CHAPTER IX

THE ANTONINES

I.

ANTONINUS PIUS

HADRIAN’S strength was born of the mingling in him of old-Italian and Iberian and perhaps African-Semitic blood; the ocean, the plain, now luxuriant now sun-stricken, and the sluggish river of the south-western edge of the empire left their mark on his family and his childhood. Trajan had set him in the currents of the provincial movement, and like Trajan he brought with him a nature full of contrasts: at once lively and majestic, with the play of sentiment and the pose of greatness, despising the body and full of the discipline and gravity of the soul and the spirit, with a wide outlook, a power of organization, an unshaken will to master the world of earth and of heaven, a strange almost mystical impulse to a universal embracing unity. Thus he takes his place as one of the strongest in the line of the great Spaniards rather than of 'Roman' rulers: he stands nearer to the Alphonsos and Borgias, to Ignatius, Charles V or Philip II than to Augustus whom he affected to embody. Cold to dissemble, resolute in act, he had won Rome, the Empire’s centre, and from it he wandered over the whole world. He had defended it in arms at the four corners of civilization, in Britain, in Mauretania, in the South-East, on the Danube and the Black Sea. He had made the final cleavage between Orient and Occident and laid upon the West the task of defending European culture by the disciplined strength of the army and the unresting all-pervading activity of the officials, by drawing on the forces of the cities and country that made up the Empire; by ceaseless striving after a ‘culture’ full of life. His aim was to end barbarism, to keep the oriental world at arm's length and to strive to maintain the Greek way of life which was the bond between Rome and its empire. To that end he made of Athens a second focus of the empire, its new centre for things of the mind. His appeal, the strength and resources that he brought to the task seemed to promise success. His collapse was of evil augury. The dark days to come could only be averted by like efforts and self-sacrifice, which alone could enable the Empire to revolve round Eternal Rome and not only round its ever-active Emperor.

THE CHARACTER OF PIUS

The man whom Hadrian adopted after the sudden death of L. Aelius Caesar was cast in a different mould. T. Aelius Antoninus presented the sharpest contrast to Hadrian, in his character and historical effect. His family, which originated at Nemausus (Nimes) in Gaul, had during the last two generations risen to distinction at Rome. Though the history of the Province in his reign showed that he did not forget whence his race had sprung—or perhaps it was Nemausus that was careful not to forget—he may never have seen his home. All he knew at first was the neighborhood of Rome, the Latin and south Etruscan countryside. After his father’s death he was brought up in the house of his paternal grandfather Aurelius and then in that of his maternal grandfather Arrius Antoninus, who was still alive in AD 106. The property inherited from these two families made him one of the richest men of Rome and brought him estates not only in Latium and south Etruria near Lorium but farther afield in Etruria, in Umbria and Picenum and, perhaps later, in Campania. This fact was decisive for his thinking and acting. In love with the quiet and the tasks offered by his country estates he could forgo life in Rome and had no desire to travel over the world. He was happy to live in Lorium or Alsium, Lanuvium or Tusculum, Centumcellae or Signia, Baiae or Naples, and even when he became Emperor he did not care to leave Italy but left others to take charge of wars and administration in the empire. With no taste for splendor or parade, thrifty and prudential, the careful steward of his own possessions, he rebuked his wife, on becoming co-regent—“Have you not wit to see that now we have reached empire we have lost what we had before?” But he, too, said nothing is meaner, indeed more heartless, than to nibble at the property of the State without adding to it by one's own efforts3.' He gave lavishly of his own property but cut down the salary of the lyric poet Mesomedes. Content with little, with small care for personal comfort, laborious, with a simple goodness, cheerful with an unaffected dignity, caring for integrity and piety, careful to save men and not to destroy them, bearing unjust censure without reply, calmly above calumny, he tested men by their character and their acts without distrust, without malice or ready censure. The loyal master of his servants, in honor exigent to fulfill his devoir, he strove from his chosen retreat to fashion the world so far as his duty claimed it of him.

