw a number of old men rubbing themselves against the wall for the purpose of arousing the generosity of the Emperor, he ordered them to be called out and then to rub one another in turn.

His love for the common people he loudly expressed. So fond was he of travel, that he wished to inform himself in person about all that he had read concerning all parts of the world.

Cold and bad weather he could bear with such endurance that he never covered his head.

He showed a multitude of favours to many kings, but from a number he even purchased peace, and by some he was treated with scorn;

to many he gave huge gifts, but none greater than to the king of the Hiberi, for to him he gave an elephant and a band of fifty men, in addition to magnificent presents.

And having himself received huge gifts from Pharasmanes, including some cloaks embroidered with gold, he sent into the arena three hundred condemned criminals dressed in gold-embroidered cloaks for the purpose of ridiculing the gifts of the king.

When he tried cases, he had in his council not only his friends and the members of his staff, but also jurists, in particular Juventius Celsus, Salvus Julianus, Neratius Priscus, and others, only those, however, whom the senate had in every instance approved.

Among other decisions he ruled that in no community should any house be demolished for the purpose of transporting any building-materials to another city.

To the child of an outlawed person he granted a twelfth of the property.

Accusations for lèse-majesté he did not admit.

Legacies from persons unknown to him he refused, and even those left to him by acquaintances he would not accept if they had any children.

In regard to treasure-trove, he ruled that if anyone made a find on his own property he might keep it, if on another's land, he should turn over half to the proprietor thereof, if on the state's, he should share the find equally with the privy-purse.

He forbade masters to kill their slaves, and ordered that any who deserved it should be sentenced by the courts.

He forbade anyone to sell a slave or a maid-servant to a procurer or trainer of gladiators without giving a reason therefor.

He ordered that those who had wasted their property, if legally responsible, should be flogged in the amphitheatre and then let go. Houses of hard labour for slaves and free he abolished.

He provided separate baths for the sexes.

He issued an order that, if a slave-owner were murdered in his house, no slaves should be examined save those who were near enough to have had knowledge of the murder.

In Etruria he held a praetorship while emperor. In the Latin towns he was dictator and aedile and duumvir, in Naples demarch, in his native city duumvir with the powers of censor. This office he held at Hadria, too, his second native city, as it were, and at Athens he was archon.

In almost every city he built some building and gave public games.

At Athens he exhibited in the stadium a hunt of a thousand wild beasts,

but he never called away from Rome a single wild beast-hunter or actor.

In Rome, in addition to popular entertainments of unbounded extravagance, he gave spices to the people in honour of his mother-in law, and in honour of Trajan he caused essences of balsam and saffron to be poured over the seats of the theatre.

And in the theatre he presented plays of all kinds in the ancient manner and had the court-players appear before the public.

In the Circus he had many wild beasts killed and often a whole hundred of lions.

He often gave the people exhibitions of military Pyrrhic dances, and he frequently attended gladiatorial shows.

He built public buildings in all places and without number, but he inscribed his own name on none of them except the temple of his father Trajan.

At Rome he restored the Pantheon, the Voting-enclosure, the Basilica of Neptune, very many temples, the Forum of Augustus, the Baths of Agrippa, and dedicated all of them in the names of their original builders.

Also he constructed the bridge named after himself, a tomb on the banks of the Tiber, and the temple of the Bona Dea.

With the aid of the architect Decrianus he raised the Colossus and, keeping it in an upright position, moved it away from the place in which the Temple of Rome is now, though its weight was so vast that he had to furnish for the work as many as twenty-four elephants.

This statue he then consecrated to the Sun, after removing the features of Nero, to whom it had previously been dedicated, and he also planned, with the assistance of the architect Apollodorus, to make a similar one for the Moon.

Most democratic in his conservations, even with the very humble, he denounced all who, in the belief that they were thereby maintaining the imperial dignity, begrudged him the pleasure of such friendliness.

In the Museum at Alexandria he propounded many questions to the teachers and answered himself what he had propounded.

Marius Maximus says that he was naturally cruel and performed so many kindnesses only because he feared that he might meet the fate which had befallen Domitian.

Though he cared nothing for inscriptions on his public works, he gave the name of Hadrianopolis to many cities, as, for example, even to Carthage and a section of Athens;

and he also gave his name to aqueducts without number.

He was the first to appoint a pleader for the privy-purse.

Hadrian's memory was vast and his ability was unlimited; for instance, he personally dictated his speeches and gave opinions on all questions.

He was also very witty, and of his jests many still survive. The following one has even become famous: When he had refused a request to a certain grey-haired man, and the man repeated the request but this time with dyed hair, Hadrian replied: "I have already refused this to your father."

Even without the aid of a nomenclator he could call by name a great many people, whose names he had heard but once and then all in a crowd; indeed, he could correct the nomenclators when they made mistakes, as they not infrequently did,

and he even knew the names of the veterans whom he had discharged at various times. He could repeat from memory, after a rapid reading, books which to most men were not known at all.

He wrote, dictated, listened, and, incredible as it seems, conversed with his friends, all at one and the same time. He had as complete a knowledge of the state-budget in all its details as any careful householder has of his own household.

His horses and dogs he loved so much that he provided burial-places for them,

and in one locality he founded a town called Hadrianotherae, because once he had hunted successfully there and killed a bear.

He always inquired into the actions of all his judges, and persisted in his inquiries until he satisfied himself of the truth about them.

He would not allow his freedmen to be prominent in public affairs or to have any influence over himself, and he declared that all his predecessors were to blame for the faults of their freedmen; he also punished all his freedmen who boasted of their influence over him.

With regard to his treatment of his slaves, the following incident, stern but almost humorous, is still related. Once when he saw one of his slaves walk away from his presence between two senators, he sent someone to give him a box on the ear and say to him: "Do not walk between those whose slave you may someday be".

As an article of food he was singularly fond of tetrapharmacum, which consisted of pheasant, sow's udders, ham, and pastry.

During his reign there were famines, pestilence, and earthquakes. The distress caused by all these calamities he relieved to the best of his ability, and also he aided many communities which had been devastated by them.

There was also an overflow of the Tiber.

To many communities he gave Latin citizenship, and to many others he remitted their tribute.

There were no campaigns of importance during his reign, and the wars that he did wage were brought to a close almost without arousing comment.

The soldiers loved him much on account of his very great interest in the army and for his great liberality to them besides.

The Parthians always regarded him as a friend because he took away the king whom Trajan had set over them.

The Armenians were permitted to have their own king, whereas under Trajan they had had a governor,

and the Mesopotamians were relieved of the tribute which Trajan had imposed.

The Albanians and Hiberians he made his friends by lavishing gifts upon their kings, even though they had scorned to come to him.

The kings of the Bactrians sent envoys to him to beg humbly for his friendship.

He very often assigned guardians. Discipline in civil life he maintained as rigorously as he did in military.

He ordered senators and knights to wear the toga whenever they appeared in public except when they were returning from a banquet,

and he himself, when in Italy, always appeared thus clad.

At banquets, when senators came, he received them standing, and he always reclined at table dressed either in a Greek cloak or in a toga.

The cost of a banquet he determined on each occasion, all with the utmost care, and he reduced the sums that might be expended to the amounts prescribed by p69the ancient laws.

He forbade the entry into Rome of heavily laden waggons, and did not permit riding on horseback in cities.

None but invalids were allowed to bathe in the public baths before the eighth hour of the day.

He was the first to put knights in charge of the imperial correspondence and of the petitions addressed to the emperor.

Those men whom he saw to be poor and innocent he enriched of his own accord, but those who had become rich through sharp practice he actually regarded with hatred. He despised foreign cults,

but native Roman ones he observed most scrupulously; moreover, he always performed the duties of pontifex maximus.

He tried a great number of lawsuits himself both in Rome and in the provinces, and to his council he called consuls and praetors and the foremost of the senators.

He drained the Fucine Lake.

He appointed four men of consular rank as judges for all Italy.

When he went to Africa it rained on his arrival for the first time in the space of five years, and for this he was beloved by the Africans.

After traversing, as he did, all parts of the world with bare head and often in severe storms and frosts, he contracted an illness which confined him to his bed.

And becoming anxious about a successor he thought first of Servianus.

Afterwards, however, as I have said, he forced him to commit suicide; and Fuscus, too, he put to death on the ground that, being spurred on by prophecies and omens, he was hoping for the imperial power.

Carried away by suspicion, he held in the greatest abhorrence Platorius Nepos, whom he had formerly so loved that, once, when he went to see him while ill and was refused admission, he nevertheless let him go unpunished.

Also he hated Terentius Gentianus, but even more vehemently, because he saw that he was then beloved by the senate.

At last, he came to hate all those of whom he had thought in connection with the imperial power, as though they were really about to be emperors.

However, he controlled all the force of his innate cruelty down to the time when in his Tiburtine Villa he almost met his death through a hemorrhage.

Then he threw aside all restraint and compelled Servianus to kill himself, on the ground that he aspired to the empire, merely because he gave a feast to the royal slaves, sat in a royal chair placed close to his bed, and, though an old man of ninety, used to arise and go forward to meet the guard of soldiers. He put many others to death, either openly or by treachery,

and indeed, when his wife Sabina died, the rumour arose that the Emperor had given her poison.

Hadrian then determined to adopt Ceionius Commodus, son-in law of Nigrinus, the former conspirator, and this in spite of the fact that his sole recommendation was his beauty.

Accordingly, despite the opposition of all, he adopted Ceionius Commodus Verus and called him Aelius Verus Caesar.

On the occasion of the adoption he gave games in the Circus and bestowed largess upon the populace and the soldiers.

He dignified Commodus with the office of praetor and immediately placed him in command of the Pannonian provinces, and also conferred on him the consulship together with money enough to meet the expenses of the office. He also appointed Commodus to a second consulship.

And when he saw that the man was diseased, he used often to say: "We have leaned against a tottering wall and have wasted the four hundred million sesterces which we gave to the populace and the soldiers on the adoption of Commodus".

Moreover, because of his ill-health, Commodus could not even make a speech in the senate thanking Hadrian for his adoption.

Finally, too large a quantity of medicine was administered to him, and thereupon his illness increased, and he died in his sleep on the very Kalends of January. Because of the date Hadrian forbade public mourning for him, in order that the vows for the state might be assumed as usual.

After the death of Aelius Verus Caesar, Hadrian was attacked by a very severe illness, and thereupon he adopted Arrius Antoninus (who was afterwards called Pius), imposing upon him the condition that he adopt two sons, Annius Verus and Marcus Antoninus.

These were the two who afterwards ruled the empire together, the first joint Augusti.

And as for Antoninus, he was called Pius, it is said, because he used to give his arm to his father-in law when weakened by old age.

However, others assert that this surname was given to him because, as Hadrian grew more cruel, he rescued many senators from the Emperor;

others, again, that it was because he bestowed great honours upon Hadrian after his death.

The adoption of Antoninus was lamented by many at that time, particularly by Catilius Severus, the prefect of the city, who was making plans to secure the throne for himself.

When this fact became known, a successor was appointed for him and he was deprived of his office.

But Hadrian was now seized with the utmost disgust of life and ordered a servant to stab him with a sword.

When this was disclosed and reached the ears of Antoninus, he came to the Emperor, together with the prefects, and begged him to endure with fortitude the hard necessity of illness, declaring furthermore that he himself would be no better than a parricide, were he, an adopted son, to permit Hadrian to be killed.

The Emperor then became angry and ordered the betrayer of the secret to be put to death; however, the man was saved by Antoninus.

Then Hadrian immediately drew up his will, though he did not lay aside the administration of the empire.

Once more, however, after making his will, he attempted to kill himself, but the dagger was taken from him.

He then became more violent, and he even demanded poison from his physician, who thereupon killed himself in order that he might not have to administer it.

About this time there came a certain woman, who said that she had been warned in a dream to coax Hadrian to refrain from killing himself, for he was destined to recover entirely, but that she had failed to do this and had become blind; she had nevertheless been ordered a second time to give the same message to Hadrian and to kiss his knees, and was assured of the recovery of her sight if she did so.

The woman then carried out the command of the dream, and received her sight after she had bathed her eyes with the water in the temple from which she had come.

Also a blind old man from Pannonia came to Hadrian when he was ill with fever, and touched him; whereupon the man received his sight, and the fever left Hadrian.

All these things, however, Marius Maximus declares were done as a hoax.

After this Hadrian departed for Baiae, leaving Antoninus at Rome to carry on the government.

But he received no benefit there, and he thereupon sent for Antoninus, and in his presence he died there at Baiae on the sixth day before the Ides of July.

Hated by all, he was buried at Puteoli on an estate that had belonged to Cicero.

Just before his death, he compelled Servianus, then ninety years old, to kill himself, as has been said before, in order that Servianus might not outlive him, and, as he thought, become emperor. He likewise gave orders that very many others who were guilty of slight offences should be put to death; these, however, were spared by Antoninus.

And he is said, as he lay dying, to have composed the following lines:

O blithe little soul, thou, flitting away,
Guest and comrade of this my clay,
Whither now goest thou, to what place
Bare and ghastly and without grace?
Nor, as thy wont was, joke and play."

Such verses as these did he compose, and not many that were better, and also some in Greek.

He lived 62 years, 5 months, 17 days. He ruled 20 years, 11 months.

He was tall of stature and elegant in appearance; his hair was curled on a comb, and he wore a full beard to cover up the natural blemishes on his face; and he was very strongly built.

He rode and walked a great deal and always kept himself in training by the use of arms and the javelin.

He also hunted, and he used often to kill a lion with his own hand, but once in a hunt he broke his collar-bone and a rib; these hunts of his he always shared with his friends.

At his banquets he always furnished, according to the occasion, tragedies, comedies, Atellan farces, players on the sambuca, readers, or poets.

His villa at Tibur was marvellously constructed, and he actually gave to parts of it the names of provinces and places of the greatest renown, calling them, for instance, Lyceum, Academia, Prytaneum, Canopus, Poecile and Tempe. And in order not to omit anything, he even made a Hades.

The premonitions of his death were as follows: On his last birthday, when he was commending Antoninus to the gods, his bordered toga fell down without apparent cause and bared his head.

His ring, on which his portrait was carved, slipped of its own accord from his finger.

On the day before his birthday someone came into the senate wailing; by his presence Hadrian was as disturbed as if he were speaking about his own death, for no one could understand what he was saying.

Again, in the senate, when he meant to say, "after my son's death," he said, "after mine".

Besides, he dreamed that he had asked his father for a soporific; he also dreamed that he had been overcome by a lion.

Much was said against him after his death, and by many persons.

The senate wished to annul his acts, and would have refrained from naming him "the Deified" had not Antoninus requested it.

Antoninus, moreover, finally built a temple for him at Puteoli to take the place of a tomb, and he also established a quinquennial contest and flamens and sodales and many other institutions which appertain to the honour of one regarded as a god.

It is for this reason, as has been said before, that many think that Antoninus received the surname Pius.

Among these I must tell first and foremost of Aelius Verus, who through his adoption by Hadrian became a member of the imperial family, and was the first to receive only the name of Caesar.

Since I can tell but little of him, and the prologue should not be more extensive than the play, I shall now proceed to tell of the man himself.

The life of Ceionius Commodus, also called Aelius Verus, adopted by Hadrian after his journey through the world, when he was burdened by old age and weakened by cruel disease, contains nothing worthy of note except that he was the first to receive only the name of Caesar.

This was conferred, not by last will and testament, as was previously the custom, nor yet in the fashion in which Trajan was adopted, but well nigh in the same manner as in our own time your Clemency conferred the name of Caesar on Maximianus and on Constantius, as on true sons of the imperial house and heirs apparent of your August Majesty.

Now whereas I must needs tell something of the name of the Caesars, particularly in a life of the man who received this name alone of the imperial titles, men of the greatest learning and scholarship aver that he who first received the name of Caesar was called by this name, either because he slew in battle an elephant, which in the Moorish tongue is called caesai,

or because he was brought into the world after his mother's death and by an incision in her abdomen, or because he had a thick head of hair when he came forth from his mother's womb, or, finally, because he had bright grey eyes and was vigorous beyond the wont of human beings.

At any rate, whatever be the truth, it was a happy fate which ordained the growth of a name so illustrious, destined to last as long as the universe endures.

This man, then, of whom I shall write, was at first called Lucius Aurelius Verus, but on his adoption by Hadrian he passed into the family of the Aelii, that is, into Hadrian's, and received the name of Caesar.

His father was Ceionius Commodus, whom some have called Verus, others, Lucius Aurelius, and many, Annius.

His ancestors, all men of the highest rank, had their origin for the most part in Etruria or Faventia.

Of his family, however, we will speak at greater length in the life of his son, Lucius Aurelius Ceionius Commodus Verus Antoninus, whom Antoninus was ordered to adopt.

For all that pertains to the family-tree should be included in the work which deals with a prince of whom there is more to be told.

Aelius Verus was adopted by Hadrian at the time when, as we have previously said, the Emperor's health was beginning to fail and he was forced to take thought for the succession.

He was at once made praetor and appointed military and civil governor of the provinces of Pannonia; afterwards he was created consul, and then, because he had been chosen to succeed to the imperial power, he was named for a second consulship.

On the occasion of his adoption largess was given to the populace, three hundred million sesterces were distributed among the soldiers, and races were held in the Circus; in short, nothing was omitted which could signalize the public rejoicing.

He had, moreover, such influence with Hadrian, even apart from the affection resulting from his adoption, which seemed a firm enough tie between them, that he was the only one who obtained his every desire, even when expressed in a letter.

Besides, in the province to which he had been appointed he was by no means a failure;

for he carried on a campaign with success, or rather, with good fortune, and achieved the reputation, if not of a pre-eminent, at least of an average, commander.

Verus had, however, such wretched health that Hadrian immediately regretted the adoption, and since he often considered others as possible successors, he might have removed him altogether from the imperial family had Verus chanced to live longer.

In fact, it is reported by those who have set down in writing all the details of Hadrian's life, that the Emperor was acquainted with Verus' horoscope, and that he adopted a man whom he did not really deem suitable to govern the empire merely for the purpose of gratifying his own desires, and, some even say, of complying with a sworn agreement said to have been contracted on secret terms between himself and Verus.

For Marius Maximus represents Hadrian as so expert in astrology, as even to assert that he knew all about his own future, and that he actually wrote down beforehand what he was destined to do on every day down to the hour of his death.

Furthermore, it is generally known that he often said about Verus:

This hero Fate will but display to earth
Nor suffer him to stay.

And once when Hadrian was reciting these verses while strolling about in his garden, one of the literary men, in whose brilliant company he delighted, happened to be present and proceeded to add,

The race of Rome,
Would seem to you, O Gods, to be too great,
Were such gifts to endure.

Thereupon the Emperor remarked, it is said, "The life of Verus will not admit of these lines," and added,

Bring lilies with a bounteous hand;
And I the while will scatter rosy blooms,
Thus doing honour to our kinsman's soul
With these poor gifts — though useless be the task.

At the same time, too, Hadrian, it is reported, remarked with a laugh: "I seem to have adopted, not a son, but a god".

Yet when one of these same literary men who was present tried to console him, saying: "What if a mistake has been made in casting the horoscope of this man who, as we believe, is destined to live"? Hadrian is said to have answered: "It is easy for you to say that, when you are looking for an heir to your property, not to the Empire".

This makes it clear that he intended to choose another heir, and at the end of his life to remove Verus from the government of the state. However, fortune aided his purpose.

For after Verus had returned from his province, and had finished composing, either by his own efforts or with the help of imperial secretaries or the rhetoricians, a very pretty speech, still read nowadays, wherein he intended to convey his thanks to his father Hadrian on the Kalends of January, he swallowed a potion which he believed would benefit him and died on that very day of January.

All public lamentation for him was forbidden by Hadrian because it was the time for assuming the vows for the state.

Verus was a man of joyous life and well versed in letters, and he was endeared to Hadrian, as the malicious say, rather by his beauty than by his character.

In the palace his stay was but a short one; in his private life, though there was little to be commended, yet there was little to be blamed. Furthermore, he was considerate of his family, well-dressed, elegant in appearance, a man of regal beauty, with a countenance that commanded respect, a speaker of unusual eloquence, deft at writing verse, and, moreover, not altogether a failure in public life.

His pleasures, many of which are recorded by his biographers, were not indeed discreditable but somewhat luxurious.

For it is Verus who is said to have been the inventor of the tetrapharmacum, or rather pentapharmacum, of which Hadrian was thereafter always fond, namely, a mixture of sows' udders, pheasant, peacock, ham in pastry and wild boar.

