fice of an obnoxious fugitive.* "Wherever you are," said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, "remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror.”+ CHAPTER IV.—THE CRUELTY, FOLLIES, AND MURDER OF COMMODUS. -ELECTION OF PERTINAX.-HIS ATTEMPTS TO REFORM THE STATE.HIS ASSASSINATION BY THE PRÆTORIAN GUARDS. THE mildness of Marcus, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics was unable to eradicate, formed, at the same time, the most amiable, and the only defective, part of his character. His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart. Artful men, who study the passions of princes, and conceal their own, approached his person in the disguise of philosophic sanctity, and acquired riches and honours by affecting to despise them.§ His excessive indulgence to his brother, his wife, and his son, exceeded the bounds of private virtue, and became a public injury, by the example and consequences of their vices. Faustina, the daughter of Pius, and the wife of Marcus, has been as much celebrated for her gallantries as for her beauty. The grave simplicity of the philosopher was ill calculated to engage her wanton levity, or to fix that unbounded passion for variety, which often discovered personal merit in the meanest of mankind.** The Cupid of the ancients was, in general, a very sensual deity; and the * Under Tiberius, a Roman knight attempted to fly to the Parthians. He was stopped in the straits of Sicily; but so little danger did there appear in the example, that the most jealous of tyrants disdained to punish it. Tacit. Annal. 6, 14. + Cicero ad Familiares, 4, 7. [The philosophy of the Stoics contributed rather to increase this mildness, by the indifference to external accidents, the severity of self-judgment, and the equitable appreciation of others, which it inculcated. When temperament and principles coalesce, they work wonders.—WENCK.] § See the complaints of Avidius Cassius, Hist. August. p. 45. These are, it is true, the complaints of faction; but even faction exaggerates, rather than invents. [This refers to L. Verus, his brother by adoption, and colleague in the government. Marcus had no other brother.-WENCK.] ** Faustinam satis constat apud Cajetam, conditiones sibi et nauticas et gladiatorias, elegisse. Hist. August. p. 30. Lampridius explains the sort of merit which Faustina chose, and the conditions which she exacted. Hist. August. p. 102. * amours of an empress, as they exact on her side the plainest advances, are seldom susceptible of much sentimental delicacy. Marcus was the only man in the empire who seemed ignorant or insensible of the irregularities of Faustina; which, according to the prejudices of every age, reflected some disgrace on the injured husband. He promoted several of her lovers to posts of honour and profit, and during a connexion of thirty years, invariably gave her proofs of the most tender confidence, and of a respect which ended not with her life. In his Meditations, he thanks the gods, who had bestowed on him a wife, so faithful, so gentle, and of such a wonderful simplicity of manners. The obsequious senate, at his earnest request, declared her a goddess. She was represented, in her temples, with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Ceres; and it was decreed that, on the day of their nuptials, the youth of either sex should pay their VOWS before the altar of their chaste patroness. The monstrous vices of the son have cast a shade on the purity of the father's virtues. It has been objected to Marcus, that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy; and that he chose a successor in his own family, rather than in the republic. Nothing, however, was neglected by the anxious father, and by the men of virtue and learning whom he summoned to his assistance, to expand the narrow mind of young Commodus, to correct his growing vices, and to render him worthy of the throne, for which he was designed. But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous. The distasteful lesson of a grave philosopher was, in a moment, obliterated by the whisper of a profligate favourite; and Marcus himself blasted the fruits of this laboured education, by admitting his son, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, to a full participation of the imperial power. He lived but four years afterwards; but he lived long enough to repent a * Hist. August. p. 34. + Meditat. 1. 1. The world has laughed at the credulity of Marcus; but Madam Dacier assures us (and we may credit a lady), that the husband will always be deceived, if the wife condescends to dissemble. Dion Cassius, 1. 71, p. 1195. Hist. August. p. 33. Commentaire de Spanheim sur les Cæsars de Julien, p. 289. The deification of Faustina is the only defect which Julian's criticism is able to discover in the all-accomplished character of Marcus. rash measure, which raised the impetuous youth above the restraint of reason and authority.* Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society, are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom *[This elevation did not raise Commodus (L. Aurel. Commodus Antoninus) "above the restraint of reason and authority." The last expression must be qualified by many considerations to give it a proper meaning. Commodus was admitted to the tribunitian power, received the title of imperator, and at last that of Augustus ("Augustus junior," is found on medals); but he remained dependent on his father, both as son and as the younger emperor. No proof can be adduced that M. Aurelius ever repented the measure, which he, without doubt, adopted deliberately, aware that his sinking health forbade him to hope for a much longer term of life, and desirous, before its close, of training his son, under his own inspection, to the business of government. The confused narrative of Lampridius, who wrote in the time of Diocletian, and for which he confesses that he had no better authority than a fertur or dicitur (in M. Aurel. c. 27, 28), says only, that M. Aurelius, before his death, foresaw and deplored his son's wicked administration. Dion, in Xiphilia (p. 1203), conjectures the same. Herodian (lib. 1, c. 3, 4) relates, that before his decease, Aurelius was anxious, that his son should not