But even there he did not as an autocrat or even with strong initiative rely upon his own powers, sure instinct and sound judgment. Never, so we are expressly told, did he allow any act of State to have effect until he had consulted his 'Friends' and had been guided by their views. This makes it hard to reach a decisive verdict on his personal share in the fortune of the Empire. Whether even his speeches were of his own composing was, it seems, a topic for jesting doubts; there are stories of pert sayings which he did not resent. This is proof of his kindliness to all the world, of his easy good nature towards his kindred and friends, with whom he did not cease, when emperor, to go fishing, hunting, making holiday for the vintage. He loved the simple pleasures of a simple citizen, admired actors, gave honor and good pay to rhetoricians, philosophers and grammatici because their labors were useful, though he had no touch of Hadrian’s zeal to conquer the world of ideas, of knowledge and of culture. When the emotional Marcus Aurelius broke down in tears at the death of his teacher, and the palace servants would check his abandonment to grief, Antoninus found a word of sensible human comfort: “Permittite illi ut homo sit; neque enim philosophia vel imperium tollit adfectus”; nor did he lack a witty mocking thrust to bring to heel the haughty tutor of the young prince. In such anecdotes is mirrored the character that can be detected as clearly in his acts of State, the humana civilitas, the aristocratic detachment of the rich Roman—no trace of Hadrian’s daemonic restlessness.

His official career was not less significant of his character. After helping to manage the family property he won the name of a lavish quaestor and a magnificent praetor. In his thirty-third year (AD 120) he became consul along with Hadrian’s powerful friend Catilius Severus. Probably three years before, he married Annia Galeria Faustina whose brother, M. Annius Verus, was to be the father of the future Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whom at Hadrian’s wish he himself adopted. Through these connections he became the friend of Hadrian who advanced him thus early to high office. He was made one of the four consular iuridici who judged matters of inheritance, guardianship and fideicommissum, in the towns of Italy, a duty which, doubtless not against his will, he discharged in the regions where his estates lay. In AD 134-5 after the usual interval from his consulship he became, like his grandfather Arrius sixty years before, proconsul of Asia, where he emulated and it was said even surpassed, as no one else had done, that eminent administrator.

ANTONINUS' EARLY CAREER 

Thrust into the microcosm of Asia Minor with its competing jealousies and no less its new panhellenic movement, he may have felt the effect of its ferment of life, stirred and excited by the forceful directness of Hadrian and his way of mastery and governing. He may have yielded to its influence, as when he endured patiently the brusque inhospitality of the pompous rhetorician Polemo, or he may have chosen in quiet devotion to an ancient ideal to fulfill his duty aloof and unmoved. After Hadrian’s return from the Jewish War, Antoninus was made a member of his consilium not only on grounds of friendship and family connection, but because of his experience as jurist and administrator. But his horizon had been limited. He had not governed one of the Imperial border provinces, had never had to do with the army: his way had lain in lands that had long been at peace and in the care of the Senate rather than of the princeps. Of the problems presented by the Northern and Eastern Fronts he can hardly have known more than he could learn from the discussions at Hadrian’s court, in Rome, in Italy and in Asia Minor. He was no drastic imperialist like Trajan, nor was he even strongly drawn to Hadrian’s all-pervading and imaginative width of interest. He was, as has been seen, a strange compound of the petit bourgeois and the Italian landowner, without ambition, without elasticity of mind or the passion for greatness, without an instinct for movement, revolution or daemonic energy. He was a tenacious conservative.

More than that, he had been the closest witness of Hadrian’s tragic collapse. The sight of that unquiet strength drained away to death could not well move him to desert his own quietude, even though he was certainly among those who were gravely stirred when the Emperor, with darkened judgment, adopted Ceionius Commodus to be locum tenens for his young nephew Annius Verus, and marked him out for the succession. But his unambitious, unsuperstitious mind could not be stirred to trust signs and wonders that proclaimed, so ran the rumor, his divine summons to the throne. He did nothing to cross the will of Heaven. When Hadrian, in his mortal sickness, summoned, on 24 January 138, the most respected senators to the Palace and saw him come supporting the steps of his aged father-in-law, the senior consular, he was touched by this filial piety. But it was not this that decided Hadrian; he had already made his choice and now he announced it and carried it through in the face of the egotistical plans of Catilius Severus though he too was near enough akin to the boy Annius. He declared his intention to make Antoninus his son, but laid on him the duty of adopting, on his part, Annius, now nearly seventeen years old and the son of Aelius Caesar, a boy of about eight. Further, he urged him to betroth his daughter to Annius, which made it plain that he wished by every means to secure him the precedence for the succession over the young Aelius. He sought to make the way sure for the Spanish line till far in the future. But would Antoninus consent to play this role? His personality was known to Hadrian. He was not the 'best', but he was the richest man in Rome and all his wealth would come to the rich Annius, in whom the broken Emperor saw the man who would be optimus—Verissimus, as he named him at this time. Antoninus asked for time for reflection, whether in feigned modesty or from secret reluctance, like a second Tiberius. And then, by his consent to the double adoption and the betrothal, he saved the throne for the Spanish coterie. From 25 February 138—the day on which the legal formalities—were completed—he was co-regent as Imp. Titus Aelius Caesar Antoninus trib. pot. cos. His name expressed the tie with his adopted father Hadrian and his grandfather Antoninus, and he revealed how strongly his nature responded to this ideal, though the two figures of Hadrian and Antoninus were more and more to strive for mastery in him. It is significant that, down to the fourth century when Hadrian’s memory was dim, the 25th February was celebrated at Lorium as the birthday of the rule of all the Antonines.