Of this article of food Marius Maximus gives a different account, for he calls it, not pentapharmacum, but tetrapharmacum, as we have ourselves described it in our biography of Hadrian.

There was also another kind of pleasure, it is said, of which Verus was the inventor.

He constructed, namely, a bed provided with four high cushions and all inclosed with a fine net; this he filled with rose-leaves, from which the white parts had been removed, and then reclined on it with his mistresses, burying himself under a coverlet made of lilies, himself anointed with perfumes from Persia.

Some even relate that he made couches and tables of roses and lilies, these flowers all carefully cleansed, a practice, which, if not creditable, at least did not make for the destruction of the state.

Furthermore, he always kept the Recipes of Caelius Apicius and also Ovid's Amores at his bedside, and declared that Martial, the writer of Epigrams, was his Vergil.

Still more trivial was his custom of fastening wings on many of his messengers after the fashion of Cupids, and often giving them the names of the winds, calling one Boreas, another Notus, others Aquilo, or Circius, or some other like name, and forcing them to bear messages without respite or mercy.

And when his wife complained about his amours with others, he said to her, it is reported: "Let me indulge my desires with others; for wife is a term of honour, not of pleasure."

His son was Antoninus Verus, who was adopted by Marcus, or rather, with Marcus, and received an equal share with him in the imperial power.

For these are the men who first received the name of Augustus conjointly, and whose names are inscribed in the lists of the consuls, not as two Antonini but as two Augusti.

And such was the impression created by the novelty and the dignity of this fact that in some of the lists the order of the consuls begins with the names of these emperors.

On the occasion of the adoption of Verus, Hadrian bestowed a vast sum of money on the populace and the soldiery.

But being a rather sagacious man, when he saw that Verus was in such utterly wretched health that he could not brandish a shield of any considerable weight, he remarked, it is said:

"We have lost the three hundred million sesterces which we paid out to the army and to the people, for we have indeed leaned against a tottering wall, and one which can hardly bear even our weight, much less that of the Empire".

This remark, indeed, Hadrian made to his prefect,

but the man repeated it, and as a result Aelius Caesar grew worse every day from anxiety, as a man does who had lost hope. Thereupon Hadrian appointed a successor for the prefect who had divulged the remark, wishing to give the impression that he had qualified his harsh words.

But it profited him nothing, for Lucius Ceionius Commodus Verus Aelius Caesar (for he was called by all these names) died and was accorded an emperor's funeral, nor did he derive any benefit from his imperial position save honour at his death.

Hadrian, then, mourned his death as might a good father, not a good emperor. For when his friends anxiously asked who could now be adopted, Hadrian is said to have replied to them: "I decided that even when Verus was still alive,"

thereby showing either his good judgment or his knowledge of the future.

After Verus' death Hadrian was in doubt for a time as to what he should do, but finally he adopted Antoninus, who had received the surname Pius. And he imposed on Antoninus the condition that he in turn should adopt Marcus and Verus, and should give his daughter in marriage to Verus, rather than to Marcus.

Nor did Hadrian live long thereafter, but succumbed to weakness and illnesses of various kinds, all the while declaring that a prince ought to die, not in an enfeebled condition, but in full vigour.

Hadrian gave orders that colossal statues of Verus should be set up all over the world, and in some cities he even had temples built.

Finally, out of regard for him, Hadrian gave his son Verus (who had remained in the imperial household after his father's death) to Antoninus Pius, as I have already said, to be adopted as his son along with Marcus, treating the boy as if he were his own grandson; and he often remarked: "Let the Empire retain something of Verus".

This indeed contradicts all that very many authors have written with regard to Hadrian's regret for his adoption of Verus, since, save for a kindly character, there was nothing in character of the younger Verus capable of shedding lustre on the imperial family.

These are the facts about Verus Caesar which have seemed worthy of being consigned to letters.

I was unwilling to leave him unmentioned for this reason that it is my purpose to set forth in single books the lives of all the successors of Caesar the Dictator, that is, the Deified Julius, whether they were called Caesars or Augusti or princes, and of all those who came into the family by adoption, whether it was as sons or as relatives of emperors that they were immortalized by the name of Caesar, and thereby to satisfy my own sense of justice, even if there be many who will feel no compelling need of seeking such information.

His grandfather was Titus Aurelius Fulvus, who after various offices of honour attained to a second consulship and the prefecture of the city;

his father was Aurelius Fulvus, also consul, and a stern and upright man.

His mother was Arria Fadilla; her mother was Boionia Procilla and her father Arrius Antoninus, twice consul and a righteous man, who pitied Nerva that he assumed the imperial power.

Julia Fadilla was his mother's daughter,

his stepfather being Julius Lupus, a man of consular rank.

His father-in‑law was Annius Verus and his wife Annia Faustina, who bore him two sons and two daughters, of whom the elder was married to Lamia Silanus and the younger to Marcus Antoninus.

Antoninus himself was born at an estate at Lanuvium on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of October in the twelfth consulship of Domitian and first of Cornelius Dolabella. He was reared at Lorium on the Aurelian Way, where he afterwards built the palace whose ruins stand there to‑day.

He passed his childhood first with his paternal grandfather, then later with his maternal; and he showed such a dutiful affection toward all his family, that he was enriched by legacies from even his cousins, his stepfather, and many still more distant kin.

In personal appearance he was strikingly handsome, in natural talent brilliant, in temperament kindly; he was aristocratic in countenance and calm in nature, a singularly gifted speaker and an elegant scholar, conspicuously thrifty, a conscientious land-holder, gentle, generous, and mindful of others' rights. He possessed all these qualities, moreover, in the proper mean and without ostentation,

and, in fine, was praiseworthy in every way and, in the minds of all good men, well deserving of comparison with Numa Pompilius.

He was given the name of Pius by the senate, either because, when his father-in‑law was old and weak, he lent him a supporting hand in his attendance at the senate (which act, indeed, is not sufficient as a token of great dutifulness, since a man were rather undutiful who did not perform this service than dutiful if he did),

or because he spared those men whom Hadrian in his ill-health had condemned to death,

or because after Hadrian's death he had unbounded and extraordinary honours decreed for him in spite of opposition from all,

or because, when Hadrian wished to make away with himself, by great care and watchfulness he prevented him from so doing,

or because he was in fact very kindly by nature and did no harsh deed in his own time.

He also loaned money at four per cent, the lowest rate ever exacted, in order that he might use his fortune to aid many.

As quaestor he was generous, as praetor illustrious, and in the consulship he had as colleague Catilius Severus.

His life as a private citizen he passed mostly on his estates but he was well-known everywhere.

He was chosen by Hadrian from among the four men of consular rank under whose jurisdiction Italy was placed, to administer that particular part of Italy in which the greater part of his own holdings lay; from this it was evident that Hadrian had regard for both the fame and the tranquillity of such a man.

An omen of his future rule occurred while he was administering Italy; for when he mounted the tribunal, among other greetings some one cried, "God save thee, Augustus".

His proconsulship in Asia he conducted in such a fashion that he alone excelled his grandfather;

and in this proconsulship, too, he received another omen foretelling his rule; for at Tralles a priestess, being about to greet him after the custom of the place (for it was their custom to greet the proconsuls by their title), instead of saying "Hail, proconsul," said "Hail, imperator";

at Cyzicus, moreover, a crown was transferred from an image of a god to a statue of him

After his consulship, again, a marble bull was found hanging in his garden with its horns attached to the boughs of a tree, and lightning from a clear sky struck his home without inflicting damage, and in Etruria certain large jars that had been buried were found above the ground again, and swarms of bees settled on his statues throughout all Etruria, and frequently he was warned in dreams to include an image of Hadrian among his household gods.

While setting out to assume his proconsular office he lost his elder daughter.

bout the licence and loose living of his wife a number of things were said, which he heard with great sorrow and suppressed.

On returning from his proconsulship he lived for the most part at Rome, being a member of the councils of Hadrian, and in all matters concerning which Hadrian sought his advice, ever urging the more merciful course.

The manner of his adoption, they say, was somewhat thus: After the death of Aelius Verus, whom Hadrian had adopted and named Caesar, a day was set for the meeting of the senate,

and to this Arrius Antoninus came, supporting the steps of his father-in‑law.

For this act, it is said, Hadrian adopted him. But this could not have been the only reason for the adoption, nor ought it to have been, especially since Antoninus had always done well in his administration of public office, and in his proconsulship had shown himself a man of worth and dignity.

At any rate, when Hadrian announced a desire to adopt him, he was given time for deciding whether he wished to be adopted.

This condition was attached to his adoption, that as Hadrian took Antoninus as his son, so he in turn should take Marcus Antoninus, his wife's nephew, and Lucius Verus, thenceforth called Verus Antoninus, the son of that Aelius Verus whom Hadrian had previously adopted.

He was adopted on the fifth day before the Kalends of March, while returning thanks in the senate for Hadrian's opinion concerning him

and he was made colleague to his father in both the proconsular and the tribunician power.

It is related as his first remark, that when he was reproved by his wife because he was not sufficiently generous to his household in some trifling matter, he said: "Foolish woman, now that we have gained an empire, we have lost even what we had before".

To the people he gave largess on his own account

and also paid the moneys that his father had promised. He contributed a large amount of money, too, to Hadrian's public works, and of the crown-gold which had been presented to him on the occasion of his adoption, he returned all of Italy's share, and half of their share to the provinces.

His father, as long as he lived, he obeyed most scrupulously, and when Hadrian passed away at Baiae he bore his remains to Rome with all piety and reverence, and buried him in the gardens of Domitia; moreover, though all opposed the measure, he had him placed among the deified.

On his wife Faustina he permitted the senate to bestow the name of Augusta, and for himself accepted the surname Pius. The statues decreed for his father, mother, grandparents and brothers, then dead, he accepted readily; nor did he refuse the circus-games ordered for his birthday, though he did refuse other honours. In honour of Hadrian he set up a superb shield and established a college of priests.

After his accession to the throne he removed none of the men whom Hadrian had appointed to office, and, indeed, was so steadfast and loyal that he retained good men in the government of provinces for terms of seven and even nine years.

He waged a number of wars, but all of them through his legates. For Lollius Urbicus, his legate, overcame the Britons and built a second wall, one of turf, after driving back the barbarians. Through other legates or governors, he forced the Moors to sue for peace, and crushed the Germans and the Dacians37 and many other tribes, and also the Jews, who were in revolt.

In Achaea also and in Egypt he put down rebellions and many a time sharply checked the Alani in their raiding.

His procurators were ordered to levy only a reasonable tribute, and those who exceeded a proper limit were commanded to render an account of their acts, nor was he ever pleased with any revenues that were onerous to the provinces.

Moreover, he was always willing to hear complaints against his procurators.

He besought the senate to pardon those men whom Hadrian had condemned, saying that Hadrian himself had been about to do so.

The imperial pomp he reduced to the utmost simplicity and thereby gained the greater esteem, though the palace-attendants opposed this course, for they found that since he made no use of go-betweens, they could in no wise terrorize men or take money for decisions about which there was no concealment.

In his dealings with the senate, he rendered it, as emperor, the same respect that he had wished another emperor to render him when he was a private man.

When the senate offered him the title of Father of his Country, he at first refused it, but later accepted it with an elaborate expression of thanks.

On the death of his wife Faustina, in the third year of his reign, the senate deified her, and voted her games and a temple and priestesses and statues of silver and of gold. These the Emperor accepted, and furthermore granted permission that her statue be erected in all the circuses;

and when the senate voted her a golden statue, he undertook to erect it himself.

At the instance of the senate, Marcus Antoninus, now quaestor, was made consul;

also Annius Verus, he who was afterwards entitled Antoninus, was appointed quaestor before the legal age.

Never did he resolve on measures about the provinces or render a decision on any question without previously consulting his friends, and in accordance with their opinions he drew up his final statement.

And indeed he often received his friends without the robes of state and even in the performance of domestic duties.

With such care did he govern all peoples under him that he looked after all things and all men as if they were his own. As a result, the provinces all prospered in his reign,

informers were abolished,

the confiscation of goods was less frequent than ever before, and only one man was condemned as guilty of aspiring to the throne.

This was Atilius Titianus, and it was the senate itself that conducted his prosecution, while the Emperor forbade any investigation about the fellow-conspirators of Atilius and always aided his son to attain all his desires. Priscianus did indeed die for aspiring to the throne, but by his own hand, and about his conspiracy also the Emperor forbade any investigation.

The board of Antoninus Pius was rich yet never open to criticism, frugal yet not stingy; his table was furnished by his own slaves, his own fowlers and fishers and hunters.

A bath, which he had previously used himself, he opened to the people without charge, nor did he himself depart in any way from the manner of life to which he had been accustomed when a private man.

He took away salaries from a number of men who held obvious sinecures, saying there was nothing meaner, nay more unfeeling, than the man who nibbled at the revenues of the state without giving any service in return;

for the same reason, also, he reduced the salary of Mesomedes, the lyric poet. The budgets of all the provinces and the sources of revenue he knew exceedingly well.

He settled his private fortune on his daughter, but presented the income of it to the state.

Indeed, the superfluous trappings of royal state and even the crown-lands he sold, living on his own private estates and varying his residence according to the season.

Nor did he undertake any expedition other than the visiting of his lands in Campania, averring that the equipage of an emperor, even of one over frugal, was a burdensome thing to the provinces.

And yet he was regarded with immense respect by all nations, for, making his residence in the city, as he did, for the purpose of being in a central location, he was able to receive messages from every quarter with equal speed.

He gave largess to the people, and, in addition, a donation to the soldiers, and founded an order of destitute girls, called Faustinianae in honour of Faustina.

Of the public works that were constructed by him the following remain to‑day: the temple of Hadrian at Rome, so called in honour of his father, the Graecostadium, restored by him after its burning, the Amphitheatre, repaired by him, the tomb of Hadrian, the temple of Agrippa, and the Pons Sublicius,

also the Pharus, the port at Caieta, and the port at Tarracina, all of which he restored, the bath at Ostia, the aqueduct at Antium, and the temples at Lanuvium.

Besides all this, he helped many communities to erect new buildings and to restore the old; and he even gave pecuniary aid to Roman magistrates and senators to assist them in the performance of their duties.

He declined legacies from those who had children of their own and was the first to establish the rule that bequests made under fear of penalty should not be valid.

Never did he appoint a successor to a worthy magistrate while yet alive, except in the case of Orfitus, the prefect of the city, and then only at his own request.

For under him Gavius Maximus, a very stern man, reached his twentieth year of service as prefect of the guard; he was succeeded by Tattius Maximus,

and at his death Antoninus appointed two men in his place, Fabius Cornelius Repentinus and Furius Victorinus,

the former of whom, however, was ruined by the scandalous tale that he had gained his office by the favour of the Emperor's mistress.

So rigidly did he adhere to his resolve that no senator should be executed in his reign, that a confessed parricide was merely marooned on a desert island, and that only because it was against the laws of nature to let such a one live.

He relieved a scarcity of wine and oil and wheat with loss to his own private treasury, by buying these and distributing them to the people free.

The following misfortunes and prodigies occurred in his reign: the famine, which we have just mentioned, the collapse of the Circus, an earthquake whereby towns of Rhodes and of Asia were destroyed — all of which, however, the Emperor restored in splendid fashion, — and a fire at Rome which consumed three hundred and forty tenements and dwellings.

The town of Narbonne, the city of Antioch, and the forum of Carthage also burned.

Besides, the Tiber flooded its banks, a comet was seen, a two-headed child was born, and a woman gave birth to quintuplets.

There was seen, moreover, in Arabia, a crested serpent larger than the usual size, which ate itself from the tail to the middle; and also in Arabia there was a pestilence, while in Moesia barley sprouted from the tops of trees.

And besides all this, in Arabia four lions grew tame and of their own accord yielded themselves to capture.

Pharasmenes, the king, visited him at Rome and showed him more respect than he had shown Hadrian. He appointed Pacorus king of the Lazi, induced the king of the Parthians to forego a campaign against the Armenians merely by writing him a letter, and solely by his personal influence brought Abgarus the king back from the regions of the East.

He settled the pleas of several kings. The royal throne of the Parthians, which Trajan had captured, he refused to return when their king asked for it,

and after hearing the dispute between Rhoemetalces and the imperial commissioner, sent the former back his kingdom of the Bosphorus.

He sent troops to the Black Sea to bring aid to Olbiopolis against the Tauroscythians and forced the latter to give hostages to Olbiopolis.

No one has ever had such prestige among foreign nations as he, for he was ever a lover of peace, even to such a degree that he was continually quoting the saying of Scipio in which he declared that he would rather save a single citizen than slay a thousand foes.

When the senate declared that the months of September and October should be called respectively Antoninus and Faustinus, Antoninus refused.

The wedding of his daughter Faustina, whom he espoused to Marcus Antoninus, he made most noteworthy, even to the extent of giving a donative to the soldiers.

He made Verus Antoninus consul after his quaestorship.

On one occasion, he sent word to Apollonius, whom he had summoned from Chalcis, to come to the House of Tiberius (where at the time he was staying) in order that he might put Marcus Antoninus in his charge, but Apollonius replied "The master ought not come to the pupil, but the pupil to the master". Whereupon the Emperor ridiculed him, saying "It was easier, then, for Apollonius to come to Rome from Chalcis than from his house to my palace". The greed of this man he had noticed even in the matter of his salary.

It is related of him, too, as an instance of his regard for his family, that when Marcus was mourning the death of his tutor and was restrained by the palace servants from this display of affection, the Emperor said: "Let him be only a man for once; for neither philosophy nor empire takes away natural feeling".

On his prefects he bestowed both riches and consular honours.

If he convicted any of extortion he nevertheless delivered up the estates to their children, providing only that the children should restore to the provinces what their fathers had taken.

He was very prone to acts of forgiveness.

He held games at which he displayed elephants and the animals called corocottae and tigers and rhinoceroses, even crocodiles and hippopotami, in short, all the animals of the whole earth; and he presented at a single performance as many as a hundred lions together with tigers.

His friends he always treated, while on the throne, just as though he were a private citizen, for they never combined with his freedmen to sell false hopes of favours, and indeed he treated his freedmen with the greatest strictness.

He was very fond of the stage, found great delight in fishing and hunting and in walks and conversation with his friends, and was wont to pass vintage-time in company with his friends in the manner of an ordinary citizen.

Rhetoricians and philosophers throughout all the provinces he rewarded with honours and money. The orations which have come down in his name, some say, are really the work of others, according to Marius Maximus, however, they were his own.

He always shared his banquets, both public and private, with his friends;

and never did he perform sacrifices by proxy except when he was ill.

When he sought offices for himself or for his sons all was done as by a private individual.

He himself was often present at the banquets of his intimates,

and among other things it is a particular evidence of his graciousness that when, on a visit at the house of Homullus, he admired certain porphyry columns and asked where they came from, Homullus replied "When you come to another's house, be deaf and dumb," and he took it in good part. In fact, the jibes of this same Homullus, which were many, he always took in good part.

A number of legal principles were established by Antoninus with the aid of certain men, experts in jurisprudence, namely, Vindius Verus, Salvius Valens, Volusius Maecianus, Ulpius Marcellus, and Diavolenus.

Rebellions, wherever they occurred, he suppressed not by means of cruelty, but with moderation and dignity.

He forbade the burial of bodies within the limits of any city; he established a maximum cost for gladiatorial games; and he very carefully maintained the imperial post. Of everything that he did he rendered an account, both in the senate and by proclamation.

He died in the seventieth year of his age, but his loss was felt as though he had been but a youth. They say his death was somewhat as follows: after he had eaten too freely some Alpine cheese at dinner he vomited during the night, and was taken with a fever the next day.

On the second day, as he saw that his condition was becoming worse, in the presence of his prefects he committed the state and his daughter to Marcus Antoninus, and gave orders that the golden statue of Fortune, which was wont to stand in the bed-chamber of the emperor, be given to him.

Then he gave the watchword to the officer of the day as "Equanimity," and so, turning as if to sleep, gave up the ghost at Lorium.

While he was delirious with fever, he spoke of nothing save the state and certain kings with whom he was angry.

To his daughter he left his private fortune, and in his will he remembered all his household with suitable legacies.

He was a handsome man, and tall in stature; but being a tall man, when he was bent by old age he had himself swathed with splints of linden-wood bound on his chest in order that he might walk erect.

Moreover, when he was old, he ate dry bread before the courtiers came to greet him, in order that he might sustain his strength. His voice was hoarse and resonant, yet agreeable.

He was deified by the senate, while all men vied with one another to give him honour, and all extolled his devoutness, his mercy, his intelligence, and his righteousness. All honours were decreed for him which were ever before bestowed on the very best of emperors.