depart from the course in which he had been trained, and that, freed in his extreme youth from all restraint, he might resist the temptations by which absolute power would surround him. With this view, therefore, and calling to mind the numerous instances in which youthful sovereigns had degenerated, he earnestly recommended him to the watchful care of his ministers and generals. From the whole narrative, from the address of the dying emperor, and from the conduct of Commodus himself, who had accompanied his father to the German war, and whose perverse nature did not at once break loose, after his parent's death, it may be inferred, that M. Aurelius entertained no unfavourable opinion of his son, and had no reason to be dissatisfied with his general deportment. In Julian's Cæsar's (p. 30. Edit. Heusinger) Marcus, when reproached for having left the empire in the hands of so depraved a youth, replied, that he had not foreseen his son's vices, which had never been displayed till he became sole emperor. Julian could no doubt, refer to better histories of that period than are now extant. Herodian (lib. 1, c. 2) says, that he commenced his history from the death of M. Aurelius, because his government had been described by many excellent writers. These cannot have been such as Capitolinus.-WENCK.] supplied by those of humanity. The ardour of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood; but these motives will not account for the unprovoked cruelties of Commodus, who had nothing to wish, and everything to enjoy. The beloved son of Marcus succeeded to his father, amidst the acclamations of the senate and armies,* and when he ascended the throne, the happy youth saw round him neither competitor to remove, nor enemies to punish. In this calm elevated station, it was surely natural, that he should prefer the love of mankind to their detestation, the mild glories of his five predecessors, to the ignominious fate of Nero and Domitian. Yet Čommodus was not, as he has been represented, a tiger born with an insatiate thirst of human blood, and capable, from his infancy, of the most inhuman actions.† Nature had formed him of a weak, rather than a wicked disposition. His simplicity and timidity rendered him the slave of his attendants, who gradually corrupted his mind. His cruelty, which at first obeyed the dictates of others, degenerated into habit, and at length became the ruling passion of his soul.‡ Upon the death of his father, Commodus found himself embarrassed with the command of a great army, and the conduct of a difficult war against the Quadi and Marcomanni.§ The servile and profligate youths whom Marcus * Commodus was the first Porphyrogenitus (born since his father's accession to the throne). By a new strain of flattery, the Egyptian medals date by the years of his life, as if they were synonymous to those of his reign. Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. 2, p. 752. + Hist. August. p. 46. [This is the language of Lampridius (in Commod. c. 1,) who affirms that Commodus was a monster from his childhood. Writers of this stamp generally adopt this tone. According to them, tyrants and virtuous rulers are all born so, and are all good or bad in one and the same way.-WENCK.] Dion. Cassius, 1. 72, p. 1203. § According to Tertullian (Apolog. c. 25,) he died at Sirmium. But the situation of Vindobona, or Vienna, where both the Victors place his death, is better adapted to the operations of the war against the Marcomanni and Quadi. [The Quadi occupied the country now called Moravia; the Marcomanni first dwelt on the banks of the Rhine and the Mein; then in the time of Augustus drove the Boii from Bohemia to settle in Boio-aria, now Bavaria. The Marcomanni, in VOL. I. I had banished,* soon regained their station and influence about the new emperor. They exaggerated the hardships and dangers of a campaign in the wild countries beyond the Danube; and they assured the indolent prince, that the terror of his name, and the arms of his lieutenants, would be sufficient to complete the conquest of the dismayed barbarians, or to impose such conditions as were more advantageous than any conquest. By a dexterous application to his sensual appetites, they compared the tranquillity, the splendour, the refined pleasures, of Rome, with the tumult of a Pannonian camp, which afforded neither leisure nor materials for luxury. Commodus listened to the pleasing advice; but whilst he hesitated between his own inclination, and the awe which he still retained for his father's counsellors, the summer insensibly elapsed, and his triumphal entry into the capital was deferred till the autumn. His graceful person, popular address, and imagined virtues, attracted the public favour; the honourable peace which he had recently granted to the barbarians, diffused a universal joy;§ his impatience to revisit Rome was fondly ascribed to the love of his country; and his dissolute course of amusements was faintly condemned in a prince of nineteen years of age. During the three first years of his reign, the forms, and even the spirit, of the old administration were maintained by those faithful counsellors to whom Marcus had recommended his son, and for whose wisdom and integrity Commodus still entertained a reluctant esteem. The young prince and his profligate favourites revelled in all the license of sovereign power; but his hands were yet unstained with blood, and he had even displayed a generosity of sentiment, which might perhaps have ripened into solid virtue. A fatal incident decided his fluctuating character. their turn, were expelled from Bohemia by the Sarmati or Sclavonians, by whose descendants it is now inhabited. See D'Anville, Geog. Anc. tom. i. p. 131.-GUIZOT.] * [This is Gibbon's conjecture. I know no proof on which it rests.-WENCK.] [It is a fair inference from the character of the father, the best of all authorities, that he banished from his court the attendants, who, as just before stated, had corrupted his son's mind.-ED.] Herod. 1. 1, p. 12. Herod. 1. 1, p. 16. § This universal joy is well described (from the medals as well as historians) by Mr. Wotton, Hist. of Rome, p. 192, 193. Manilius, the confidential secretary of Avidius Cassius, was discovered after he had lain |