The adoption found the usual response in the Empire in praise of his devotion as son and loyal colleague of his father. When Hadrian a few weeks later moved to Baiae, he stayed in Rome in charge of the government, though of his acts few traces are left. Then, as Tiberius had done, he hastened to his father’s deathbed. On 10 July 138 Hadrian’s death left him de facto sole ruler. He was nearly fifty-two, and still younger than Tiberius, and this stop-gap emperor retained his charge for longer than Trajan and Hadrian, longer even than Tiberius. But the patient Marcus Aurelius did not find twenty-three years too long to wait, for when Antoninus died on 7 March, 161 the son was no more than for and in the fullness of manhood.

The filial piety of the new ruler was quickly shown. His father’s body was brought from Puteoli to Rome and laid in its tomb beyond the Tiber. The State funeral and consecration, which bestowed on Antoninus the authority that went with the position of Divi filius, was decreed by the Senate which wished to annul Hadrian’s acta, only after he had expended himself in urgent pleading and in threats and had consented to the release of senators whom his predecessor had arrested. This was shrewd policy, and his zeal for pietas, the spring of man’s right conduct too towards gods, parents and dead alike, earned him the name of Pius, which he bore, amid the applause of the world, next after his title 'Augustus'.

TITULATURE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE 

From 139 onwards he added the title ‘pater patriae’,  which he had at first, like Hadrian, refused and then accepted earlier than his predecessor had done. His full name ‘Imperator Titus Aelius Caesar Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius Pater Patriae’ (138—9) acknowledged his adoptive father and his grandfather and, with ‘Imperator Caesar Augustus Pater Patriae’, Augustus the proto­type of Roman Imperial rule: he united their intrinsic properties and as Pius enriched them further. His victory over the Senate not only gave him the sanction of divine descent, but enabled him to fix the picture the world was to have of him and of his less worthy successors. Before two years had passed he set on his coins the short form ‘Antoninus Augustus Pius’, which thus detached him from his predecessor. Once only, in 150-1, when he dedicated the Temple of Divus Hadrianus, he, and the Senate with him, resumed the full form of his name and had it inscribed on coins for the following months.

One thing else is significant and of consequence because the principle was rigorously carried through. On the Imperial currency issued by the Emperor his consulships appear, as did those of Hadrian on his coins, but he went beyond him in assuming a fourth consulship, and at the same time he set himself above all other consulars, none of whom held the office more than twice. His son, Marcus Aurelius Caesar Augusti Pii filius, was an exception, attaining a third consulship in 161, when he was forty years old, together with his adoptive brother, L. Aurelius Verus, who at the age of about thirty became consul for the second time, a visible sign of his second place. In 143-4 and at times later Pius records his second acclamation as imperator, as Hadrian had done, though not on his coins, since 135. But at first on the coins he made as little use as his predecessor had done of the tribunicia potestas in counting the years of his reign. Then at the completion of his first decade there suddenly appears his tenth tribunicia potestas (from December 10, 146 to December 9, 147), and the series continues to the twenty-fourth tenure in 160-1, by which time the like tenures of Marcus Aurelius had reached fifteen.

In 139 he had given to Marcus the name of Caesar and made him consul designate. In the next year, as his colleague in the consulship, he betrothed him to his daughter, who on her marriage in 145 received the name of Augusta. On the birth of their first child in 146 Aurelius was granted the tribunicia potestas, to run from December 10, and proconsulare imperium without the city. Now Aurelius was recognized as Pius’ colleague in rule, and the hopes of Rome and the fortunes of the dynasty rested upon him. As Vespasian and Titus had counted their years together, so now it was made clear to all by the parallel office of Pius and Marcus that the regime had attained a stability hitherto unknown. What made this clearer was the steady though secondary advancement of L. Verus. After minor distinctions he attained the consulship at the age of twenty-four, and finally, at the end of 160, Rome witnessed an unparalleled instance of concord in the Imperial house when both the Emperor’s sons were appointed consuls together for the next year, Marcus for the third time, Verus for the second. Thus Verus’ position also in the State was marked out.