He well deserved the flamen and games and temple and the Antonine priesthood. Almost alone of all emperors he lived entirely unstained by the blood of either citizen or foe so far as was in his power, and he was justly compared to Numa, whose good fortune and piety and tranquillity and religious rites he ever maintained.

was the son of Annius Verus, who died while praetor. His grandfather, named Annius Verus also, attained to a second consulship, was prefect of the city, and was enrolled among the patricians by Vespasian and Titus while they were censors.

Annius Libo, a consul, was his uncle, Galeria Faustina Augusta, his aunt. His mother was Domitia Lucilla, the daughter of Calvisius Tullus, who served as consul twice.

Annius Verus, from the town of Succuba in Spain, who was made a senator and attained to the dignity of praetor, was his father's grandfather; his great-grandfather on his mother's side was Catilius Severus, who twice held the consulship and was prefect of the city. His father's mother was Rupilia Faustina, the daughter of Rupilius Bonus, a man of consular rank.

Marcus himself was born at Rome on the sixth day before the Kalends of May in the second consulship of his grandfather and the first of Augur, in a villa on the Caelian Hill.

His family, in tracing its origin back to the beginning, established its descent from Numa, or so Marius Maximus tells, and likewise from the Sallentine king Malemnius, the son of Dasummus, who founded Lupiae.

He was reared in the villa where he was born, and also in the home of his grandfather Verus close to the dwelling of Lateranus.

He had a sister younger than himself, named Annia Cornificia; his wife, who was also his cousin, was Annia Faustina.

At the beginning of his life Marcus Antoninus was named Catilius Severus after his mother's grandfather.

After the death of his real father, however, Hadrian called him Annius Verissimus, and, after he assumed the toga virilis, Annius Verus. When his father died he was adopted and reared by his father's father.

He was a solemn child from the very beginning; and as soon as he passed beyond the age when children are brought up under the care of nurses, he was handed over to advanced instructors and attained to a knowledge of philosophy.

In his more elementary education, he received instruction from Euphorion in literature and from Geminus in drama, in music and likewise in geometry from Andron; on all of whom, as being spokesmen of the sciences, he afterwards conferred great honours.

Besides these, his teachers in grammar were the Greek Alexander of Cotiaeum, and the Latins Trosius Aper, Pollio, and Eutychius Proculus of Sicca;

his masters in oratory were the Greeks Aninius Macer, Caninius Celer and Herodes Atticus, and the Latin Cornelius Fronto.

Of these he conferred high honours on Fronto, even asking the senate to vote him a statue; but indeed he advanced Proculus also — even to a proconsulship, and assumed the burdens of the office himself.

He studied philosophy with ardour, even as a youth. For when he was twelve years old he adopted the dress and, a little later, the hardiness of a philosopher, pursuing his studies clad in a rough Greek cloak and sleeping on the ground; at his mother's solicitation, however, he reluctantly consented to sleep on a couch strewn with skins.

He received instruction, furthermore, from the teacher of that Commodus who was destined later to be a kinsman of his, namely Apollonius of Chalcedon, the Stoic;

and such was his ardour for this school of philosophy, that even after he became a member of the imperial family, he still went to Apollonius' residence for instruction.

In addition, he attended the lectures of Sextus of Chaeronea, the nephew of Plutarch, and of Junius Rusticus, Claudius Maximus, and Cinna Catulus, all Stoics.

He also attended the lectures of Claudius Severus, an adherent of the Peripatetic school, but he received most instruction from Junius Rusticus, whom he ever revered and whose disciple he became, a man esteemed in both private and public life, and exceedingly well acquainted with the Stoic system,

with whom Marcus shared all his counsels both public and private, whom he greeted with a kiss prior to the prefects of the guard,

whom he even appointed consul for a second term, and whom after his death he asked the senate to honour with statues. On his teachers in general, moreover, he conferred great honours, for he even kept golden statues of them in his chapel, and made it a custom to show respect for their tombs by personal visits and by offerings of sacrifices and flowers.

He studied jurisprudence as well, in which he heard Lucius Volusius Maecianus,

and so much work and labour did he devote to his studies that he impaired his health — the only fault to be found with his entire childhood.

He attended also the public schools of rhetoricians. Of his fellow-pupils he was particularly fond of Seius Fuscianus and Aufidius Victorinus, of the senatorial order, and Baebius Longus and Calenus, of the equestrian.

He was very generous to these men, so generous, in fact, that on those whom he could not advance to public office on account of their station in life, he bestowed riches.

He was reared under the eye of Hadrian, who called him Verissimus, as we have already related, and did him the honour of enrolling him in the equestrian order when he was six years old

and appointing him in his eighth year to the college of the Salii.

While in this college, moreover, he received an omen of his future rule; for when they were all casting their crowns on the banqueting-couch of the god, according to the usual custom, his crown, as if placed there by his hand, fell on the brow of Mars.

In this priesthood he was leader of the dance, seer, and master, and consequently both initiated and dismissed a great number of people; and in these ceremonies no one dictated the formulas to him, for all of them he had learned by himself.

In the fifteenth year of his life he assumed the toga virilis, and straightway, at the wish of Hadrian, was betrothed to the daughter of Lucius Ceionius Commodus.

Not long after this he was made prefect of the city during the Latin Festival, and in this position he conducted himself very brilliantly both in the presence of the magistrates and at the banquets of the Emperor Hadrian.

Later, when his mother asked him to give his sister part of the fortune left him by his father, he replied that he was content with the fortune of his grandfather and relinquished all of it, further declaring that if she wished, his mother might leave her own estate to his sister in its entirety, in order that she might not be poorer than her husband.

So complaisant was he, moreover, that at times, when urged, he let himself be taken to hunts or the theatre or the spectacles.

Besides, he gave some attention to painting, under the teacher Diognetus. He was also fond of boxing and wrestling and running and fowling, played ball very skilfully, and hunted well.

But his ardour for philosophy distracted him from all these pursuits and made him serious and dignified, not ruining, however, a certain geniality in him, which he still manifested toward his household, his friends, and even to those less intimate, but making him, rather, austere, though not unreasonable, modest, though not inactive, and serious without gloom.

Such was his character, then, when, after the death of Lucius Caesar, Hadrian looked about for a successor to the throne. Marcus did not seem suitable, being at the time but eighteen years of age; and Hadrian chose for adoption Antoninus Pius, the uncle-in‑law of Marcus, with the provision that Pius should in turn adopt Marcus and that Marcus should adopt Lucius Commodus.

And it was on the day that Verus was adopted that he dreamed that he had shoulders of ivory, and when he asked if they were capable of bearing a burden, he found them much stronger than before.

When he discovered, moreover, that Hadrian had adopted him, he was appalled rather than overjoyed, and when told to move to the private home of Hadrian, reluctantly departed from his mother's villa.

And when the members of his household asked him why he was sorry to receive royal adoption, he enumerated to them the evil things that sovereignty involved.

At this time he first began to be called Aurelius instead of Annius, since, according to the law of adoption, he had passed into the Aurelian family, that is, into the family of Antoninus.

And so he was adopted in his eighteenth year, and at the instance of Hadrian exception was made for his age and he was appointed quaestor for the year of the second consulship of Antoninus, now his father.

Even after his adoption into the imperial house, he still showed the same respect to his own relatives that he had borne them as a commoner,

was as frugal and careful of his means as he had been when he lived in a private home, and was willing to act, speak, and think according to his father's principles.

When Hadrian died at Baiae and Pius departed to bring back his remains, Marcus was left at Rome and discharged his grandfather's funeral rites, and, though quaestor, presented a gladiatorial spectacle as a private citizen.

Immediately after Hadrian's death Pius, through his wife, approached Marcus, and, breaking his betrothal with the daughter of Lucius Ceionius Commodus, . . . he was willing to espouse one so much his junior in years, he replied, after deliberating the question, that he was.

And when this was done, Pius designated him as his colleague in the consulship, though he was still only quaestor, gave him the title of Caesar, appointed him while consul-elect one of the six commanders of the equestrian order and sat by him when he and his five colleagues were producing their official games, bade him take up his abode in the House of Tiberius and there provided him with all the pomp of a court, though Marcus objected to this, and finally took him into the priesthoods at the bidding of the senate.

Later, he appointed him consul for a second term at the same time that he began his fourth.

And all this time, when busied with so many public duties of his own, and while sharing his father's activities that he might be fitted for ruling the state, Marcus worked at his studies eagerly.

At this time he took Faustina to wife and, after begetting a daughter, received the tribunician power and the proconsular power outside the city, with the added right of making five proposals in the senate.

Such was his influence with Pius that the Emperor was never quick to promote anyone without his advice.

Moreover, he showed great deference to his father, though there were not lacking those who whispered things against him,

especially Valerius Homullus, who, when he saw Marcus' mother Lucilla worshipping in her garden before a shrine of Apollo, whispered, "Yonder woman is now praying that you may come to your end, and her son rule." All of which influenced Pius not in the least,

such was Marcus' sense of honour and such his modesty while heir to the throne.

He had such regard for his reputation, moreover, that even as a youth he admonished his procurators to do nothing high-handed and often refused sundry legacies that were left him, returning them to the nearest kin of the deceased.

Finally, for three and twenty years he conducted himself in his father's home in such a manner that Pius felt more affection for him day by day,

and never in all these years, save for two nights on different occasions, remained away from him.

For these reasons, then, when Antoninus Pius saw that the end of his life was drawing near, having summoned his friends and prefects, he commended Marcus to them all and formally named him as his successor in the empire. He then straightway gave the watch-word to the officer of the day as "Equanimity," and ordered that the golden statue of Fortune, customarily kept in his own bed-chamber, be transferred to the bed-chamber of Marcus.

Part of his mother's fortune Marcus then gave to Ummidius Quadratus, the son of his sister, because the latter was now dead.

Being forced by the senate to assume the government of the state after the death of the Deified Pius, Marcus made his brother his colleague in the empire, giving him the name Lucius Aurelius Verus Commodus and bestowing on him the titles Caesar and Augustus.

Then they began to rule the state on equal terms, and then it was that the Roman Empire first had two emperors, when Marcus shared with another the empire he had inherited. Next, he himself took the name Antoninus,

and just as though he were the father of Lucius Commodus, he gave him the name Verus, adding also the name Antoninus; he also betrothed him to his daughter Lucilla, though legally he was his brother.

In honour of this union they gave orders that girls and boys of newly-named orders should be assigned a share in the distribution of grain.

And so, when they had done those things which had to be done in the presence of the senate, they set out together for the praetorian camp, and in honour of their joint rule promised twenty thousand sesterces apiece to the common soldiers and to the others money in proportion.

The body of their father they laid in the Tomb of Hadrian with elaborate funeral rites, and on a holiday which came thereafter an official funeral train marched in parade.

Both emperors pronounced panegyrics for their father from the Rostra, and they appointed a flamen for him chosen from their own kinsmen and a college of Aurelian priests from their closest friends.

And now, after they had assumed the imperial power, the two emperors acted in so democratic a manner that no one missed the lenient ways of Pius; for though Marullus, a writer of farces of the time, irritated them by his jests, he yet went unpunished.

They gave funeral games for their father.

And Marcus abandoned himself to philosophy, at the same time cultivating the good-will of the citizens.

But now to interrupt the emperor's happiness and repose, there came the first flood of the Tiber — the severest one of their time — which ruined many houses in the city, drowned a great number of animals, and caused a most severe famine;

all these disasters Marcus and Verus relieved by their own personal care and aid.

At this time, moreover, came the Parthian war, which Vologaesus planned under Pius and declared under Marcus and Verus, after the rout of Attidius Cornelianus, than governor of Syria.

And besides this, war was threatening in Britain, and the Chatti had burst into Germany and Raetia.

Against the Britons Calpurnius Agricola was sent; against the Chatti, Aufidius Victorinus.

But to the Parthian war, with the consent of the senate, Marcus despatched his brother Verus, while he himself remained at Rome, where conditions demanded the presence of an emperor.

Nevertheless, he accompanied Verus as far as Capua, honouring him with a retinue of friends from the senate and appointing also all his chiefs-of‑staff.

And when, after returning to Rome, he learned that Verus was ill at Canusium he hastened to see him, after assuming vows in the senate, which, on his return to Rome after learning that Verus had set sail, he immediately fulfilled.

Verus, however, after he had come to Syria, lingered amid the debaucheries of Antioch and Daphne and busied himself with gladiatorial bouts and hunting. And yet, for waging the Parthian war through his legates, he was acclaimed Imperator,

while meantime Marcus was at all hours keeping watch over the workings of the state, and, though reluctantly and sorely against his will, but nevertheless with patience, was enduring the debauchery of his brother.

In a word, Marcus, though residing at Rome, planned and executed everything necessary to the prosecution of the war.

In Armenia the campaign was successfully prosecuted under Statius Priscus, Artaxata being taken, and the honorary name Armeniacus was given to each of the emperors. This name Marcus refused at first, by reason of his modesty, but afterwards accepted.

When the Parthian war was finished, moreover, each emperor was called Parthicus; but this name also Marcus refused when first offered, though afterwards he accepted it.

And further, when the title "Father of his Country" was offered him in his brother's absence, he deferred action upon it until the latter should be present.

In the midst of this war he entrusted his daughter, who was about to be married and had already received her dowry, to the care of his sister, and, accompanying them himself as far as Brundisium, sent them to Verus together with the latter's uncle, Civica.

Immediately thereafter he returned to Rome, recalled by the talk of those who said that he wished to appropriate to himself the glory of finishing the war and had therefore set out for Syria.

He wrote to the proconsul, furthermore, that no one should meet his daughter as she made her journey.

In the meantime, he put such safeguards about suits for personal freedom — and he was the first to do so — as to order that every citizen should bestow names upon his free-born children within thirty days after birth and declare them to the prefects of the treasury of Saturn.

In the provinces, too, he established the use of public records, in which entries concerning births were to be made in the same manner as at Rome in the office of the prefects of the treasury, the purpose being that if any one born in the provinces should plead a case to prove freedom, he might submit evidence from these records.

Indeed, he strengthened this entire law dealing with declarations of freedom, and he enacted other laws dealing with money-lenders and public sales.

He made the senate the judge in many inquiries and even in those which belonged to his own jurisdiction. With regard to the status of deceased persons, he ordered that any investigations must be made within five years.

Nor did any of the emperors show more respect to the senate than he. To do the senate honour, moreover, he entrusted the settling of disputes to many men of praetorian and consular rank who then held no magistracy, in order that their prestige might be enhanced through their administration of law.

He enrolled in the senate many of his friends, giving them the rank of aedile or praetor;

and on a number of poor but honest senators he bestowed the rank of tribune or aedile.

Nor did he ever appoint anyone to senatorial rank whom he did not know well personally.

He granted senators the further privilege that whenever any of them was to be tried on a capital charge, he would examine the evidence behind closed doors and only after so doing would bring the case to public trial; nor would he allow members of the equestrian order to attend such investigations.

He always attended the meetings of the senate if he was in Rome, even though no measure was to be proposed, and if he wished to propose anything himself, he came in person even from Campania.

More than this, when elections were held he often remained even until night, never leaving the senate-chamber

until the consul announced, "We detain you no longer, Conscript Fathers". Further, he appointed the senate judge in appeals made from the consul.

To the administration of justice he gave singular care. He added court-days to the calendar until he had set 230 days for the pleading of cases and judging of suits,

and he was the first to appoint a special praetor in charge of the praetor of wards, in order that greater care might be exercised in dealing with trustees; for previously the appointment of trustees had been in the hands of the consuls.

As regards guardians, indeed, he decided that all youths might have them appointed without being obliged to show cause therefor, whereas previously they were appointed under the Plaetorian Law, or in cases of prodigality or madness.

In the matter of public expenditures he was exceedingly careful, and he forbade all libels on the part of false informers, putting the mark of infamy on such as made false accusations. He scorned such accusations as would swell the privy-purse.

He devised many wise measures for the support of the state-poor, and, that he might give a wider range to the senatorial functions, he appointed supervisors for many communities from the senate.

In times of famine he furnished the Italian communities with food from the city; indeed, he made careful provision for the whole matter of the grain-supply.

He limited gladiatorial shows in every way, and lessened the cost of free theatrical performances also, decreeing that though an actor might receive five aurei, nevertheless no one who gave a performance should expend more than ten.

The streets of the city and the highways he maintained with the greatest care. As for the grain-supply, for that he provided laboriously.

He appointed judges for Italy and thereby provided for its welfare, after the plan of Hadrian, who had appointed men of consular rank to administer the law;

and he made scrupulous provision, furthermore, for the welfare of the provinces of Spain, which, in defiance of the policy of Trajan, had been exhausted by levies from the Italian settlers.

Also he enacted laws about inheritance-taxes, about the property of freedmen held in trust, about property inherited from the mother, about the succession of the sons to the mother's share, and likewise that senators of foreign birth should invest a fourth part of their capital in Italy.

And besides this, he gave the commissioners of districts and streets power either themselves to punish those who fleeced anyone of money beyond his due assessment, or to bring them to the prefect of the city for punishment.

He engaged rather in the restoration of old laws than in the making of new, and ever kept near him prefects with whose authority and responsibility he framed his laws. He made use of Scaevola also, a man particularly learned in jurisprudence.

Toward the people he acted just as one acts in a free state.

He was at all times exceedingly reasonable both in restraining men from evil and in urging them to good, generous in rewarding and quick to forgive, thus making bad men good, and good men very good, and he even bore with unruffled temper the insolence of not a few.

For example, when he advised a man of abominable reputation, who was running for office, a certain Vetrasinus, to stop the town-talk about himself, and Vetrasinus replied that many who had fought with him in the arena were now praetors, the Emperor took it with good grace.

Again, in order to avoid taking an easy revenge on any one, instead of ordering a praetor who had acted very badly in certain matters to resign his office, he merely entrusted the administration of the law to the man's colleague.

The privy-purse never influenced his judgment in law-suits involving money.

Finally, if he was firm, he was also reasonable.

After his brother had returned victorious from Syria, the title "Father of his Country" was decreed to both, inasmuch as Marcus in the absence of Verus had conducted himself with great consideration toward both senators and commons.

Furthermore, the civic crown was offered to both; and Lucius demanded that Marcus triumph with him, and demanded also that the name Caesar should be given to Marcus' sons.

But Marcus was so free from love of display that though he triumphed with Lucius, nevertheless after Lucius' death he called himself only Germanicus, the title he had won in his own war.

In the triumphal procession, moreover, they carried with them Marcus' children of both sexes, even his unmarried daughters;

and they viewed the games held in honour of the triumph clad in the triumphal robe.

Among other illustrations of his unfailing consideration towards others this act of kindness is to be told: After one lad, a rope-dancer, had fallen, he ordered mattresses spread under all rope-dancers. This is the reason why a net is stretched them to‑day.

While the Parthian war was still in progress, the Marcomannic war broke out, after having been postponed for a long time by the diplomacy of the men who were in charge there, in order that the Marcomannic war might not be waged until Rome was done with the war in the East.

Even at the time of the famine the Emperor had hinted at this war to the people, and when his brother returned after five years' service, he brought the matter up in the senate, saying that both emperors were needed for the German war.

So great was the dread of this Marcomannic war, that Antoninus summoned priests from all sides, performed foreign religious ceremonies, and purified the city in every way, and he was delayed thereby from setting out to the seat of war.

The Roman ceremony of the feast of the gods was celebrated for seven days.

And there was such a pestilence, besides, that the dead were removed in carts and waggons.

About this time, also, the two emperors ratified certain very stringent laws on burial and tombs, in which they even forbade any one to build a tomb at his country-place, a law still in force.

Thousands were carried off by the pestilence, including many nobles, for the most prominent of whom Antoninus erected statues.

Such, too, was his kindliness of heart that he had funeral ceremonies performed for the lower classes even at the public expense; and in the case of one foolish fellow, who, in a search with divers confederates for an opportunity to plunder the city, continually made speeches from the wild fig-tree on the Campus Martius, to the effect that fire would fall down from heaven and the end of the world would come should he fall from the tree and be turned into a stork, and finally at the appointed time did fall down and free a stork from his robe, the Emperor, when the wretch was hailed before him and confessed all, pardoned him.

Clad in the military cloak the two emperors finally set forth, for now not only were the Victuali and Marcomanni throwing everything into confusion, but other tribes, who had been driven on by the more distant barbarians and had retreated before them, were ready to attack Italy if not peaceably received.

And not a little good resulted from that expedition, even by the time they had advanced as far as Aquileia, for several kings retreated, together with their peoples, and put to death the authors of the trouble.

And the Quadi, after they had lost their king, said that they would not confirm the successor who had been elected until such a course was approved by our emperors.