It is plain to see how far Pius went his own way. First he speaks of ‘aequitas’, ‘felicitas’ and ‘fides’ as the guiding principle of his rule: the Senate stressed the ideas of peace, the acceptance of the Pontificate, the care for the poor of Rome. It did not even now admit its defeat over the consecration of Hadrian, but aequitas offered a formula for agreement. In 139 the oppositions have disappeared and these ideas have been harmonized. Now that Pius has taken the title ‘pater patriae’ the Senate speaks of ‘good success’, of the Felicitas and Salus of the ruler, of the Libertas publica that leads to Security. The Emperor, too, cares for the poor as for Victory and Peace, but he dedicated the Clupeus virtutum to Hadrian and consecrated the temple of Divus Hadrianus in the Campus Martius, and a temple at Puteoli and established games in his honor, flamines and the Sodalitas Hadrianalis, almost as Tiberius had once done for Augustus. On the Senate’s coins the dead Emperor still finds hardly a mention. But a series that belongs to this time shows the representatives of the nationes, Africa, Alexandria, Armenia, Asia, Cappadocia, Dacia, Spain, Mauretania, Parthia, Phoenicia, Scythia, Sicily, Syria, and recalls the great proclamation of two years before which extolled Hadrian and his activity in all the provinces and on behalf of all their peoples. The Temple of Divus Hadrianus is to unite them all, a visible symbol of his achievement and of Roman pre-eminence in the world. But unsolved problems of foreign policy were posed by the dependency of Armenia, by Parthia, still in theory a dependency, and by Scythia. Was Phoenicia to be entirely separated from Syria?, did Alexandria seek even greater prominence ?

THE HOPES OF THE WORLD 

Thus the Emperor resumed ideas that had been Hadrian’s, and like his predecessor he remitted the whole aurum coronarium in Italy, the half of it in the provinces. But he and the Senate bethought them of his ancestors and honored the home of his father’s family in southern Gaul, and completed the buildings that Hadrian had begun in Rome, in Capua and elsewhere. The world set great hopes on him, and everywhere cities and private people began to honor him as their benefactor and set up statues to him and to his house. Ephesus, where he had resided as governor of Asia, declared that “by common consent of the whole world the most divine and pious Imperator Titus Aelius Antoninus had assumed the sovereignty given to him by his father and re­stored to health the whole race of mankind”. In the following years the chorus of laudation in the Empire swells in homage to the “best and greatest”, the “best and most reverend”, the “most god-fearing and man-loving” princeps, the “holiest of all times”, the “greatest and most visible of gods”. These phrases, which had meaning when they were used of Hadrian, possessed some reality, but in great part were little more than the expression of an age that was becoming more and more given up to sentiment without ideas behind it, far removed from the Emperor’s own dry style as shown in what remains of his edicts, letters and decisions at law.

Spoilt by Hadrian, the whole world pressed on Antoninus with petitions and demands of every kind, and there is clear evidence that he satisfied many of them. Rome and Ostia, Lanuvium and Tarquinii, Lorium and Caieta, Antium and Terracina, Capua and Puteoli and other places in Campania or south Italy all owed buildings to him. Athens, small cities of Greece and the islands, Ephesus and distant country towns in Asia Minor, cities of Syria and Alexandria, nor less of Africa and the Latin West and North as far as the Black Sea enjoyed his bounty. Baths and temples were restored or built. Not only in Italy and Narbonese Gaul but also in Gallia Lugdunensis, Upper Germany, Pannonia, Syria and Numidia he had roads made or repaired. In Rome, Narbo, Carthage and Antioch he made good the damage done by fires. Rhodes and Cos, the cities of southern Asia Minor and Cyzicus that had been visited by two severe earthquakes received help from the State. He induced the rich to make benefactions, but he also was generous with his own resources. Like his predecessor, he regarded it as Rome’s duty to provide and maintain employment. In the work on the frontier, the building of the new castella on the Antonine Wall in northern Britain and of a number on the Upper German limes, and repairs and restoration in other parts of the Empire he was continuing and completing his father’s policy.

The panegyric of Aelius Aristides was as true of him as of Hadrian. But there was a difference. Hadrian had made the power and beneficence of the emperor everywhere felt and realized by his presence; in north-west and in south-east, in villages as in cities, the consciousness of the close bond between world-ruler and subjects, between individuals and peoples, became a living force, and all felt themselves members one of another, to whom Rome was no longer a burden to be borne. But the rule of Antoninus meant that they must once more look to Rome where the Emperor “sat so as to be able in fact to receive messages more quickly in the centre of the world”. As if, perhaps, in criticism of Hadrian’s conception of his task, he sat like a beneficent spider at the centre of his web, power radiating steadily from him to the farthest bounds of the empire and as steadily returning to him again. For the last time in Imperial history the Emperor was wholly one with Rome and its centralization. His subjects had nothing left them but appeals through the administration or special embassies that were costly. But what the ruler stood for was made fact. He slowed down the rotation of offices: many men stayed at their posts two, three, four or more years, one of the Urban Prefects twelve, one of the Praetorian Prefects even eighteen. He treated them with fairness, solicitude, sometimes even indulgence, rewarded merit, and though his justice compelled him to punish when they had erred, he protected their children from sharing in their punishment. We can trace only a few slight changes in the magistracies or the army, and the division of Dacia into three in the summer of 159 is the only important measure of organization in the government of the provinces. He kept to his predecessor’s policy, even in the admission of provincials to advancement and to the government itself. Paradoxically enough, he sought to secure the future of Italy and stress the unique position, the unending fortune of Rome, while all the time the provinces gained ground step by step.

ADMINISTRATION AND LAWGIVING 

In lawgiving he was diligent, equitable and just. Careful of the letter of the law, he was not loth to interpret it according to the spirit: in judging disputes between cities he showed sober good sense. He bade the Thessalian Koinon in the name of justice to begin by punishing the use of violence in disputes about owner­ship. He called on the provincial council of Baetica, in accordance with an old law, to exact an increased penalty for the premature forcible appropriation of the object of a dispute. He urged the governor of Baetica to be severe in prosecuting kidnappers, and he referred shipwrecked men who had been robbed to the customary naval code so far as it did not clash with Roman law. Antioch was instructed how to deal with a defendant who gave surety and the Koinon of Asia was given precise direction about the number of the physicians, rhetoricians, sophists and grammatici in the different-sized cities who were to be immune from public charges. He permitted the circumcision of the sons of Jews and forbade the persecution of Christians for their faith. Coloni Caesaris were granted direct appeal to the Emperor, minors were protected from criminal prosecution. When a deserter was handed over by his father he limited the punishment to loss of rank to spare the father the reproach of causing the son’s execution. He sought to ensure a milder application of the law against the man who killed his wife for adultery, and the release of those unfit to work who had served ten years of penal labor in the quarries and still had relatives. He was inexorable against any master who killed his slave. Anyone who maltreated or starved or otherwise misused a slave was deprived of him, and in other decrees he made the laws of slavery more progressive. He sought to prevent the prosecution of conspirators, he made punishable the exhibition of an Imperial statue as a provocation, avoided confiscation, and imposed limits on the acceptance of bequests to the emperor. In all this as in many other edicts on the most diverse sides of the law, excerpts from which have been preserved, he showed himself far removed from the rigor of old-Roman conceptions of law and developed further the liberalism of Trajan and Hadrian.

Under his equable rule “all the provinces flourished”. By his strict economy he had accumulated at his death in the Treasury a sum stated to be 675 million denarii. Though he insisted on moderation in the collection of tribute, and on nine occasions distributed to the People of Rome money or corn to a total value of 800 denarii to each recipient, though he showed his liberality in not forgetting the soldiers, and spent large sums on games and shows of beasts, he was not only less profuse than his predecessors but also was a shrewd manager. Thus in providing for the care of girls in honor of his dead wife Faustina he arranged, so far as can be seen, that it should mainly happen on his own estates. His decree about debts continued the policy of Hadrian, but it would have been more loudly acclaimed had it been as comprehensive as that of his predecessor. It was possible for Pius to be economical because Hadrian in his profusion had met countless needs and the world was in equilibrium. If the activity of Hadrian had quickened the pulse of the Empire, Antoninus let it grow steady of itself. The ruler was far away; his effect was due to the force and devotion of his officials. The governed were conscious of his remoteness, and made their own strength effective. Over all rested the brightness of a day in late summer.