Nevertheless, Lucius went on, though reluctantly, after a number of peoples had sent ambassadors to the legates of the emperors asking pardon for the rebellion.

Lucius, it is true, thought they should return, because Furius Victorinus, the prefect of the guard, had been lost, and part of his army had perished; Marcus, however, held that they should press on, thinking that the barbarians, in order that they might not be crushed by the size of so great a force, were feigning a retreat and using other ruses which afford safety in war, held that they should persist in order that they might not be overwhelmed by the mere burden of their vast preparations.

Finally, they crossed the Alps, and pressing further on, completed all measures necessary for the defence of Italy and Illyricum.

They then decided, at Lucius' insistence, that letters should first be sent ahead to the senate and that Lucius should then return to Rome.

But on the way, after they had set out upon their journey, Lucius died from a stroke of apoplexy while riding in the carriage with his brother.

It was customary with Marcus to read, listen to, and sign documents at the circus-games; because of this habit he was openly ridiculed, it is said, by the people.

The freedmen Geminas and Agaclytus were very powerful in the reign of Marcus and Verus.

Such was Marcus' sense of honour, moreover, that although Verus' vices mightily offended him, he concealed and defended them; he also deified him after his death, aided and advanced his aunts and sisters by means of honours and pensions, honoured Verus himself with many sacrifices,

consecrated a flamen for him and a college of Antonine priests, and gave him all honours that are appointed for the deified.

There is no emperor who is not the victim of some evil tale, and Marcus is no exception. For it was bruited about, in truth, that he put Verus out of the way, either with poison — by cutting a sow's womb with a knife smeared on one side with poison, and then offering the poisoned portion to his brother to eat, while keeping the harmless portion for himself

or, at least, by employing the physician Posidippus, who bled Verus, it is said, unseasonably. After Verus' death Cassius revolted from Marcus.

Such was Marcus' kindness toward his own family that he bestowed the insignia of every office on all his kin, while on his son, and an accursed and foul one he was, he hastened to bestow the name of Caesar, then afterward the priesthood, and, a little later, the title of imperator and a share in a triumph and the consulship.

It was at this time that Marcus, though acclaimed imperator, ran on foot in the Circus by the side of the triumphal car in which his son was seated.

After the death of Verus, Marcus Antoninus held the empire alone, a nobler man by far and more abounding in virtues,

especially as he was no longer hampered by Verus' faults, neither by those of excessive candour and hot-headed plain speaking, from which Verus suffered through natural folly, nor by those others which had particularly irked Marcus Antoninus even from his earliest years, the principles and habits of a depraved mind.

Such was Marcus' own repose of spirit that neither in grief nor in joy did he ever change countenance, being wholly given over to the Stoic philosophy, which he had not only learned from all the best masters, but also acquired for himself from every source.

For this reason Hadrian would have taken him for his own successor to the throne had not his youth prevented.

This intention, indeed, seems obvious from the fact that he chose Marcus to be the son-in‑law of Pius, in order that the direction of the Roman state might some time at least come into his hands, as to those of one well worthy.

Toward the provinces from then on he acted with extreme restraint and consideration. He carried on a successful campaign against the Germans.

He himself singled out the Marcomannic war — a war which surpassed any in the memory of man — and waged it with both valour and success, and that at a time when a grievous pestilence had carried away thousands of civilians and soldiers.

And so, by crushing the Marcomanni, the Sarmatians, the Vandals, and even the Quadi, he freed the Pannonias from bondage, and with Commodus his son, whom he had previously named Caesar, triumphed at Rome, as we told above.

When he had drained the treasury for this war, moreover, and could not bring himself to impose any extraordinary tax on the provincials, he held a public sale in the Forum of the Deified Trajan of the imperial furnishings, and sold goblets of gold and crystal and murra, even flagons made for kings, his wife's silken gold-embroidered robes, and, indeed, even certain jewels which he had found in considerable numbers in a particularly holy cabinet of Hadrian's.

This sale lasted for two months, and such a store of gold was realised thereby, that after he had conducted the remainder of the Marcomannic war in full accordance with his plans, he gave the buyers to understand that if any of them wished to return his purchases and recover his money, he could do so. Nor did he make it unpleasant for anyone who did or did not return what he had bought.

At this time, also, he granted permission to the more prominent men to hold banquets with the same pomp that he used himself and with servants similar to his own.

In the matter of public games, furthermore, he was so liberal as to present a hundred lions together in one performance and have them all killed with arrows.

After he had ruled, then, with the good-will of all, and had been named and beloved variously as brother, father, or son by various men according to their several ages, in the eighteenth year of his reign and the sixty-first of his life he closed his last day.

Such love for him was manifested on the day of the imperial funeral that none thought that men should lament him, since all were sure that he had been lent by the gods and had now returned to them.

Finally, before his funeral was held, so many say, the senate and people, not in separate places but sitting together, as was never done before or after, hailed him as a gracious god.

This man, so great, so good, and an associate of the gods both in life and in death, left one son Commodus; and had he been truly fortunate he would not have left a son.

It was not enough, indeed, that people of every age, sex, degree and rank in life, gave him all honours given to the gods, but also whosoever failed to keep the Emperor's image in his home, if his fortune were such that he could or should have done so, was deemed guilty of sacrilege.

Even to‑day, in fine, statues of Marcus Antoninus stand in many a home among the household gods.

Nor were there lacking men who observed that he foretold many things by dreams and were thereby themselves enabled to predict events that did come to pass.

Therefore a temple was built for him and priests were appointed, dedicated to the service of the Antonines, both Sodales and flamens, and all else that the usage of old time decreed for a consecrated temple.

Some say, and it seems plausible, that Commodus Antoninus, his son and successor, was not begotten by him, but in adultery;

they embroider this assertion, moreover, with a story current among the people. On a certain occasion, it was said, Faustina, the daughter of Pius and wife of Marcus, saw some gladiators pass by, and was inflamed for love of one of them; and afterwards, when suffering from a long illness, she confessed the passion to her husband.

And when Marcus reported this to the Chaldeans, it was their advice that Faustina should bathe in his blood and thus couch with her husband.

When this was done, the passion was indeed allayed, but their son Commodus was born a gladiator, not really a prince;

for afterwards as emperor he fought almost a thousand gladiatorial bouts before the eyes of the people, as shall be related in his life.

This story is considered plausible, as a matter of fact, for the reason that the son of so virtuous a prince had habits worse than any trainer of gladiators, any play-actor, any fighter in the arena, anything brought into existence from the offscourings of all dishonour and crime.

Many writers, however, state that Commodus was really begotten in adultery, since it is generally known that Faustina, while at Caieta, used to choose out lovers from among the sailors and gladiators.

When Marcus Antoninus was told about this, that he might divorce, if not kill her, he is reported to have said "If we send our wife away, we must also return her dowry".

And what was her dowry? the Empire, which, after he had been adopted at the wish of Hadrian, he had inherited from his father-in‑law Pius.

But truly such is the power of the life, the holiness, the serenity, and the righteousness of a good emperor that not even the scorn felt for his kin can sully his own good name.

For since Antoninus held ever to his moral code and was moved by no man's whispered machinations, men thought no less of him because his son was a gladiator, his wife infamous.

Even now he is called a god, which ever has seemed and even now seems right to you, most venerable Emperor Diocletian, who worship him among your divinities, not as you worship the others, but as one apart, and who often say that you desire, in life and gentleness, to be such a one as Marcus, even though, as far as philosophy is concerned, Plato himself, were he to return to life, could not be such a philosopher. So much, then, for these matters, told briefly and concisely.

But as for the acts of Marcus Antoninus after the death of his brother, they are as follows: First of all, he conveyed his body to Rome and laid it in the tomb of his fathers.

Then divine honours were ordered for Verus. Later, while rendering thanks to the senate for his brother's deification, he darkly hinted that all the strategic plans whereby the Parthians had been overcome were his own.

He added, besides, certain statements in which he indicated that now at length he would make a fresh beginning in the management of the state, now that Verus, who had seemed somewhat negligent, was removed.

And the senate took this precisely as it was said, so that Marcus seemed to be giving thanks that Verus had departed this life.

Afterwards he bestowed many privileges and much honour and money on all Verus' sisters, kin, and freedmen. For he was exceedingly solicitous about his good reputation, indeed he was wont to ask what men really said of him, and to correct whatever seemed justly blamed.

Just before setting out for the German war, and before the period of mourning had yet expired, he married his daughter to Claudius Pompeianus, the son of a Roman knight, and now advanced in years, a native of Antioch, whose birth was not sufficiently noble (though Marcus later made him consul twice),

since Marcus' daughter was an Augusta and the daughter of an Augusta. Indeed, Faustina and the girl who was given in marriage were both opposed to this match.

Against the Mauri, when they wasted almost the whole of Spain, matters were brought to a successful conclusion by his legates;

and when the warriors of the Bucolici did many grievous things in Egypt, they were checked by Avidius Cassius, who later attempted to seize the throne.

Just before his departure, while he was living in retreat at Praeneste, Marcus lost his seven-year‑old son, by name Verus Caesar, from an operation on a tumour under his ear.

For no more than five days did he mourn him; and even during this period, when consulted on public affairs he gave some time to them. And because the games of Jupiter Optimus Maximus were then in progress

and he did not wish to have them interrupted by public mourning, he merely ordered that statues should be decreed for his dead son, that a golden image of him should be carried in procession at the Circus, and that his name should be inserted in the song of the Salii.

And since the pestilence was still raging at this time, he both zealously revived the worship of the gods and trained slaves for military service — just as had been done in the Punic war — whom he called Volunteers, after the example of the Volones.

He armed gladiators also, calling them the Compliant, and turned even the bandits of Dalmatia and Dardania into soldiers. He armed the Diogmitae, besides, and even hired auxiliaries from among the Germans for service against Germans.

And besides all this, he proceeded with all care to enrol legions for the Marcomannic and German war.

And lest all this prove burdensome to the provinces, he held an auction of the palace furnishings in the Forum of the Deified Trajan, as we have related, and sold there, besides robes and goblets and golden flagons, even statues and paintings by great artists.

He overwhelmed the Marcomanni while they were crossing the Danube, and restored the plunder to the provincials.

Then, from the borders of Illyricum even into Gaul, all the nations banded together against us — the Marcomanni, Varistae, Hermunduri and Quadi, the Suebians, Sarmatians, Lacringes and Buri, these and certain others together with the Victuali, namely, Osi, Bessi, Cobotes, Roxolani, Bastarnae, Alani, Peucini, and finally, the Costoboci. Furthermore, war threatened in Parthia and Britain.

Thereupon, by immense labour on his own part, while his soldiers reflected his energy, and both legates and prefects of the guard led the host, he conquered these exceedingly fierce peoples, accepted the surrender of the Marcomanni, and brought a great number of them to Italy.

Always before making any move, he conferred with the foremost men concerning matters not only of war but also of civil life.

This saying particularly was ever on his lips: "It is juster that I should yield to the counsel of such a number of such friends than that such a number of such friends should yield to my wishes, who am but one".

But because Marcus, as a result of his system of philosophy, seemed harsh in his military discipline and indeed in his life in general, he was bitterly assailed;

to all who spoke ill of him, however, he made reply either in speeches or in pamphlets.

And because in this German, or Marcomannic, war, or rather I should say in this "War of Many Nations," many nobles perished, for all of whom he erected statues in the Forum of Trajan,

his friends often urged him to abandon the war and return to Rome. He, however, disregarded this advice and stood his ground, nor did he withdraw before he had brought all the wars to a conclusion.

Several proconsular provinces he changed into consular, and several consular provinces into proconsular or praetorian, according to the exigencies of war.

He checked disturbances among the Sequani by a rebuke and by his personal influence;

and in Spain, likewise, he quieted the disturbances which had arisen in Lusitania.

And having summoned his son Commodus to the border of the empire, he gave him the toga virilis, in honour of which he distributed largess among the people, and appointed him consul before the legal age.

He was always displeased at hearing that anyone had been outlawed by the prefect of the city.

He himself was very sparing of the public money in giving largess — a fact which we mention rather in praise than in disparagement

but nevertheless he gave financial assistance to the deserving, furnished aid to towns on the brink of ruin, and, when necessity demanded, cancelled tribute or taxes.

And while absent from Rome he left forceful instructions that the amusements of the Roman people should be provided for by the richest givers of public spectacles,

because, when he took the gladiators away to the war, there was talk among the people that he intended to deprive them of their amusements and thereby drive them to the study of philosophy.

Indeed, he had ordered that the actors of pantomimes should begin their performances nine days later than usual in order that business might not be interfered with.

There was talk, as we mentioned above, about his wife's intrigues with pantomimists; however, he cleared her of all these charges in his letters.

He forbade riding and driving within the limits of any city. He abolished common baths for both sexes. He reformed the morals of the matrons and young nobles which were growing lax. He separated the sacred rites of Serapis from the miscellaneous ceremonies of the Pelusia.

There was a report, furthermore, that certain men masquerading as philosophers had been making trouble both for the state and for private citizens; but this charge he refuted.

It was customary with Antoninus to punish all crimes with lighter penalties than were usually inflicted by the laws; although at times, toward those who were clearly guilty of serious crimes he remained implacable.

He himself held those trials of distinguished men which involved the death-penalty, and always with the greatest justice. Once, indeed, he rebuked a praetor who heard the pleas of accused men in too summary a fashion, and ordered him to hold the trials again, saying that it was a matter of concern to the honour of the accused that they should be heard by a judge who really represented the people.

He scrupulously observed justice, moreover, even in his dealings with captive enemies. He settled innumerable foreigners on Roman soil.

By his prayers he summoned a thunderbolt from heaven against a war-engine of the enemy, and successfully besought rain for his men when they were suffering from thirst.

He wished to make a province of Marcomannia and likewise of Sarmatia,161 and he would have done so

had not Avidius Cassius just then raised a rebellion in the East. This man proclaimed himself emperor, some say, at the wish of Faustina, who was now in despair over her husband's death;

others, however, say that Cassius proclaimed himself emperor after spreading false rumours of Antoninus' death, and indeed he had called him the Deified.

Antoninus was not much disturbed by this revolt, nor did he adopt harsh measures against Cassius' dear ones.

The senate, however, declared Cassius a public enemy and confiscated his property to the public treasury.

The Emperor, then, abandoning the Sarmatian and Marcomannic wars, set out against him

At Rome there was a panic for fear that Cassius would arrive during Antoninus' absence; but he was speedily slain and his head was brought to Antoninus.

Even then, Marcus did not rejoice at Cassius' death, and gave orders that his head should be buried.

Maecianus, Cassius' ally, in whose charge Alexandria had been placed, was killed by the army; likewise his prefect of the guard — for he had appointed one — was also slain

Marcus then forbade the senate to impose any heavy punishment upon those who had conspired in this revolt;

and at the same time, in order that his reign might escape such a stain, he requested that during his rule no senator should be executed.

Those who had been exiled, moreover, he ordered to be recalled; and there were only a very few of the centurions who suffered the death-penalty.

He pardoned the communities which had sided with Cassius, and even went so far as to pardon the citizens of Antioch, who had said many things in support of Cassius and in opposition to himself.

But he did abolish their games and public meetings, including assemblies of every kind, and issued a very severe edict against the people themselves.

And yet a speech which Marcus delivered to his friends, reported by Marius Maximus, brands them as rebels.

And finally, he refused to visit Antioch when he journeyed to Syria,

nor would he visit Cyrrhus, the home of Cassius. Later on, however, he did visit Antioch. Alexandria, when he stayed there, he treated with clemency.

He conducted many negotiations with kings, and ratified peace with all the kings and satraps of Persia when they came to meet him.

He was exceedingly beloved by all the eastern provinces, and on many, indeed, he left the imprint of philosophy.

While in Egypt he conducted himself like a private citizen and a philosopher at all the stadia, temples, and in fact everywhere. And although the citizens of Alexandria had been outspoken in wishing Cassius success, he forgave everything and left his daughter among them.

And now, in the village of Halala, in the foothills of Mount Taurus, he lost his wife Faustina, who succumbed to a sudden illness.

He asked the senate to decree her divine honours and a temple, and likewise delivered a eulogy of her, although she had suffered grievously from the reputation of lewdness. Of this, however, Antoninus was either ignorant or affected ignorance.

He established a new order of Faustinian girls in honour of his dead wife,

expressed his pleasure at her deification by the senate,

and because she had accompanied him on his summer campaign, called her "Mother of the Camp".

And besides this, he made the village where Faustina died a colony, and there built a temple in her honour. This, however, was afterwards consecrated to Elagabalus.

With characteristic clemency, he suffered rather than ordered the execution of Cassius,

while Heliodorus, the son of Cassius, was merely banished, and others of his children exiled but allowed part of their father's property.

Cassius's sons, moreover, were granted over half their father's estate and were enriched besides with sums of gold and silver, while the women of the family were presented with jewels. Indeed, Alexandria, Cassius' daughter, and Druncianus, his son-in‑law, were allowed to travel wherever they wished, and were even put under the protection of the Emperor's uncle by marriage.

And further than this, he grieved at Cassius' death, saying that he had wished to complete his reign without shedding the blood of a single senator.

After he had settled affairs in the East he came to Athens, and had himself initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries in order to prove that he was innocent of any wrong-doing, and he entered the sanctuary unattended.

Afterwards, when returning to Italy, he encountered a violent storm on the way.

Then, reaching Italy by way of Brundisium, he donned the toga and bade his troops do likewise, nor indeed during his reign were the soldiers ever clad in the military cloak.

When he reached Rome he triumphed, then hastened to Lavinium.

Presently he appointed Commodus his colleague in the tribunician power, bestowed largess upon the people, and gave marvellous games; shortly thereafter he remedied many civil abuses,

and set a limit to the expense of gladiatorial shows.

Ever on his lips was a saying of Plato's, that those states prospered where the philosophers were kings or the kings philosophers.

He united his son in marriage with the daughter of Bruttius Praesens, performing the ceremony in the manner of ordinary citizens; and in celebration of the marriage he gave largess to the people.

He then turned his attention to completing the war, in the conduct of which he died. During this time the behaviour of his son steadily fell away from the standard the Emperor had set for himself.

For three years thereafter he waged war with the Marcomanni, the Hermunduri, the Sarmatians, and the Quadi, and had he lived a year longer he would have made these regions provinces.

Two days before his death, it is said, he summoned his friends and expressed the same opinion about his son that Philip expressed about Alexander when he too thought poorly of his son, and added that it grieved him exceedingly to leave a son behind him.

For already Commodus had made it clear that he was base and cruel.

He died in the following manner: When he began to grow ill, he summoned his son and besought him first of all not to think lightly of what remained of the war, lest he seem a traitor to the state.

And when his son replied that his first desire was good health, he allowed him to do as he wished, only asking him to wait a few days and not leave at once.

Then, being eager to die, he refrained from eating or drinking, and so aggravated the disease.

On the sixth day he summoned his friends, and with derision for all human affairs and scorn for death, said to them: "Why do you weep for me, instead of thinking about the pestilence and about death which is the common lot of us all?"

And when they were about to retire he groaned and said: "If you now grant me leave to go, I bid you farewell and pass on before."

And when he was asked to whom he commended his son he replied: "To you, if he prove worthy, and to the immortal gods".

The army, when they learned of his sickness, lamented loudly, for they loved him singularly.

On the seventh day he was weary and admitted only his son, and even him he at once sent away in fear that he would catch the disease.

And when his son had gone, he covered his head as though he wished to sleep and during the night he breathed his last.

It is said that he foresaw that after his death Commodus would turn out as he actually did, and expressed the wish that his son might die, lest, as he himself said, he should become another Nero, Caligula, or Domitian.

It is held to Marcus' discredit that he advanced his wife's lovers, Tertullus and Tutilius and Orfitus and Moderatus, to various offices of honour, although he had caught Tertullus in the very act of breakfasting with his wife.

In regard to this man the following dialogue was spoken on the stage in the presence of Antoninus himself. The Fool asked the Slave the name of his wife's lover and the Slave answered "Tullus" three times; and when the Fool kept on asking, the Slave replied, "I have already told you thrice Tullus is his name".

But the city-populace and others besides talked a great deal about this incident and found fault with Antoninus for his forbearance.

Previous to his death, and before he returned to the Marcomannic war, he swore in the Capitol that no senator had been executed with his knowledge and consent, and said that had he known he would have spared even the insurgents.

Nothing did he fear and deprecate more than a reputation for covetousness, a charge of which he tried to clear himself in many letters.

Some maintain — and held it a fault — that he was insincere and not as guileless as he seemed, indeed not as guileless as either Pius or Verus had been.