FOREIGN POLICY

The prestige of Antoninus stood high throughout the world. Embassies came to him from India, Hyrcania and Bactria, but they were of slight moment since the Eastern policy of the Empire renounced any offensive. He increased the domains of the King of the Caucasian Iberi, who visited him in Rome. He gave kings to the Lazae in Colchis, to the dependent Armenians and to the Quadi and admitted them afresh to allegiance. A letter from him sufficed to stay Vologases II of Parthia from an attack on Armenia; his authority caused Abgar VIII of Osrhoene to evacuate Armenia; he refused to give up to Vologases III the sacred throne which Trajan had carried off, and his firmness ensured peace until the closing months of his reign. But although he thus maintained the symbol of Parthian dependence on Rome, there was no return to the Eastern policy of Trajan. To Antoninus the Empire needed no further conquests. He decided between claimants to the throne of the Bosporan realm whose king was amicus Caesaris et populi Romani, and supported the people of Olbia against the Scythians. All this continued Hadrian’s policy of conciliation, but with a difference. Hadrian threw himself into the task and built up the basis from which this distant influence could be exerted, Pius used up and did not add to the Empire’s reserves. While he sought peace from inertia, he justified it with the plea of Scipio and Augustus that he would rather save the life of one citizen than slay a thousand enemies, but they had other motives, and it may be that the Empire itself suffered from his passivity. His desire to avoid wars did not save him from them, and success was due to his lieutenants, not to the Emperor who stayed in his palace at Rome.

The Empire coinage of AD 138-9 reveals the danger of war. As at the beginning of Hadrian’s reign, so now, there were movements afoot at all the four corners of the empire. In Britain the Brigantes once more broke in, pouring across Hadrian’s Wall, but were defeated thanks to the “help of the gods and the loyalty of the soldiers”. The victory was the work of Lollius Urbicus, the new governor of the province, and the Emperor received from it his second acclamation as Imperator. The strengthening of the empire’s defenses on the north-west by the Antonine Wall which Lollius carried through is significant as the necessary consequence of this invasion and victory. From AD 145 onwards the coin-types of almost every year suggest wars and victories. In 145-52 and also towards the end of the reign there was serious fighting in Mauretania Caesariensis and Tingitana, in which a detachment of the Sixth Legion Ferrata from Judaea and cavalry­ formations from Spain, Germany and Pannonia were engaged. The coins of 152 reveal the peace imposed on the rebels by the Emperor, who celebrated an Ovatio for his victory. There is evidence for a victorious war over Germans, but it is hardly possible to decide whether this is to be connected with the building of castella on the Upper German limes that belongs to about 146.

To the years after 152 may be assigned various conflicts, the Jewish Rebellion, a rising in Achaea (both of unknown date and extent), an insurrection of the Egyptian fellaheen which in 152-3 seriously endangered the corn-supply of Rome and led to riots in which the Emperor risked being stoned and was reduced to making a largesse of wine, oil and meal to the poor at his own expense. It was not till 154 that the ‘concordia’ of Nile and Tiber and the securing and peace of Rome, thanks to Fortune and the world-ruler, were commemorated. In 155 there seems to have been another victory in Britain to judge from the types of Mars, Hercules, Felicitas and, strangely enough, of the “loyalty of the armies”—perhaps there had been a mutiny in the province. In the next year Juppiter appears as victor, and the coins again show the “loyalty of the armies” and Victory and Peace, the providence of the gods securing for Pius Rome’s mastery of the world. The literary tradition records other conflicts, with the Alani, on the Borysthenes, on the Red Sea, which cannot be dated, and in the years 157 and 158 operations against Dacian tribes by the troops of the province with detachments from Africa and Mauretania. In 159, the year in which the Emperor’s vicennalia were tardily celebrated, there was peace, but in 160—1, despite the praises of Felicitas Saeculi and Peace, there were warlike alarms, for Roma, Mars and Juppiter are hailed as victorious powers. Risings in Africa in which the Virtus of Marcus Aurelius, that had been honored in 156 and 159, proved itself, ended in i6o with a victory for the Roman arms. All this is proof that it was no age of lasting peace, that there was not only unrest without the empire but stress within it. It was peace where there was no peace, even if men did not wake from the dream of a Golden Age.

Fortune herself was made the Emperor’s obedient follower. He was named Pius, for like the phoenix he had cared for his father’s consecration. This was to be proof that a new Saeculum had begun: at his second consulship he was hailed as optimus princeps, and the year as blessed and happy. But when on July 20, 139, the Sothic period in Egypt was fulfilled so that a new cycle began, hopes turned to the future. Alexandria celebrated the Emperor as the all-guiding Pantheos Helios-Zeus-Ammon (i.e., Re-Amun), the lord of the new world-Era, the great bestower of fruitfulness. After the dark period of Mars and the god of the Underworld, Hadrian he began to appear as the god of light. In Rome the notes of libertas publica and salus Populi were struck and rose to a crescendo when Pius at last completed and dedicated the temple of Roma Aeterna and Venus Felix which Hadrian had begun. The ruler under divine providence, who cared for Italy and its renewing, removing the juridici so that the old municipal rights were restored, turned the thoughts of the Romans to their primitive past, to its myths and divination and to the age of gold. Ilium, whence the city had its birth, was granted privileges, while he founded a new Pallantium in honor of the Arcadian city whence all that was Greek had sprung. Thus Panhellenism received a new impulse, but Rome still mores. A wave of archaism swept over Rome and the Greek East. Senate and People hailed Antoninus as “best and greatest princeps, the most beneficent and just for his eminent care of the State cults and for his devoutness (religio)!” Many compared him with King Numa.

OPTIMUS PRINCEPS

In Alexandria, which added to all this the reference to the phoenix as the harbinger of the new Saeculum, the Prefect of Egypt, who as praefectus annonae at Rome had felt the magic of this worship of the pasts, caused Pius’ entry on his fourth consulship on January 1, 145 to be celebrated in an especial way. Beside the Egyptian and Greek gods appeared the signs of the zodiac as rulers of the season. In AD 141 Hercules, the benefactor of mankind, had been advanced in honor; now the rule of the optimus princeps and the new year of happiness and blessing that his consulship was to bring to the capital were thus made to rest on the domination of the constellations at their fortunate conjunction by the Alexandrian divinities Sarapis and Isis, Helios and Selene. The harmony of seasons and the world’s course, of the Universe and government on earth were taught by the astronomers and astrologers and accepted by men, before whose belief even Rome must bow.

Alexandria in the years of the primi decennales hailed the Emperor anew as the world-redeemer Hercules, and loyally shared in celebrating the victories that stirred Rome. But, even if in 139 Alexandria had failed to make good its claims, now it was perhaps presumption that Sarapis appears in the chariot as triumphator in celebrating the victory in Britain. Alexandrian coins show no reference to the Nine-hundredth-year celebration of the founding of Rome which coincided with the beginning of the second decade of Pius’ reign, but in the Roman Empire coinage also there is hardly a hint of this conjunction of events or cycles of years. And apart from regular symbols or the record of current events such as the festival of the restoration of the temple of Divus Augustus at the beginning of the Emperor’s third decade, these show no signs of living significance. The same is true of the coinage of Alexandria, but the insurrection in Egypt and the ‘concord’ between Nile and Tiber alike betray how dangerous it might possibly be to the People of Rome and its daily bread. In the East on every side the sun-religion advanced ever more potently. In Rome itself and in the West offerings for the Emperor’s preservation were made to the Magna Mater and to Juppiter Dolichenus. Nothing is heard of the cult of Rome, and the Panhellenic movement sank into a dream. The divinities of the East pressed on irresistibly from Egypt and Asia Minor, Mithras and Dolichenus, the sun god and the Christ; and with them Astrology. Philosophers sought new answers to life’s riddles, unblinded by the brilliance of the material civilization of the time. We look in vain for the creative ideas of this quarter of a century during which Pius governed the world from Rome. He gave to the Senate what was the Senate’s, he maintained the fair show that he was the ampliator civium, the new optimus princeps, a Numa and the protector of the Greek basis of European culture. All this he did, but his sitting like a spider in the middle of the delicate web that covered the vast empire was a danger to it more than a blessing. After a short illness he died in peace, full of days, at Lorium on March 7, 161, in the dreams of his delirium “still speaking of the State and of the kings he was angered at”, and he took the peace and quiet of the Empire with him into his grave, into his temple as a fair aspiration for the future.

II.

MARCUS' ACCESSION: THE TWO EMPERORS