Others accused him of encouraging the arrogance of the court by keeping his friends from general social intercourse and from banquets.

His parents were deified at his command, and even his parents' friends, after their death, he honoured with statues.

He did not readily accept the version of those who were partisans in any matter, but always searched long and carefully for the truth.

After the death of Faustina, Fabia tried to manoeuvre a marriage with him. But he took a concubine instead, the daughter of a steward of his wife's, rather than put a stepmother over so many children.

I, however, have thought, since Marcus began to rule first and Verus only afterwards and Verus died while Marcus still lived on, that Marcus' life should be related first, and then that of Verus.

Now, Lucius Ceionius Aelius Commodus Verus Antoninus — called Aelius by the wish of Hadrian, Verus and Antoninus because of his relationship to Antoninus — is not to be classed with either the good or the bad emperors.

For, in the first place, it is agreed that if he did not bristle with vices, no more did he abound in virtues; and, in the second place, he enjoyed, not unrestricted power, but a sovereignty on like terms and equal dignity with Marcus, from whom he differed, however, as far as morals went, both in the laxity of his principles and the excessive licence of his life.

For in character he was utterly ingenuous and unable to conceal a thing.

His real father, Lucius Aelius Verus (who was adopted by Hadrian), was the first man to receive the name of Caesar and die without reaching a higher rank.

His grandfathers and great-grandfathers and likewise many other of his ancestors were men of consular rank.

Lucius himself was born at Rome while his father was praetor, on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of January, the birthday of Nero as well — who also held the throne.

His father's family came mostly from Etruria, his mother's from Faventia.

Such, then, was his real ancestry; but when his father was adopted by Hadrian he passed into the Aelian family, and when his father Caesar died, he still stayed in the family of Hadrian.

By Hadrian he was given in adoption to Aurelius, when Hadrian, making abundant provision for the succession, wished to make Pius his son and Marcus his grandson;

and he was given on the condition that he should espouse the daughter of Pius. She was later given to Marcus, however, as we have related in his life, because Verus seemed too much her junior in years,

while Verus took to wife Marcus' daughter Lucilla. He was reared in the House of Tiberius,

and received instruction from the Latin grammarian Scaurinus (the son of the Scaurus who had been Hadrian's teacher in grammar), the Greeks Telephus, Hephaestio, Harpocratio, the rhetoricians Apollonius, Caninius Celer, Herodes Atticus, and the Latin Cornelius Fronto, his teachers in philosophy being Apollonius and Sextus.

For all of these he cherished a deep affection, and in return he was beloved by them, and this despite his lack of natural gifts in literary studies.

In his youth he loved to compose verses, and later on in life, orations. And, in truth, he is said to have been a better orator than poet, or rather, to be strictly truthful, a worse poet than speaker.

Nor are there lacking those who say that he was aided by the wit of his friends, and that the things credited to him, such as they are, were written by others; and in fact it is said that he did keep in his employ a number of eloquent and learned men.

Nicomedes was his tutor. He was devoted to pleasure, too care-free, and very clever, within proper bounds, at every kind of frolic, sport, and raillery.

At the age of seven he passed into the Aurelian family, and was moulded by the manners and influence of Marcus. He loved hunting and wrestling, and indeed all the sports of youth.

And at the age of three and twenty he was still a private citizen in the imperial household.

On the day when Verus assumed the toga virilis Antoninus Pius, who on that same occasion dedicated a temple to his father, gave largess to the people;

and Verus himself, when quaestor, gave the people a gladiatorial spectacle, at which he sat between Pius and Marcus.

Immediately after his quaestorship he was made consul, with Sextius Lateranus as his colleague, and a number of years later he was created consul for a second term together with his brother Marcus.

For a long time, however, he was merely a private citizen and lacked the marks of honour with which Marcus was continually being decorated.

For he did not have a seat in the senate until he was quaestor, and while travelling, he rode, not with his father, but with the prefect of the guard, nor was any title added to his name as a mark of honour save only that he was called the son of Augustus.

He was fond of circus-games no less than of gladiatorial spectacles. And although he was weakened by such follies of debauchery and extravagance, nevertheless Pius retained him as a son, for the reason, it seems, that Hadrian, wishing to call the youth his grandson, had ordered Pius to adopt him. Towards Pius, so far as it appears, Verus showed loyalty rather than affection.

Pius, however, loved the frankness of his nature and his unspoiled way of living, and encouraged Marcus to imitate him in these.

When Pius died, Marcus bestowed all honours upon Verus, even granting him a share in the imperial power; he made him his colleague, moreover, when the senate had presented the sovereignty to him alone.

After investing him the sovereignty, then, and installing him in the tribunician power, and after rendering him the further honour of the consulship, Marcus gave instructions that he be named Verus, transferring his own name to him, whereas previously he had been called Commodus.

In return for this, Verus obeyed Marcus, whenever he entered upon any undertaking, as a lieutenant obeys a proconsul or a governor obeys the emperor.

For, at the beginning, he addressed the soldiers in his brother's behalf as well as his own, and in consideration of the joint rule he conducted himself with dignity and observed the moral standard that Marcus had set up.

When he set out for Syria, however, his name was smirched not only by the licence of an unbridled life, but also by adulteries and by love-affairs with young men.

Besides, he is said to have been so depraved as to install a cook-shop in his home after he returned from Syria, and to repair thither after Marcus' banquets and have all manner of foul persons serve him.

It is said, moreover, that he used to dice the whole night through, after he had taken up that vice in Syria, and that he so rivalled Caligula, Nero, and Vitellius in their vices as to wander about at night through taverns and brothels with only a common travelling-cap for a head-covering, revel with various rowdies, and engage in brawls, concealing his identity the while; and often, they say, when he returned, his face was beaten black and blue, and once he was recognised in a tavern even though he had hidden himself.

It was his wont also to hurl large coins into the cook-shops and therewith smash the cups.

He was very fond also of charioteers, favouring the "Greens".

He held gladiatorial bouts rather frequently at his banquets, and after continuing the meal far into the night he would fall asleep on the banqueting-couch, so that he had to be lifted up along with the covers and carried to his bedroom.

He never needed much sleep, however; and his digestion was excellent.

But Marcus, though he was not without knowledge of these happenings, with characteristic modesty pretended ignorance for fear of censuring his brother.

One such banquet, indeed, became very notorious. This was the first banquet, it is said, at which couches were placed for twelve, although there is a very well-known saying about the proper number of those present at a banquet that "seven make a dinner, nine make a din".

Furthermore, the comely lads who did the serving were given as presents, one to each guest; carvers and platters, too, were presented to each, and also live animals either tame or wild, winged or quadruped, of whatever kind were the meats that were served,

and even goblets of murra or of Alexandrine crystal were presented to each man for each drink, as often as they drank. Besides this, he gave golden and silver and even jeweled cups, and garlands, too, entwined with golden ribbons and flowers out of season, golden vases with ointments made in the shape of perfume-boxes,

and even carriages, together with mules and muleteers, and trappings of silver, wherewith they might return home from the banquet.

The estimated cost of the whole banquet, it is reported, was six million sesterces.

And when Marcus heard of this dinner, they say, he groaned and bewailed the fate of the empire.

After the banquet, moreover, they diced until dawn.

And all this was done after the Parthian war, whither Marcus had sent him, it is said, either that he might commit his debaucheries away from the city and the eyes of all citizens, or that he might learn economy by his travels, or that he might return reformed through the fear inspired by war, or, finally, that he might come to realize that he was an emperor.

But how much good all this did is shown not only by the rest of his life, but also by this banquet of which we have just told.

Such interest did Verus take in the circus-games that frequently even in his province he despatched and received letters pertaining to them.

And finally, even at Rome, when he was present and seated with Marcus, he suffered many insults from the "Blues," because he had outrageously, as they maintained, taken sides against them.

For he had a golden statue made of the "Green" horse Volucer, and this he always carried around with him;

indeed, he was wont to put raisins and nuts instead of barley in this horse's manger and to order him brought to him, in the House of Tiberius, covered with a blanket dyed with purple, and he built him a tomb, when he died, on the Vatican Hill.

It was because of this horse that gold pieces and prizes first began to be demanded for horses,

and in such honour was this horse held, that frequently a whole peck of gold pieces was demanded for him by the faction of the "Greens".

When Verus set out for the Parthian war, Marcus accompanied him as far as Capua; from there on he gorged himself in everyone's villa, and in consequence he was taken sick at Canusium, becoming very ill, so that his brother hastened thither to see him.

And now in the course of this war there were revealed many features of Verus' life that were weak and base.

For while a legate was being slain, while legions were being slaughtered, while Syria meditated revolt, and the East was being devastated, Verus was hunting in Apulia, travelling about through Athens and Corinth accompanied by orchestras and singers, and dallying through all the cities of Asia that bordered on the sea, and those cities of Pamphylia and Cilicia that were particularly notorious for their pleasure-resorts.

And when he came to Antioch, there he gave himself wholly to riotous living. His generals, meanwhile, Statius Priscus, Avidius Cassius, and Martius Verus for four years conducted the war until they advanced to Babylon and Media, and recovered Armenia.

He, however, gained the names Armeniacus, Parthicus, and Medicus; and these were proffered to Marcus also, who was then living at Rome.

For four years, moreover, Verus passed his winters at Laodicea, his summers at Daphne, and the rest of the time at Antioch.

As far as the Syrians were concerned, he was an object for ridicule, and many of the jibes which they uttered against him on the stage are still preserved.

Always, during the Saturnalia and on holidays he admitted his more pampered slaves to his dining-room.

Finally, however, at the insistence of his staff he set out for the Euphrates,

but soon, in order to receive his wife Lucilla, who had been sent thither by her father Marcus, he returned to Ephesus, going there chiefly in order that Marcus might not come to Syria with her and discover his evil deeds. For Marcus had told the senate that he himself would conduct his daughter to Syria.

Then, after the war was finished, he assigned kingdoms to certain kings, and provinces to certain members of his staff, to be ruled,

and returned to Rome for a triumph, reluctantly, however, since he was leaving in Syria what almost seemed his own kingdom. His triumph he shared with his brother, and from the senate he accepted the names which he had received in the army.

It is said, furthermore, that he shaved off his beard while in Syria to humour the whim of a low-born mistress; and because of this many things were said against him by the Syrians.

It was his fate to seem to bring a pestilence with him to whatever provinces he traversed on his return, and finally even to Rome.

It is believed that this pestilence originated in Babylonia, where a pestilential vapour arose in a temple of Apollo from a golden casket which a soldier had accidentally cut open, and that it spread thence over Parthia and the whole world.

Lucius Verus, however, is not to blame for this so much as Cassius, who stormed Seleucia in violation of an agreement, after it had received our soldiers as friends.

This act, indeed, many excuse, and among them Quadratus, the historian of the Parthian war, who blames the Seleucians as the first to break the agreement.

Such respect did Verus have for Marcus, that on the day of the triumph, which they celebrated together, he shared with his brother the names which had been granted to himself.

After he had returned from the Parthian war, however, Verus exhibited less regard for his brother; for he pampered his freedmen shamefully, and settled many things without his brother's counsel.

Besides all this, he brought actors out of Syria as proudly as though he were leading kings to a triumph. The chief of these was Maximinus, on whom he bestowed the name Paris.

Furthermore, he built an exceedingly notorious villa on the Clodian Way, and here he not only reviled himself for many days at a time in boundless extravagance together with his freedmen and friends of inferior rank in whose presence he felt no shame, but he even invited Marcus.

Marcus came, in order to display to his brother the purity of his own moral code as worthy of respect and imitation, and for five days, staying in the same villa, he busied himself continuously with the examination of law-cases, while his brother, in the meantime, was either banqueting or preparing banquets.

Verus maintained also the actor Agrippus, surnamed Memphius, whom he had brought with him from Syria, almost as a trophy of the Parthian war, and named Apolaustius.

He had brought with him, too, players of the harp and the flute, actors and jesters from the mimes, jugglers, and all kinds of slaves in whose entertainment Syria and Alexandria find pleasure, and in such numbers, indeed, that he seemed to have concluded a war, not against Parthians, but against actors.

This diversity in their manner of life, as well as many other causes, bred dissensions between Marcus and Verus — or so it was bruited about by obscure rumours although never established on the basis of manifest truth.

But, in particular, this incident was mentioned: Marcus sent a certain Libo, a cousin of his, as his legate to Syria, and there Libo acted more insolently than a respectful senator should, saying that he would write to his cousin if he happened to need any advice. But Verus, who was there in Syria, could not suffer this, and when, a little later, Libo died after a sudden illness accompanied by all the symptoms of poisoning, it seemed probable to some people, though not to Marcus, that Verus was responsible for his death; and this suspicion strengthened the rumours of dissensions between the Emperors.

Verus' freedmen, furthermore, had great influence with him, as we related in the Life of Marcus, namely Geminas and Agaclytus.

To the latter of these he gave the widow of Libo in marriage against the wishes of Marcus; indeed, when Verus celebrated the marriage ceremony Marcus did not attend the banquet.

Verus had other unscrupulous freedmen as well, Coedes and Eclectus and others.

All of these Marcus dismissed after Verus' death, under pretext of doing them honour, with the exception of Eclectus, and he afterwards slew Marcus' son, Commodus.

When the German war broke out, the two Emperors went to the front together, for Marcus wished neither to send Lucius to the front alone, nor yet, because of his debauchery, to leave him in the city.

When they had come to Aquileia, they proceeded to cross the Alps, though this was contrary to Lucius' desire; for as long as they remained in Aquileia he did nothing but hunt and banquet while Marcus made all the plans.

As far as this war was concerned, we have very fully discussed in the Life of Marcus what was accomplished by the envoys of the barbarians when they sued for peace and what was accomplished by our generals.

When the war in Pannonia was settled, they returned to Aquileia at Lucius' insistence, and then, because he yearned for the pleasures of the city, they hastened cityward.

But not far from Altinum, Lucius, while in his carriage, was suddenly stricken with the sickness which they call apoplexy, and after he had been set down from his carriage and bled, he was taken to Altinum, and here he died, after living for three days unable to speak.

There was gossip to the effect that he had violated his mother-in‑law Faustina. And it is said that his mother-in‑law killed him treacherously by having poison sprinkled on his oysters, because he had betrayed to the daughter the amour he had had with the mother.

However, there arose also that other story related in the Life of Marcus, one utterly inconsistent with the character of such a man.

Many, again, fastened the crime of his death upon his wife, since Verus had been too complaisant to Fabia, and her power his wife Lucilla could not endure.

Indeed, Lucius and his sister Fabia did become so intimate that gossip went so far as to claim that they had entered into a conspiracy to make away with Marcus,

and that when this was betrayed to Marcus by the freedman Agaclytus, Faustina circumvented Lucius in fear that he might circumvent her.

Verus was well-proportioned in person and genial of expression. His beard was allowed to grow long, almost in the style of the barbarians; he was tall, and stately in appearance, for his forehead projected somewhat over his eyebrows.

He took such pride in his yellow hair, it is said, that he used to sift gold-dust on his head in order that his hair, thus brightened, might seem even yellower.

He was somewhat halting in speech, a reckless gambler, ever of an extravagant mode of life, and in many respects, save only that he was not cruel or given to acting, a second Nero.

Among other articles of extravagance he had a crystal goblet, named Volucer after that horse of which he had been very fond, that surpassed the capacity of any human draught.

He lived forty-two years, and, in company with his brother, reigned eleven. His body was laid in the Tomb of Hadrian, where Caesar, his real father, was also buried.

There is a well-known story, which Marcus' manner of life will not warrant, that Marcus handed Verus part of a sow's womb which he had poisoned by cutting it with a knife smeared on one side with poison.

But it is wrong even to think of such a deed in connection with Marcus, although the plans and deeds of Verus may have well deserved it;

nor shall we leave the matter undecided, but rather reject it discarded and disproved, since from the time of Marcus onward, with the exception of your Clemency, Diocletian Augustus, not even flattery, it seems, has been able to fashion such an emperor.

Quadratus mentions him in his history, and certainly with all respect, for he declares that he was a very distinguished man, both indispensable to the state and influential with Marcus himself;

for he succumbed to the decrees of fate, it is said, when Marcus had already begun to rule.

Now Cassius, sprung, as we have said, from the family of the Cassii who conspired against Gaius Julius, secretly hated the principate and could not brook even the title of emperor, saying that the name of empire was all the more onerous because an emperor could not be removed from the state except by another emperor.

In his youth, they say, he tried to wrest the empire from Pius too, but through his father, a righteous and worthy man, he escaped detection in this attempt to seize the throne, though he continued to be suspected by Pius' generals.

Against Verus he organized a genuine conspiracy, as a letter of Verus' own, which I append, makes clear.

Extract from the letter of Verus: "Avidius Cassius is avid for the throne, as it seems to me and as was well-known in the reign of my grandfather, your father; I wish you would have him watched.

Everything we do displeases him, he is amassing no inconsiderable wealth, and he laughs at our letters. He calls you a philosophical old woman, me a half-witted spendthrift. Consider what should be done.

I do not dislike the man, but look to it lest you take too little heed for yourself and for your children when you keep in active service a man whom the soldiers are glad to hear and glad to see."

Marcus' answer concerning Avidius Cassius: "I have read your letter, which is that of a disquieted man rather than that of a general, and one not worthy of our times.

For if the empire is divinely decreed to be his, we cannot slay him even should we so desire. Remember what your great-grandfather used to say, 'No one ever kills his successor'. And if this is not the case, he will of himself fall into the toils of fate without any act of cruelty on our part.

Add that we cannot judge a man guilty whom no one has accused, and whom, as you say yourself, the soldiers love.

Furthermore, in cases of treason it is inevitable that even those who have been proved guilty seem to suffer injustice.

For you know yourself what your grandfather Hadrian said, 'Unhappy is the lot of emperors, who are never believed when they accuse anyone of pretending to the throne, until after they are slain'.

I have preferred, moreover, to quote this as his, rather than as Domitian's, who is reported to have said it first, for good sayings when uttered by tyrants have not as much weight as they deserve.

So let Cassius keep his own ways, especially as he is an able general and a stern and brave man, and since the state has need of him.

And as for your statement that I should take heed for my children by killing him, by all means let my children perish, if Avidius be more deserving of love than they and if it profit the state for Cassius to live rather than the children of Marcus." Thus did Verus, thus did Marcus, write about Cassius.

But let us briefly portray the nature and character of the man; for not very much can be known about those men whose lives no one has dared to render illustrious through fear of those by whom they were overcome.

We will add, moreover, how he came to the throne, and how he was killed, and where he was conquered.

For I have undertaken, Diocletian Augustus, to set down in writing the lives of all who have held the imperial title whether rightfully or without right, in order that you may become acquainted with all the emperors that have ever worn the purple.

Such was his character, then, that sometimes he seemed stern and savage, sometimes mild and gentle, often devout and again scornful of sacred things, addicted to drink and also temperate, a lover of eating yet able to endure hunger, a devotee of Venus and a lover of chastity.

Nor were there lacking those who called him a second Catiline, and indeed he rejoiced to hear himself thus called, and added that he would really be a Sergius if he killed the philosopher, meaning by that name Antoninus.

For the emperor was so illustrious in philosophy that when he was about to set out for the Marcomannic war, and everyone was fearful that some ill-luck might befall him, he was asked, not in flattery but in all seriousness, to publish his "Precepts of Philosophy";

and he did not fear to do so, but for three days discussed the books of his "Exhortations" one after the other.

Moreover, Avidius Cassius was a strict disciplinarian and wished to be called a Marius.

And since we have begun to speak of his strictness, there are many indications of what must be called savagery, rather than strictness, on his part.

For, in the first place, soldiers who had forcibly seized anything from the provincials he crucified on the very spot where they had committed the crime.

He was the first, moreover, to devise the following means of punishment: after erecting a huge post, 180 feet high, and binding condemned criminals on it from top to bottom, he built a fire at its base, and so burned some of them and killed the others by the smoke, the pain, and even by the fright.

Besides this, he had men bound in chains, ten together, and thrown into rivers or even the sea.

Besides this, he cut off the hands of many deserters, and broke the legs and hips of others, saying that a criminal alive and wretched was a more terrible example than one who had been put to death.

Once when he was commanding the army, a band of auxiliaries, at the suggestion of their centurions and without his knowledge, slaughtered 3,000 Sarmatians, who were camping somewhat carelessly on the bank of the Danube, and returned to him with immense plunder. But when the centurions expected a reward because they had slain such a host of the enemy with a very small force while the tribunes were passing their time in indolence and were even ignorant of the whole affair, he had them arrested and crucified, and punished them with the punishment of slaves, for which there was no precedent; "It might," he said, "have been an ambush, and the barbarians' awe for the Roman Empire might have been lost."

And when a fierce mutiny arose in the camp, he issued forth clad only in a wrestler's loin-cloth and said: "Strike me if you dare, and add the crime of murder to breach of discipline".

Then, as all grew quiet, he was held in well deserved fear, because he had shown no fear himself.

This incident so strengthened discipline among the Romans and struck such terror into the barbarians, that they besought the absent Antoninus for a hundred years' peace, since they had seen even those who conquered, if they conquered wrongfully, sentenced to death by the decision of a Roman general.

Many of the stern measures he took to put down the licence of the soldiers are recorded in the works of Aemilius Parthenianus, who has related the history of the pretenders to the throne from ancient times even to the present.

For example, after openly beating them with the lictors' rods in the forum and in the midst of the camp, he beheaded those who deserve it with the axe, and in numerous instances cut off his soldiers' hands.

He forbade the soldiers, moreover, to carry anything when on the march save lard and biscuit and vinegar, and if he discovered anything else he punished the breach of discipline with no light hand.

There is a letter concerning Cassius that the Deified Marcus wrote to his prefect, running somewhat as follows:

I have put Avidius Cassius in command of the Syrian legions, which are running riot in luxury and conducting themselves with the morals of Daphne; concerning these legions Caesonius Vectilianus has written that he found them all accustomed to bathe in hot water.

And I think I have made no mistake, for you too know Cassius, a man of true Cassian strictness and rigour.

Indeed, the soldiers cannot be controlled except by the ancient discipline. You know what the good poet says, a line universally quoted: "The state of Rome is rooted in the men and manners of the olden time"

Do you take care only that provisions are abundantly provided for the legions, for if I have judged Avidius correctly I know that they will not be wasted." The prefect's answer to Marcus runs:

"You planned wisely, Sire, when you put Cassius in command of the Syrian legions.

Nothing benefits Grecianized soldiers like a man who is somewhat strict.

He will certainly do away with all warm baths, and will strike all the flowers from the soldiers' heads and necks and breasts.

Food for the soldiers is all provided; and nothing is lacking under an able general, for but little is either asked or expended."

And Cassius did not disappoint the expectation that had been formed of him, for he immediately had the proclamation made at assembly, and posted notices on the walls, that if any one were discovered at Daphne in his uniform he would return without it.

Regularly once a week he inspected his soldiers' equipment, even their clothes and shoes and leggings, and he banished all dissipation from the camp and issued an order that they would pass the winter in their tents if they did not mend their ways; and they would have done so, had they not conducted themselves more respectably.

Once a week there was a drill of all the soldiers, in which they even shot arrows and engaged in contests in the use of arms.

For he said that it was shameful that soldiers should not be trained, while athletes, wild beast fighters and gladiators were, for the soldiers' future labours, if familiar to them, would be less onerous.

And so, having stiffened military discipline, he conducted affairs in Armenia and Arabia and Egypt with the greatest success.

He was well loved by all the eastern nations, especially by the citizens of Antioch, who even acquiesced in his rule, as Marius Maximus relates in his Life of the Deified Marcus.

And when the warriors of the Bucolici did many grievous things in Egypt, they were checked by Cassius, as Marius Maximus also relates in the second book of those he published on the Life of Marcus.

Finally, while in the East, he proclaimed himself emperor, some say, at the wish of Faustina, who now despaired of Marcus' health and was afraid that she would be unable to protect her infant children by herself, and that some one would arise and seize the throne and make away with the children.

Others, however, say that Cassius employed an artifice with the soldiers and provincials to overcome their love for Marcus so that they would join him, saying that Marcus had met his end.

And, indeed, he called him "the Deified," it is said, in order to lessen their grief for him.

When his plan of making himself emperor had been put into effect, he forthwith appointed prefect of the guard the man who had invested him with the imperial insignia. This man was later put to death by the army against the wishes of Antoninus. The army also slew Maecianus, in whose charge Alexandria had been placed; he had joined Cassius in the hope of sharing the sovereignty with him, and he too was slain against the wishes and without the knowledge of Antoninus.

For all that, Antoninus was not seriously angered on learning of this revolt, nor did he vent his rage on Cassius' children or on his kin.

The senate, however, pronounced him a public enemy and confiscated his property. But Antoninus was unwilling that this should be forfeited to the privy-purse, and so, at the bidding of the senate, it was delivered to the public treasury.

And there was no slight consternation at Rome; for many said that Avidius Cassius would advance on the city in the absence of Antoninus, who was singularly loved by all but the profligates, and that he would ravage it like a tyrant, especially because of the senators who had declared him an enemy to the state and confiscated his property.

The love felt for Antoninus was most clearly manifested in the fact that it was with the consent of all save the citizens of Antioch that Avidius was slain.

Antoninus, indeed, did not so much order his execution as suffer it; for it was clear to all that he would have spared him had it been in his power.

And when his head was brought to Antoninus he did not rejoice or exult, but rather was grieved that he had lost an opportunity for showing mercy; for he said that he had wished to take him alive, so that he might reproach him with the kindness he had shown him in the past, and then spare his life.

Finally, when some one said that Antoninus deserved blame because he was so indulgent toward his enemy and his enemy's children and kin, and indeed toward every one whom he had found concerned in the outbreak, and added furthermore, "What if Cassius had been successful?" the Emperor said, it is reported: "We have not worshipped the gods in such a manner, or lived such lives, that he could overcome us".

Thereupon he pointed out that in the case of all the emperors who had been slain there had been reasons why they deserved to die, and that no emperor, generally recognized as good, had been conquered or slain by a pretender,

adding that Nero had deserved to die and Caligula had forfeited his life, while neither Otho nor Vitellius had really wished to rule.

He expressed similar sentiments concerning Galba also, saying that in an emperor avarice was the most grievous of all failings.

And lastly, he said, no rebels had succeeded in overcoming either Augustus, or Trajan, or Hadrian, or his own father, and, although there had been many of them, they had been killed either against the wishes or without the knowledge of those emperors.

Antoninus himself, moreover, asked the senate to refrain from inflicting severe punishment on those men who were implicated in the rebellion; he made this request at the very same time in which he requested that during his reign no senator be punished with capital punishment — an act which won him the greatest affection.

Finally, after he had punished a very few centurions, he gave orders that those who had been exiled should be recalled.

The citizens of Antioch also had sided with Avidius Cassius, but these, together with certain other states which had aided Cassius, he pardoned, though at first he was deeply angered at the citizens of Antioch and took away their games and many of the distinctions of the city, all of which he afterwards restored.

To the sons of Avidius Cassius Antoninus he presented half of their father's property, and his daughters he even graced with gold and silver and jewels.

To Alexandria, Cassius' daughter, and Druncianus, his son-in‑law, he gave unrestricted permission to travel wherever they liked.

And they lived not as the children of a pretender but as members of the senatorial order and in the greatest security, as was shown by orders he gave that not even in a law-suit should they be taunted with the fortunes of their family, and by his convicting certain people of personal affront who had been insulting to them. He even put them under the protection of his uncle by marriage.

If any one wishes, moreover, to know the whole of this story, let him read the second book of Marius Maximus on the life of Marcus, in which he relates everything that Marcus did as sole emperor after the death of Verus.

For it was during this time that Cassius rebelled, as a letter written to Faustina shows, from which the following is an extract:

"Verus told me the truth about Avidius, that he desired to rule. For I presume you heard what Verus' messengers reported about him.

Come, then, to our Alban villa, so that with the help of the gods we may prepare for everything, and do not be afraid."

It would appear from this that Faustina knew nothing of the affair, though Marius Maximus, wishing to defame her, says that it was with her connivance that Cassius attempted to seize the throne.

Indeed, we have also a letter of hers to her husband in which she urged Marcus to punish Cassius severely.

A copy of Faustina's letter to Marcus reads: "I shall come to our Alban villa to‑morrow, as you command. Yet I urge you now, if you love your children, to punish those rebels with all severity.

For soldiers and generals have an evil habit of crushing others if they are not crushed themselves."

Another letter of this same Faustina to Marcus reads similarly: "When Celsus revolted, my mother, Faustina, urged your father, Pius, to deal righteously first with his own kin, and then with strangers.

For no emperor is righteous who does not take thought for his wife and children.

You can see how young our son Commodus is; our son-in‑law Pompeianus is an elderly man and a foreigner besides.

Consider well what you will do about Avidius Cassius and his accomplices.

Do not show forbearance to men who have shown no forbearance to you and would show none either to me or to your children, should they be victorious.

I shall follow you on your way presently; I have not been able to come to the Formian villa because our dear Fadilla was ill.

However, if I shall fail to find you at Formiae, I will follow on to Capua, a city which can furnish help to me and our children in our sickness.

Please send the physician Soteridas to Formiae. I have no confidence in Pisitheus, who does not know how to treat a young girl.

Calpurnius has brought me a sealed letter: I shall reply to it, if I linger on here, through Caecilius, the old eunuch, a man to be trusted, as you know.

I shall also report through him, in a verbal message, what Cassius' wife and children and son-in‑law are said to be circulating about you."

From these letters it can be seen that Faustina was not in collusion with Cassius, but, on the contrary, earnestly demanded his punishment; for, indeed, it was she who urged on Antoninus the necessity of vengeance when he was inclined to take no action and was considering more merciful measures.

The following letter tells what Antoninus wrote to her in reply:

"Truly, my Faustina, you are over-anxious about your husband and children. For while I was at Formiae I re-read the letter wherein you urged me to take vengeance on Avidius' accomplices.

I, however, shall spare his wife and children and son-in‑law, and I will write to the senate forbidding any immoderate confiscation or cruel punishment.

For there is nothing which endears a Roman emperor to mankind as much as the quality of mercy.

This quality caused Caesar to be deified and made Augustus a god, and it was this characteristic, more than any other, that gained your father his honourable name of Pius.

Indeed, if the war had been settled in accordance with my desires, Avidius would not have been killed.

So do not be anxious; 'Over me the gods keep guard, the gods hold dear my righteousness.' I have named our son-in‑law Pompeianus consul for next year." Thus did Antoninus write to his wife.

It is of interest, moreover, to know what sort of a message he sent to the senate.

An extract from the message of Marcus Antoninus: "So then, in return for this manifestation of joy at our victory, Conscript Fathers, receive my son-in‑law as consul — Pompeianus, I mean, who has come to an age that were long since rewarded with the consulship, had there not stood in the way certain brave men, to whom it was right to give what was due them from the state.

And now, as to Cassius' revolt, I pray and beseech you, Conscript Fathers, lay aside your severity, and preserve the righteousness and mercy that are mine — nay rather I should say, yours — and let the senate put no man to death.

Let no senator be punished; let the blood of no distinguished man be shed; let those who have been exiled return to their homes; let those who have been outlawed recover their estates.

Would that I could also recall many from the grave! Vengeance for a personal wrong is never pleasing in an emperor, for the juster the vengeance is, the harsher it seems.

Wherefore, you will grant pardon to the sons and son-in‑law and wife of Avidius Cassius. For that matter, why should I say pardon? They have done nothing.

Let them live, therefore, free from all anxiety, knowing that they live under Marcus. Let them live in possession of their parents' property, granted to each in due proportion; let them enjoy gold, silver, and raiment; let them be rich; let them be free from anxiety; let them, unrestricted and free to travel wheresoever they wish, carry in themselves before the eyes of all nations everywhere an example of my forbearance, an example of yours.

Nor is it any great act of mercy, Conscript Fathers, to grant pardon to the wives and children of outlawed men.

I do beseech you to save these conspirators, men of the senatorial and equestrian orders, from death, from proscription, from terror, from disgrace, from hatred, and, in short, from every harm, and to grant this to my reign,

that whoever, in the cause of the pretender, has fallen in the strife may, though slain, still be esteemed."

The senate honoured this act of mercy with these acclamations:

"God save you, righteous Antoninus. God save you, merciful Antoninus.

You have desired what was lawful, we have done what was fitting. We ask lawful power for Commodus. Strengthen your offspring. Make our children free from care. No violence troubles righteous rule.

We ask the tribunician power for Commodus Antoninus. We beseech your presence.

All praise to your philosophy, your patience, your principles, your magnanimity, your innocence! You conquer your foes within, your prevail over those without, the gods are watching over you," and so forth.

And so the descendants of Avidius Cassius lived unmolested and were admitted to offices of honour.

But after his deified father's death Commodus Antoninus ordered them all to be burned alive, as if they had been caught in a rebellion.

So much have we learned concerning Avidius Cassius.

His character, as we have said before, was continually changing, though inclined, on the whole, to severity and cruelty.

Had he gained the throne, he would have made not a merciful and kind emperor but a beneficent and excellent one.

For we have a letter of his, written to his son-in‑law after he had declared himself emperor, that reads somewhat as follows:

"Unhappy state, unhappy, which suffers under men who are eager for riches and men who have grown rich!

Marcus is indeed the best of men, but one who wishes to be called merciful and hence suffers to live men whose manner of life he cannot sanction.

Where is Lucius Cassius, whose name we bear in vain? Where is that other Marcus, Cato the Censor? Where is all the rigour of our fathers? Long since indeed has it perished, and now it is not even desired.

Marcus Antoninus philosophizes and meditates on first principles, and on souls and virtue and justice, and takes no thought for the state.

There is need, rather, for many swords, as you see for yourself, and for much practical wisdom, in order that the state may return to its ancient ways.

And truly in regard to those governors of provinces — can I deem proconsuls or governors those who believe that their provinces were given them by the senate and Antoninus only in order that they might revel and grow rich?

You have heard that our philosopher's prefect of the guard was a beggar and a pauper three days before his appointment, and then suddenly became rich. How, I ask you, save from the vitals of the state and the purses of the provincials? Well then, let them be rich, let them be wealthy. In time they will stuff the imperial treasury; only let the gods favour the better side, let the men of Cassius restore to the state a lawful government." This letter of his shows how stern and how strict an emperor he would have been.

As for Commodus himself, he was born, with his twin brother Antoninus, at Lanuvium — where his mother's father was born, it is said — on the day before the Kalends of September, while his father and uncle were consuls.

Faustina, when pregnant with Commodus and his brother, dreamed that she gave birth to serpents, one of which, however, was fiercer than the other.

But after she had given birth to Commodus and Antoninus, the latter, for whom the astrologers had cast a horoscope as favourable as that of Commodus, lived to be only four years old.

After the death of Antoninus, Marcus tried to educate Commodus by his own teaching and by that of the greatest and the best of men.

In Greek literature he had Onesicrates as his teacher, in Latin, Antistius Capella; his instructor in rhetoric was Ateius Sanctus.

However, teachers in all these studies profited him not in the least — such is the power, either of natural character, or of the tutors maintained in a palace. For even from his earliest years he was base and dishonourable, and cruel and lewd, defiled of mouth, moreover, and debauched.

Even then he was an adept in certain arts which are not becoming in an emperor, for he could mould goblets and dance and sing and whistle, and he could play the buffoon and the gladiator to perfection.

In the twelfth year of his life, at Centumcellae, he gave a forecast of his cruelty. For when it happened that his bath was drawn too cool, he ordered the bathkeeper to be cast into the furnace; whereupon the slave who had been ordered to do this burned a sheep-skin in the furnace, in order to make him believe by the stench of the vapour that the punishment had been carried out.

While yet a child he was given the name of Caesar, along with his brother Verus, and in his fourteenth year he was enrolled in the college of priests.

When he assumed the toga, he was elected one of the leaders of the equestrian youths, the trossuli, and even while still clad in the youth's praetexta he gave largess and presided in the Hall of Trajan.

He assumed the toga on the Nones of July — the day on which Romulus vanished from the earth — at the time when Cassius revolted from Marcus.

After he had been commended to the favour of the soldiers he set out with his father for Syria and Egypt, and with him he returned to Rome.

Afterward he was granted exemption from the law of the appointed year and made consul, and on the fifth day before the Kalends of December, in the consulship of Pollio and Aper, he was acclaimed Imperator together with his father, and celebrated a triumph with him.

For this, too, the senate had decreed. Then he set out with his father for the German war.

The more honourable of those appointed to supervise his life he could not endure, but the most evil he retained, and, if any were dismissed, he yearned for them even to the point of falling sick.

When they were reinstated through his father's indulgence, he always maintained eating-houses and low resorts for them in the imperial palace. He never showed regard for either decency or expense.

He diced in his own home. He herded together women of unusual beauty, keeping them like purchased prostitutes in a sort of brothel for the violation of their chastity. He imitated the hucksters that strolled about from market to market.

He procured chariot-horses for his own use. He drove chariots in the garb of a professional charioteer, lived with gladiators, and conducted himself like a procurer's servant. Indeed, one would have believed him born rather to a life of infamy than to the high place to which Fortune advanced him.

His father's older attendants he dismissed, and any friends that were advanced in years he cast aside.

The son of Salvius Julianus, the commander of the troops, he tried to lead into debauchery, but in vain, and he thereupon plotted against Julianus.

He degraded the most honourable either by insulting them directly or giving them offices far below their deserts.

He was alluded to by actors as a man of depraved life, and he thereupon banished them so promptly that they did not again appear on the stage.

He abandoned the war which his father had almost finished and submitted to the enemy's terms, and then he returned to Rome.

After he had come back to Rome he led the triumphal procession with Saoterus, his partner in depravity, seated in his chariot, and from time to time he would turn around and kiss him openly, repeating this same performance even in the orchestra.

And not only was he wont to drink until dawn and squander the resources of the Roman Empire, but in the evening he would ramble through taverns and brothels.

He sent out to rule the provinces men who were either his companions in crime or were recommended to him by criminals.

He became so detested by the senate that he in his turn was moved with cruel passion for the destruction of that great order, and from having been despised he became bloodthirsty.

Finally the actions of Commodus drove Quadratus and Lucilla, with the support of Tarrutenius Paternus, the prefect of the guard, to form a plan for his assassination.Finally the actions of Commodus drove Quadratus and Lucilla, with the support of Tarrutenius Paternus, the prefect of the guard, to form a plan for his assassination.

The task of slaying him was assigned to Claudius Pompeianus, a kinsman.

But he, as soon as he had an opportunity to fulfil his mission, strode up to Commodus with a drawn sword, and, bursting out with these words, "This dagger the senate sends thee," betrayed the plot like a fool, and failed to accomplish the design, in which many others along with himself were implicated.

After this fiasco, first Pompeianus and Quadratus were executed, and then Norbana and Norbanus and Paralius; and the latter's mother and Lucilla were driven into exile.

Thereupon the prefects of the guard, perceiving that the aversion in which Commodus was held was all on account of Saoterus, whose power the Roman people could not endure, courteously escorted this man away from the Palace under pretext of a sacrifice, and then, as he was returning to his villa, had him assassinated by their private agents.

But this deed enraged Commodus more than the plot against himself.

Paternus, the instigator of this murder, who was believed to have been an accomplice in the plot to assassinate Commodus and had certainly sought to prevent any far-reaching punishment of that conspiracy, was now, at the instigation of Tigidius, dismissed from the command of the praetorian guard by the expedient of conferring on him the honour of the broad stripe.

And a few days thereafter, Commodus accused him of plotting, saying that the daughter of Paternus had been betrothed to the son of Julianus with the understanding that Julianus would be raised to the throne. On this pretext he executed Paternus and Julianus, and also Vitruvius Secundus, a very dear friend of Paternus, who had charge of the imperial correspondence.

Besides this, he exterminated the whole house of the Quintilii, because Sextus, the son of Condianus, by pretending death, it was said, had made his escape in order to raise a revolt.

Vitrasia Faustina, Velius Rufus, and Egnatius Capito, a man of consular rank, were all slain.

Aemilius Iuncus and Atilius Severus, the consuls, were driven into exile. And against many others he vented his rage in various ways.

After this Commodus never appeared in public readily, and would never receive messages unless they had previously passed through the hands of Perennis.

For Perennis, being well acquainted with Commodus' character, discovered the way to make himself powerful,

namely, by persuading Commodus to devote himself to pleasure while he, Perennis, assumed all the burdens of the government — an arrangement which Commodus joyfully accepted.

Under this agreement, then, Commodus lived, rioting in the Palace amid banquets and in baths along with 300 concubines, gathered together for their beauty and chosen from both matrons and harlots, and with minions, also 300 in number, whom he had collected by force and by purchase indiscriminately from the common people and the nobles solely on the basis of bodily beauty.

Meanwhile, dressed in the garb of an attendant at the sacrifice, he slaughtered the sacrificial victims. He fought in the arena with foils, but sometimes, with his chamberlains acting as gladiators, with sharpened swords. By this time Perennis had secured all the power for himself.

He slew whomsoever he wished to slay, plundered a great number, violated every law, and put all the booty into his own pocket.

Commodus, for his part, killed his sister Lucilla, after banishing her to Capri.

After debauching his other sisters, as it is said, he formed an amour with a cousin of his father, and even gave the name of his mother to one of his concubines.

His wife, whom he caught in adultery, he drove from his house, then banished her, and later put her to death.

By his orders his concubines were debauched before his own eyes,

and he was not free from the disgrace of intimacy with young men, defiling every part of his body in dealings with persons of either sex.

At this time Claudius also, whose son had previously come into Commodus' presence with a dagger, was slain, ostensibly by bandits, and many other senators were put to death, and also certain women of wealth.

And not a few provincials, for the sake of their riches, were charged with crimes by Perennis and then plundered or even slain;

some, against whom there was not even the imputation of a fictitious crime, were accused of having been unwilling to name Commodus as their heir.

About this time the victories in Sarmatia won by other generals were attributed by Perennis to his own son.

Yet in spite of his great power, suddenly, because in the war in Britain he had dismissed certain senators and had put men of the equestrian order in command of the soldiers, this same Perennis was declared an enemy to the state, when the matter was reported by the legates in command of the army, and was thereupon delivered up to the soldiers to be torn to pieces.

In his place of power Commodus put Cleander, one of his chamberlains.

After Perennis and his son were executed, Commodus rescinded a number of measures on the ground that they had been carried out without his authority, pretending that he was merely re-establishing previous conditions.

However, he could not maintain this penitence for his misdeeds longer than thirty days, and he actually committed more atrocious crimes through Cleander than he had done through the aforesaid Perennis.

Although Perennis was succeeded in general influence by Cleander, his successor in the prefecture was Niger, who held this position as prefect of the guard, it is said, for just six hours.

In fact, prefects of the guard were changed hourly and daily, Commodus meanwhile committing all kinds of evil deeds, worse even than he had committed before.

Marcius Quartus was prefect of the guard for five days. Thereafter, the successors of these men were either retained in office or executed, according to the whim of Cleander.

At his nod even freedmen were enrolled in the senate and among the patricians, and now for the first time there were twenty-five consuls in a single year. Appointments to the provinces were uniformly sold;

in fact, Cleander sold everything for money. He loaded with honours men who were recalled from exile; he rescinded decisions of the courts.

Indeed, because of Commodus' utter degeneracy, his power was so great that he brought Burrus, the husband of Commodus' sister, who was denouncing and reporting to Commodus all that was being done, under the suspicion of pretending to the throne, and had him put to death; and at the same time he slew many others who defended Burrus.

Among these Aebutianus was slain, the prefect of the guard; in his place Cleander himself was made prefect, together with two others whom he himself chose.

Then for the first time were there three prefects of the guard, among whom was a freedman, called the "Bearer of the Dagger".

However, a full worthy death was at last meted out to Cleander also. For when, through his intrigues, Arrius Antoninus was put to death on false charges as a favour to Attalus, whom Arrius had condemned during his proconsulship in Asia, Commodus could not endure the hatred of the enraged people and gave Cleander over to the populace for punishment.

At the same time Apolaustus and several other freedmen of the court were put to death. Among other outrages Cleander had debauched certain of Commodus' concubines, and from them had begotten sons,

who, together with their mothers, were put to death after his downfall.

As successors to Cleander Commodus appointed Julianus and Regillus, both of whom he afterwards condemned.

After these men had been put to death he slew the two Silani, Servilius and Dulius, together with their kin, then Antius Lupus and the two Petronii, Mamertinus and Sura, and also Mamertinus' son Antoninus, whose mother was his own sister;

after these, six former consuls at one time, Allius Fuscus, Caelius Felix, Lucceius Torquatus, Larcius Eurupianus, Valerius Bassianus and Pactumeius Magnus, all with their kin;

in Asia Sulpicius Crassus, the proconsul, Julius Proculus, together with their kin, and Claudius Lucanus, a man of consular rank; and in Achaia his father's cousin, Annia Faustina, and innumerable others.

He had intended to kill fourteen others also, since the revenues of the Roman empire were insufficient to meet his expenditures.

Meanwhile, because he had appointed to the consulship a former lover of his mother's, the senate mockingly gave Commodus the name Pius; and after he had executed Perennis, he was given the name Felix, as though, amid the multitudinous executions of many citizens, he were a second Sulla.

And this same Commodus, who was called Pius, and who was called Felix, is said to have feigned a plot against his own life, in order that he might have an excuse for putting many to death.

Yet as a matter of fact, there were no rebellions save that of Alexander, who soon killed himself and his near of kin, and that of Commodus' sister Lucilla.

He was called Britannicus by those who desired to flatter him, whereas the Britons even wished to set up an emperor against him.

He was called also the Roman Hercules, on the ground that he had killed wild beasts in the amphitheatre at Lanuvium; and, indeed, it was his custom to kill wild beasts on his own estate.

He had, besides, an insane desire that the city of Rome should be renamed Colonia Commodiana. This mad idea, it is said, was inspired in him while listening to the blandishments of Marcia.

He had also a desire to drive chariots in the Circus,

and he went out in public clad in the Dalmatian tunic and thus clothed gave the signal for the charioteers to start.

And in truth, on the occasion when he laid before the senate his proposal to call Rome Commodiana, not only did the senate gleefully pass this resolution, but also took the name "Commodian" to itself, at the same time giving Commodus the name Hercules, and calling him a god.

He pretended once that he was going to Africa, so that he could get funds for the journey, then got them and spent them on banquets and gaming instead.

He murdered Motilenus, the prefect of the guard, by means of poisoned figs. He allowed statues of himself to be erected with the accoutrements of Hercules; and sacrifices were performed to him as to a god.

He had planned to execute many more men besides, but his plan was betrayed by a certain young servant, who threw out of his bedroom a tablet on which were written the names of those who were to be killed.

He practised the worship of Isis and even went so far as to shave his head and carry a statue of Anubis.

In his passion for cruelty he actually ordered the votaries of Bellona to cut off one of their arms,

and as for the devotees of Isis, he forced them to beat their breasts with pine-cones even to the point of death. While he was carrying about the statue of Anubis, he used to smite the heads of the devotees of Isis with the face of the statue. He struck with his club, while clad in a woman's garment or a lion's skin, not lions only, but many men as well. Certain men who were lame in their feet and others who could not walk, he dressed up as giants, encasing their legs from the knee down in wrappings and bandages to make them look like serpents, and then despatched them with his arrows. He desecrated the rites of Mithra with actual murder, although it was customary in them merely to say or pretend something that would produce an impression of terror.

Even as a child he was gluttonous and lewd. While a youth, he disgraced every class of men in his company and was disgraced in turn by them.

Whosoever ridiculed him he cast to the wild beasts. And one man, who had merely read the book by Tranquillus containing the life of Caligula, he ordered cast to the wild beasts, because Caligula and he had the same birthday.

And if any one, indeed, expressed a desire to die, he had him hurried to death, however really reluctant.

In his humorous moments, too, he was destructive.

For example, he put a starling on the head of one man who, as he noticed, had a few white hairs, resembling worms, among the black, and caused his head to fester through the continual pecking of the bird's beak — the bird, of course, imagining that it was pursuing worms.

One corpulent person he cut open down the middle of his belly, so that his intestines gushed forth.

Other men he dubbed one-eyed or one-footed, after he himself had plucked out one of their eyes or cut off one of their feet.

In addition to all this, he murdered many others in many places, some because they came of his presence in the costume of barbarians, others because they were noble and handsome.

He kept among his minions certain men named after the private parts of both sexes, and on these he liked to bestow kisses.

He also had in his company a man with a male member larger than that of most animals, whom he called Onos. This man he treated with great affection, and even made him rich and appointed him to the priesthood of the Rural Hercules.

It is claimed that he often mixed human excrement with the most expensive foods, and he did not refrain from tasting them, mocking the rest of the company, as he thought.

He displayed two misshapen hunchbacks on a silver platter after smearing them with mustard, and then straightway advanced and enriched them.

He pushed into a swimming-pool his praetor prefect Julianus, although he was clad in his toga and accompanied by his staff; and he even ordered this same Julianus to dance naked before his concubines, clashing cymbals and making grimaces.

The various kinds of cooked vegetables he rarely admitted to his banquets, his purpose being to preserve unbroken the succession of dainties.

He used to bathe seven and eight times a day, and was in the habit of eating while in the baths.

He would enter the temples of the gods defiled with adulteries and human blood.

He even aped a surgeon, going so far as to bleed men to death with scalpels.

Certain months were renamed in his honour by his flatterers; for August they substituted Commodus, for September Hercules, for October Invictus, for November Exsuperatorius, and for December Amazonius, after his own surname.

He had been called Amazonius, moreover, because of his passion for his concubine Marcia, whom he loved to have portrayed as an Amazon, and for whose sake he even wished to enter the arena of Rome dressed as an Amazon.

He engaged in gladiatorial combats, and accepted the names usually given to gladiators with as much pleasure as if he had been granted triumphal decorations.

He regularly took part in the spectacles, and as often as he did so, ordered the fact to be inscribed in the public records.

It is said that he engaged in gladiatorial bouts seven hundred and thirty-five times.

He received the name of Caesar on the fourth day before the Ides of the month usually called October, which he later named Hercules, in the consulship of Pudens and Pollio.

He was called Germanicus on the Ides of "Hercules" in the consulship of Maximus and Orfitus.

He was received into all the sacred colleges as a priest on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of "Invictus," in the consulship of Piso and Julianus.

He set out for Germany on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of the month which he later named Aelius,

and assumed the toga in the same year.

Together with his father he was acclaimed Imperator on the fifth day before the Kalends of "Exsuperatorius," in the year when Pollio and Aper served their second consulships,

and he celebrated a triumph on the tenth day before the Kalends of January in this same year.

He set out on his second expedition on the third day before the Nones of "Commodus" in the consulship of Orfitus and Rufus.

He was officially presented by the army and the senate to be maintained in perpetuity in the Palatine mansion, henceforth called Commodiana, on the eleventh day before the Kalends of "Romanus," in the year that Praesens was consul for the second time.

When he laid plans for a third expedition, he was persuaded by the senate and people to give it up.

Vows were assumed in his behalf on the Nones of "Pius," when Fuscianus was consul for the second time.

Besides these facts, it is related in records that he fought 365 gladiatorial combats in his father's reign.

Afterwards, by vanquishing or slaying retiarii, he won enough gladiatorial crowns to bring the number up to a thousand.

He also killed with his own hand thousands of wild beasts of all kinds, even elephants. And he frequently did these things before the eyes of the Roman people.

But, though vigorous enough for such exploits, he was otherwise weak and diseased; indeed, he had such a conspicuous growth on his groin that the people of Rome could see the swelling through his silken robes.

Many verses were written alluding to this deformity; and Marius Maximus prides himself on preserving these in his biography of Commodus.

Such was his prowess in the slaying of wild beasts, that he once transfixed an elephant with a pole, pierced a gazelle's horn with a spear, and on a thousand occasions dispatched a mighty beast with a single blow.

Such was his complete indifference to propriety, that time and again he sat in the theatre or amphitheatre dressed in a woman's garments and drank quite publicly.

The Moors and the Dacians were conquered during his reign, and peace was established in the Pannonias, but all by his legates, since such was the manner of his life. The provincials in Britain, Dacia, and Germany attempted to cast off his yoke,

but all these attempts were put down by his generals.

Commodus himself was so lazy and careless in signing documents that he answered many petitions with the same formula, while in very many letters he merely wrote the word "Farewell".

All official business was carried on by others, who, it is said, even used condemnations to swell their purses.

And because he was so careless, moreover, a great famine arose in Rome, not because there was any real shortage of crops, but merely because those who then ruled the state were plundering the food supply.

As for those who plundered on every hand, Commodus afterwards put them to death and confiscated their property;

but for the time he pretended that a golden age had come, "Commodian" by name, and ordered a general reduction of prices, the result of which was an even greater scarcity.

In his reign many a man secured punishment for another or immunity for himself by bribery.

Indeed, in return for money Commodus would grant a change of punishment, the right of burial, the alleviation of wrongs, and the substitution of another for one condemned to be put to death.

He sold provinces and administrative posts, part of the proceeds accruing to those through whom he made the sale and part to Commodus himself.

To some he sold even the lives of their enemies. Under him the imperial freedmen sold even the results of law-suits.

He did not long put up with Paternus and Perennis as prefects; indeed, not one of the prefects whom he himself had appointed remained in office as long as three years. Most of them he killed, some with poison, some with the sword.

Prefects of the city he changed with equal readiness. He executed his chamberlains with no compunctions whatever, even though all that he had done had been at their bidding.

One of these chamberlains, however, Eclectus by name, forestalled him when he saw how ready Commodus was to put the chamberlains to death, and took part in a conspiracy to kill him.

At gladiatorial shows he would come to watch and stay to fight, covering his bare shoulders with a purple cloth.

And it was his custom, moreover, to order the insertion in the city-gazette of everything he did that was base or foul or cruel, or typical of a gladiator or a procurer — at least, the writings of Marius Maximus so testify.

He entitled the Roman people the "People of Commodus," since he had very often fought as a gladiator in their presence.

And although the people regularly applauded him in his frequent combats as though he were a god, he became convinced that he was being laughed at, and gave orders that the Roman people should be slain in the Amphitheatre by the marines who spread the awnings.

He gave an order, also, for the burning of the city, as though it were his private colony, and this order would have been executed had not Laetus, the prefect of the guard, deterred him.

Among other triumphal titles, he was also given the name "Captain of the Secutores" six hundred and twenty times.

The prodigies that occurred in his reign, both those which concerned the state and those which affected Commodus personally, were as follows. A comet appeared.

Footprints of the gods were seen in the Forum departing from it. Before the war of the deserters the heavens were ablaze. On the Kalends of January a swift coming mist and darkness arose in the Circus; and before dawn there had already been fire-birds and ill-boding portents.

Commodus himself moved his residence from the Palace to the Vectilian Villa on the Caelian hill, saying that he could not sleep in the Palace.

The twin gates of the temple of Janus opened of their own accord, and a marble image of Anubis was seen to move.

In the Minucian Portico a bronze statue of Hercules sweated for several days. An owl, moreover, was caught above his bed-chamber both at Lanuvium and at Rome.

He was himself responsible for no inconsiderable an omen relating to himself; for after he had plunged his hand into the wound of a slain gladiator he wiped it on his own head, and again, contrary to custom, he ordered the spectators to attend his gladiatorial shows clad not in togas but in cloaks, a practice usual at funerals, while he himself presided in the vestments of a mourner.

Twice, moreover, his helmet was borne through the Gate of Libitina.

He gave largess to the people, 725 denarii to each man. Toward all others he was close-fisted to a degree, since the expense of his luxurious living had drained the treasury.

He held many races in the Circus, but rather as the result of a whim than as an act of religion, and also in order to enrich the leaders of the factions.

Because of these things — but all too late — Quintus Aemilius Laetus, prefect of the guard, and Marcia, his concubine, were roused to action and entered into a conspiracy against his life.

First they gave him poison; and when this proved ineffective they had him strangled by the athlete with whom he was accustomed to exercise.

Physically he was very well proportioned. His expression was dull, as is usual in drunkards, and his speech uncultivated. His hair was always dyed and made lustrous by the use of gold dust, and he used to singe his hair and beard because he was afraid of barbers.

The people and senate demanded that his body be dragged with the hook and cast into the Tiber; later, however, at the bidding of Pertinax, it was borne to the Mausoleum of Hadrian.

No public works of his are in existence, except the bath which Cleander built in his name.

But he inscribed his name on the works of others; this the senate erased.

Indeed, he did not even finish the public works of his father. He did organize an African fleet, which would have been useful, in case the grain-supply from Alexandria were delayed.

He jestingly named Carthage Alexandria Commodiana Togata, after entitling the African fleet Commodiana Herculea.

He made certain additions to the Colossus by way of ornamentation, all of which were later taken off,

and he also removed its head, which was a likeness of Nero, and replaced it by a likeness of himself, writing on the pedestal an inscription in his usual style, not omitting the titles Gladiatorius and Effeminatus.

And yet Severus, a stern emperor and a man whose character was well in keeping with his name, moved by hatred for the senate — or so it seems — exalted this creature to a place among the gods and granted him also a flamen, the "Herculaneus Commodianus," whom Commodus while still alive had planned to have for himself.

Three sisters survived him. Severus instituted the observance of his birthday.

Loud were the acclamations of the senate after the death of Commodus.

And that the senate's opinion of him may be known, I have quoted from Marius Maximus the acclamations themselves, and the content of the senate's decree:

"From him who was a foe of his fatherland let his honours be taken away; let the honours of the murderer be taken away; let the murderer be dragged in the dust. The foe of his fatherland, the murderer, the gladiator, in the charnel-house let him be mangled.

He is foe to the gods, slayer of the senate, foe to the gods, murderer of the senate, foe of the gods, foe of the gods, foe of the senate.

Cast the gladiator into the charnel-house. He who slew the senate, let him be dragged with the hook; he who slew the guiltless, let him be dragged with the hook — a foe, a murderer, verily, verily.

He who spared not his own blood, let him be dragged with the hook;

he who would have slain you, let him be dragged with the hook. You were in terror along with us, you were endangered along with us. That we may be safe, O Jupiter Best and Greatest, save for us Pertinax.

Long life to the guardian care of the praetorians! Long life to the praetorian cohorts! Long life to the armies of Rome! Long life to the loyalty of the senate!

Let the murderer be dragged in the dust.

We beseech you, O Sire, let the murderer be dragged in the dust. This we beseech you, let the murderer be dragged in the dust. Hearken, Caesar: to the lions with the informers! Hearken Caesar: to the lions with Speratus!

Long life to the victory of the Roman people! Long life to the soldiers' guardian care! Long life to the guardian care of the praetorians! Long life to the praetorian cohorts!

On all sides are statues of the foe, on all side are statues of the murderer, on all sides are statues of the gladiator. The statues of the murderer and gladiator, let them be cast down.

The slayer of citizens, let him be dragged in the dust. The murderer of citizens, let him be dragged in the dust. Let the statues of the gladiator be overthrown.

While you are safe, we too are safe and untroubled, verily, verily, if in very truth, then with honour, if in very truth, then with freedom.

Now at last we are secure; let informers tremble. That we may be secure, let the informers tremble. That we may be safe, cast informers out of the senate, the club for informers! While you are safe, to the lions with informers!

While you are ruler, the club for informers!

Let the memory of the murderer and the gladiator be utterly wiped away. Let the statues of the murderer and the gladiator be overthrown. Let the memory of the foul gladiator be utterly wiped away. Cast the gladiator into the charnel-house.

Hearken, Caesar: let the slayer be dragged with the hook. In the manner of our fathers let the slayer of the senate be dragged with the hook. More savage than Domitian, more foul than Nero. As he did unto others, let it be done unto him. Let the remembrance of the guiltless be preserved. Restore the honours of the guiltless, we beseech you. Let the body of the murderer be dragged with the hook,

let the body of the gladiator be dragged with the hook, let the body of the gladiator be cast into the charnel-house. Call for our vote, call for our vote: with one accord we reply, let him be dragged with the hook.

He who slew all men, let him be dragged with the hook. He who slew young and old, let him be dragged with the hook. He who slew man and woman, let him be dragged with the hook. He who spared not his own blood, let him be dragged with the hook.

He who plundered temples, let him be dragged with the hook. He who set aside the testaments of the dead, let him be dragged with the hook. He who plundered the living, let him be dragged with the hook. We have been slaves to slaves.

He who demanded a price for the life of a man, let him be dragged with the hook. He who demanded a price for a life and kept not his promise, let him be dragged with the hook. He who sold the senate, let him be dragged with the hook. He who took from sons their patrimony, let him be dragged with the hook.

Spies and informers, cast them out of the senate. Suborners of slaves, cast them out of the senate. You, too, were in terror along with us; you know all, you know both the good and the evil.

You know all that we were forced to purchase; all we have feared for your sake. Happy are we, now that you are the emperor in truth. Put it to the vote concerning the murderer, put it to the vote, put the question. We ask your presence.

The guiltless are yet unburied; let the body of the murderer be dragged in the dust. The murderer dug up the buried; let the body of the murderer be dragged in the dust."

The body of Commodus was buried during the night, after Livius Laurensis, the steward of the imperial estate, had surrendered it at the bidding of Pertinax to Fabius Cilo, the consul elect.

At this the senate cried out:

"With whose authority have they buried him? The buried murderer, let him be dug up, let him be dragged in the dust." Cincius Severus said: "Wrongfully has he been buried. And I speak as pontifex, so speaks the college of the pontifices.

And now, having recounted what is joyful, I shall proceed to what is needful: I give it as my opinion that the statues should be overthrown which this man, who lived but for the destruction of his fellow-citizens and for his own shame, forced us to decree in his honour;

wherever they are, they should be cast down. His name, moreover, should be erased from all public and private records, and the months should be once more called by the names whereby they were called when this scourge first fell upon the state."

Pertinax himself was born in the Apennines on an estate which belonged to his mother. The hour he was born a black horse climbed to the roof, and after remaining there for a short time, fell to the ground and died.

Disturbed by this occurrence, his father went to a Chaldean, and he prophesied future greatness for the boy, saying that he himself had lost his child.

As a boy, Pertinax was educated in the rudiments of literature and in arithmetic and was also put under the care of a Greek teacher of grammar and, later, of Sulpicius Apollinaris; after receiving instruction from this man, Pertinax himself took up the teaching of grammar.

But when he found little profit in this profession, with the aid of Lollianus Avitus, a former consul and his father's patron, he sought an appointment to a command in the ranks.

Soon afterwards, in the reign of Titus Aurelius, he set out for Syria as prefect of a cohort, and there, because he had used the imperial post without official letters of recommendation, he was forced by the governor of Syria to make his way from Antioch to his station on foot.

Winning promotion because of the energy he showed in the Parthian war, he was transferred to Britain and there retained.

Later he led a squadron in Moesia, and after that he supervised the distribution of grants to the poor on the Aemilian Way.

Next, he commanded the German fleet. His mother followed him all the way to Germany, and there she died, and her tomb is said to be still standing there.

From this command he was transferred to Dacia at a salary of two hundred thousand sesterces, but through the machinations of certain persons he came to be distrusted by Marcus and was removed from this post; afterwards, however, through the influence of Claudius Pompeianus, the son-in‑law of Marcus, he was detailed to the command of detachments on the plea that he would become Pompeianus' aide.

Meeting with approval in this position, he was enrolled in the senate.

Later, when he had won success in war for the second time, the plot which had been made against him was revealed, and Marcus, in order to remedy the wrong he had done him, raised him to the rank of praetor and put him in command of the First Legion. Whereupon Pertinax straightway rescued Raetia and Noricum from the enemy.

Because of his conspicuous prowess in this campaign he was appointed, on the recommendation of Marcus, to the consulship.

Marcus' speech has been preserved in the works of Marius Maximus; it contains a eulogy of him and relates, moreover, everything that he did and suffered.

And besides this speech, which it would take too much space to incorporate in this work, Marcus praised Pertinax frequently, both in the assemblies of soldiers and in the senate, and publicly expressed regret that he was a senator and therefore could not be made prefect of the guard.

After Cassius' revolt had been suppressed, Pertinax set out from Syria to protect the bank of the Danube,

and presently he was appointed to govern both the Moesias and, soon thereafter, Dacia. And by reason of his success in these provinces, he won the appointment to Syria.

Up to the time of his administration of Syria, Pertinax preserved his honesty, but after the death of Marcus he became desirous of wealth, and was in consequence assailed by popular gibes.

It was not until after he had governed four consular provinces and had become a rich man that he entered the Roman senate-chamber, which, during all his career as senator, he had never before seen, for during his term as consul he had been absent from Rome.

Immediately after this, he received orders from Perennis to retire to his father's farm in Liguria, where his father had kept a cloth-maker's shop.

On coming to Liguria, however, he bought up a great number of farms, and added countless buildings to his father's shop, which he still kept in its original form; and there he stayed for three years carrying on the business through his slaves.

After Perennis had been put to death, Commodus made amends to Pertinax, and in a letter asked him to set out for Britain.

After his arrival there he kept the soldiers from any revolt, for they wished to set up some other man as emperor, preferably Pertinax himself.

And now Pertinax acquired an evil character for enviousness, for he was said to have laid before Commodus the charge that Antistius Burrus and Arrius Antoninus were aspiring to the throne.

And certainly he did suppress a mutiny against himself in Britain, but in so doing he came into great danger; for in a mutiny of a legion he was almost killed, and indeed was left among the slain.

This mutiny Pertinax punished very severely.

Later on, however, he petitioned to be excused from his governorship, saying that the legions were hostile to him because he had been strict in his discipline.

After he had been relieved of his post, he was put in charge of the grants to the poor. Next he was made proconsul of Africa.

During this proconsulship, it is said, he suppressed many rebellions by the aid of prophetic verses which issued from the temple of Caelestis. Next he was made prefect of the city,

and in this office, as successor to Fuscianus, a very stern man, Pertinax was exceedingly gentle and considerate, and he proved very pleasing to Commodus himself, for he was . . . when Pertinax was made consul for the second time.

And while in this position, Pertinax did not avoid complicity in the murder of Commodus, when a share in this plot was offered him by the other conspirators.

After Commodus was slain, Laetus, the prefect of the guard, and Eclectus, the chamberlain, came to Pertinax and reassured him, and then led him to the camp.

There he harangued the soldiers, promised a donative, and said that the imperial power had been thrust upon him by Laetus and Eclectus.

It was pretended, moreover, that Commodus had died a natural death, chiefly because the soldiers feared that their loyalty was merely being tested.

Finally, and at first by only a few, Pertinax was hailed as emperor. He was made emperor on the day before the Kalends of January, being then more than sixty years old.

During the night he came from the camp to the senate, but, when he ordered the opening of the hall of the senate-house and the attendant could not be found, he seated himself in the Temple of Concord.

And when Claudius Pompeianus, Marcus' son-in‑law, came to him and bemoaned the death of Commodus, Pertinax urged him to take the throne; Claudius, however, seeing that Pertinax was already invested with the imperial power, refused.

Without further delay, therefore, all the magistrates, in company with the consul, came to the senate-house, and Pertinax, who had come in by night, was saluted as emperor.

Pertinax, on his part, after his own praises had been recited by the consuls and Commodus had been execrated in the outcries of the senate, returned thanks to the senate in general, and in particular to Laetus, the prefect of the guard, through whose instrumentality Commodus had been slain and he himself declared emperor.

When Pertinax had returned thanks to Laetus, however, Falco, the consul, said: "We may know what sort of an emperor you will be from this, that we see behind you Laetus and Marcia, the instruments of Commodus' crimes".

To him Pertinax replied: "You are young, Consul, and do not know the necessity of obedience. They obeyed Commodus, but against their will, and as soon as they had an opportunity, they showed what had always been their desire."

On the same day that he was entitled Augustus, at the very hour at which he was paying his vows on the Capitolium, Flavia Titiana, his wife, was also given the name of Augusta.

Of all the emperors he was the first to receive the title of Father of his Country on the day when he was named Augustus.

And at the same time he received the proconsular power and the right of making four proposals to the senate — a combination which Pertinax regarded as an omen.

And so Pertinax repaired to the Palace, which was vacant at that time, for Commodus had been slain in the Vectilian Villa. And on the first day of his reign, when the tribune asked for the watchword, he gave "let us be soldiers," as if reproving the former reign for its inactivity. As a matter of fact, he had really used this same watchword before in all his commands.

But the soldiers would not tolerate a reproof and straightway began making plans for changing the emperor.

On this same day also he invited the magistrates and the chief men of the senate to a banquet, a practice which Commodus had discontinued.

But, indeed, on the day after the Kalends of January, when the statues of Commodus were overthrown, the soldiers groaned aloud, for he gave this same watchword for the second time, and besides they dreaded service under an emperor advanced in years.

Finally on the third of the month, just as the vows were being assumed, the soldiers tried to lead Triarius Maternus Lascivius, a senator of distinction, to the camp, in order to invest him with the sovereignty of the Roman Empire.

He, however, fled from them quite naked and came to Pertinax in the Palace and presently departed from the city.

Induced by fear, Pertinax ratified all the concessions which Commodus had made to the soldiers and veterans.

He declared, also, that he had received from the senate the sovereignty which, in fact, he had already assumed on his own responsibility.

He abolished trials for treason absolutely and bound himself thereto by an oath, he recalled those who had been exiled on the charge of treason, and he re-established the good name of those who had been slain.

The senate granted his son the name of Caesar, but Pertinax not only refused to allow the name Augusta to be conferred on his wife but also, in the case of his son, said: "Only when he earns it".

And since Commodus had obscured the significance of the praetorian rank by countless appointments thereto, Pertinax, after securing the passage of a decree of the senate, issued an order that those who had secured the rank of praetor not by actual service, but by appointment, should be ranked below those who had been praetors in reality.

But by this act also he brought on himself the bitter enmity of many men.

He gave orders for the taking of a new census. He gave orders, too, that men convicted of lodging false accusations should be punished with severity, exercising, nevertheless, greater moderation than former emperors, and at the same time ordaining a separate punishment for each rank in case any of its members should be convicted for this offence.

He enacted a law, moreover, that an old will should not become invalid before the new one was formally completed, fearing that some time the privy-purse might in this way succeed to an inheritance.

He declared that for his own part he would accept no legacy which came to him either through flattery or by reason of legal entanglements if thereby the rightful heirs and the near of kin should be robbed of their rights, and when the decree of the senate was passed, he added these words:

"It is better, O Conscript Fathers, to rule a state that is impoverished, than to attain to a great mass of wealth by paths of peril and dishonour".

He paid the donatives and largesses which Commodus had promised,

and provided with the greatest care for the grain-supply. And when the treasury was drained to such a degree that he was unable to put his hands on more than a million sesterces, as he himself admitted, he was forced, in violation of a previous promise, to exact certain revenues which Commodus had remitted.

And finally, when Lollianus Gentianus, a man of consular rank, brought him to task for breaking his promise, he excused himself on the ground that it was a case of necessity.

He held a sale of Commodus' belongings, even ordering the sale of all his youths and concubines, except those who had apparently been brought to the Palace by force.

Of those whom he ordered sold, however, many were soon brought back to his service and ministered to the pleasures of the old man, and under other emperors they even attained to the rank of senator.

Certain buffoons, also, who bore the shame of unmentionable names, he put up at auction and sold.

The moneys gained in this trafficking, which were immense, he used for a donative to the soldiers.

He also demanded from Commodus' freedmen the sums wherewith they had been enriched when Commodus held his sales.

In the sale of Commodus' goods the following articles were especially noteworthy: robes of silk foundation with gold embroidery of remarkable workmanship; tunics, mantles and coats; tunics made with long sleeves in the manner of the Dalmatians and fringed military cloaks; purple cloaks made for service in the camp.

Also Bardaean hooded cloaks, and a gladiator's toga and harness finished in gold and jewels;

also swords, such as those with which Hercules is represented, and the necklaces worn by gladiators, and vessels, some of pottery, some of gold, some of ivory, some of silver, and some of citrus wood.

Also cups in the shape of the phallus, made of these same materials; and Samnite pots for heating the resin and pitch used for depilating men and making their skins smooth.

And furthermore, carriages, the very latest masterpieces of the art, made with entwined and carven wheels and carefully planned seats that could be turned so as to avoid the sun at one moment, at another, face the breeze.

There were other carriages that measured the road, and showed the time; and still others designed for the indulgence of his vices.

Pertinax restored to their masters, moreover, all slaves who had come from private homes to the Palace.

He reduced the imperial banquets from something absolutely unlimited to a fixed standard, and, indeed, cut down all expenses from what they had been under Commodus.

And from the example set by the emperor, who lived rather simply, there resulted a general economy and a consequent reduction in the cost of living;

for by eliminating the unessentials he reduced the upkeep of the court to half the usual amount.

He established rewards for the soldiers, paid the debt which he had contracted at the beginning of his reign, and restored the treasury to its normal condition.

He set aside a fixed sum for public buildings, furnished funds for repairing the highways, and paid the arrears in the salaries of very many men. Finally, he made the privy-purse capable of sustaining all the demands made upon it,

and with rigorous honesty he even assumed the responsibility for nine years' arrears of money for the poor which was owed through a statute of Trajan's.

Before he was made emperor he was not free from the suspicion of greed, for he had extended his own holdings at Vada Sabatia by foreclosing mortgages;

indeed, in a line quoted from Lucilius he was called a land-shark.

Many men, moreover, have set down in writing that in those provinces which he ruled as proconsul he conducted himself in a grasping manner; for he sold, they say, both exemptions from service and military appointments.

And lastly, although his father's estate was very small, and no legacy was left him, he suddenly became rich.

As a matter of fact, however, he restored to everyone the property of which Commodus had despoiled him, but not without compensation.

He always attended the stated meetings of the senate and always made some proposal. To those who came to greet him or who accosted him he was always courteous.

He absolved a number of men whose slaves had assailed them with false charges, and punished severely those who brought the accusation, crucifying all such slaves; and he also rehabilitated the memory of some who had died.

A plot was attempted against him by Falco the consul, who, being eager to rule, made complaint in the senate.

He, in fact, was believed by the senate, when a certain slave, on the ground that he was the son of Fabia and . . . of the household of Ceionius Commodus, laid a baseless claim to the residence on the Palatine and, on being recognised, was sentenced to be soundly flogged and returned to his master.

In the punishment of this man those who hated Pertinax are said to have found an opportunity for an outbreak.

Nevertheless, Pertinax spared Falco, and furthermore asked the senate to pardon him.

In the end Falco lived out his life in security and in possession of his property, and at his death, his son succeeded to the inheritance.

Many men, however, claimed that Falco was unaware that men were planning to make him emperor,

and others said that slaves who had falsified his accounts assailed him with trumped-up charges.

However, a conspiracy was organized against Pertinax by Laetus, the prefect of the guard, and sundry others who were displeased by his integrity.

Laetus regretted that he had made Pertinax emperor, because Pertinax used to rebuke him as a stupid babbler of various secrets. It seemed to the soldiers, moreover, a very cruel measure, that in the matter of Falco he had had many of their comrades put to death on the testimony of a single slave.

And so three hundred soldiers, formed into a wedge, marched under arms from the camp to the imperial residence.

On that day, it was said, no heart had been found in the victim when Pertinax performed a sacrifice, and when he tried to avert this evil omen, he was unable to discover the upper portion of the liver. And so on that day the great body of the soldiers remained in the camp.

Some, indeed, had come forth from the camp in order to act as escort to the emperor, but Pertinax, because of the unfavourable sacrifice, postponed for that day a projected visit to the Athenaeum, where he had planned to hear a poet, and thereupon the escort began to return to the camp.

But just at that moment the band of troops mentioned above arrived at the Palace, and neither could they be prevented from entering nor could their entrance be announced to the Emperor.

In fact, the palace-attendants hated Pertinax with so bitter a hatred that they even urged on the soldiers to do the deed.

The troops arrived just as Pertinax was inspecting the court-slaves, and, passing through the portico of the Palace, they advanced as far as the spot called Sicilia and the Banqueting-Hall of Jupiter.

As soon as he learned of their approach, Pertinax sent Laetus, the prefect of the guard, to meet them; but he, avoiding the soldiers, passed out through the portico and betook himself home with his face hidden from sight.

After they had burst into the inner portion of the Palace, however, Pertinax advanced to meet them and sought to appease them with a long and serious speech.

In spite of this, one Tausius, a Tungrian, after haranguing the soldiers into a state of fury and fear, hurled his spear at Pertinax' breast.

And he, after a prayer to Jupiter the Avenger, veiled his head with his toga and was stabbed by the rest.

Eclectus also, after stabbing two of his assailants, died with him, and the other court-chamberlains

(his own chamberlains, as soon as he had been made emperor, Pertinax had given to his emancipated children) fled away in all directions.

Many, it is true, say that the soldiers even burst into his bedroom, and there, standing about his bed, slew him as he tried to flee.

He was a stately old man, with a long beard and hair brushed back. His figure was somewhat corpulent, with somewhat prominent abdomen, but his bearing was regal. He was a man of mediocre ability in speaking, and suave rather than kindly, nor was he ever considered ingenuous.

Though friendly enough in speech, when it came to deeds, he was ungenerous and almost mean — so mean, in fact, that before he was made emperor he used to serve at his banquets lettuce and the edible thistle in half portions.

And unless someone made him a present of food, he would serve nine pounds of meat in three courses, no matter how many friends were present;

if anyone presented him with an additional amount, moreover, he would put off using it until the next day, and would then invite a great number of guests.

Even after he had become emperor, if he had no guests he would dine in the same style.

And whenever he in turn wished to send his friends something from his table, he would send a few scraps or a piece of tripe, or occasionally the legs of a fowl. But he never ate pheasants at his own banquets or sent them to others.

And when he dined without guests, he would invite his wife and Valerianus, who had been a teacher together with him, in order that he might have literary conversation.

He removed none of those whom Commodus had put in charge of affairs, preferring to wait until the anniversary of the founding of the city, which he wished to make the official beginning of his reign; and thus it came about, it is said, that the servants of Commodus plotted to slay him in his bath.

The imperial power and all the appurtenances thereof he abhorred, and he always made it quite evident that they were distasteful to him. In short, he did not wish to seem other than he really was.

In the senate-house he was most punctilious, doing reverence to the senate when it expressed its good will and conversing with all the senators as though still prefect of the city.

He even wished to resign the throne and retire to private life,

and was unwilling to have his children reared in the Palace.

On the other hand, he was so stingy and eager for money that even after he became emperor he carried on a business at Vada Sabatia through agents, just as he had done as a private citizen.

And despite his efforts, he was not greatly beloved; certainly, all who talked freely together spoke ill of Pertinax, calling him the smooth-tongued, that is, a man who speaks affably and acts meanly.

In truth, his fellow-townsmen, who had flocked to him after his accession, and had obtained nothing from him, gave him this name. In his lust for gain, he accepted presents with eagerness.

He was survived by a son and a daughter, and by his wife, the daughter of the Flavius Sulpicianus whom he made prefect of the city in his own place.

He was not in the least concerned about his wife's fidelity, even though she carried on an amour quite openly with a man who sang to the lyre. He himself, it is said, caused great scandal by an amour with Cornificia.

The freedmen attached to the court he kept within bounds with a strong hand, and in this way also he brought upon himself a bitter hatred.

The warnings of his death were these: three days before he was killed he himself, on looking into a pool, seemed to behold a man attacking him with a sword.

And on the day he was killed, they say, the pupils of his eyes, as well as the little pictures which they reflect, were invisible to those who looked into them.

And when he was performing sacrifices to the Lares the living coals died out, though they are wont to flame up. Furthermore, as we related above, the heart and upper portion of the liver could not be found in the victims. And on the day before he died, stars of great brilliancy were seen near the sun in the day-time.

He was responsible himself, it is said, for an omen about his successor, Julianus. For when Didius Julianus presented a nephew of his, to whom he was betrothing his daughter, the Emperor exhorted the young man to show deference to his uncle, and added: "Honour my colleague and successor."

For Julianus had previously been his colleague in the consulship and had succeeded him in his proconsular command.

The soldiers and court-retainers regarded him with hatred, but the people felt great indignation at his death, since it had seemed that all the ancient customs might be restored through his efforts.

His head, fixed on a pole, was carried through the city to the camp by the soldiers who killed him.

His remains, including his head, which was recovered, were laid in the tomb of his wife's grandfather.

And Julianus, his successor, buried his body with all honour, after he had found it in the Palace.

At no time, however, did he make any public mention of Pertinax either before the people or in the presence of the senate, but when he, too, was deserted by the soldiers Pertinax was raised to the rank of the gods by the senate and the people.

In the reign of Severus, moreover, after Pertinax had received the full official approval of the senate, an honorary funeral, of the kind that would be accorded to a censor, was held for him, and Severus himself honoured him with a funeral eulogy.

Severus, furthermore, out of respect for so good a ruler, accepted from the senate the name Pertinax.

Pertinax' son was made his father's priest,

and the Marcian brotherhood, who performed sacrifices to the Deified Marcus, were called Helviani in honour of Helvius Pertinax.

There were added, also, circus-games and a celebration to commemorate the anniversary of his accession, but these were afterwards abolished by Severus. The birthday-games decreed for him, however, are still observed.

He was born on the Kalends of August in the consulship of Verus and Ambibulus, and was killed on the fifth day before the Kalends of April in the consulship of Falco and Clarus. He lived sixty years, seven months and twenty-six days,

and reigned for two months and twenty-five days. He gave the people a largess of one hundred denarii apiece, and promised twelve thousand sesterces to each soldier of the guard, though he gave only six thousand. The sum promised to the armies he did not give for the reason that death forestalled him.

A letter which Marius Maximus included in his life of Pertinax shows that he shrank from taking the imperial power, but this letter, on account of its great length, I have not thought best to insert.