CHAPTER IX

THE ANTONINES

IV.

THE WAR IN GERMANY

Loudly as the Emperors’ triumph was acclaimed, there was more and more cause for anxiety during 167. In the last few years there had been bad harvests in Italy with famine that claimed two largesses from the Emperor. The plague now raged in Rome itself. Men bowed beneath the blows of fate. Prayers and resolute administrative measures could not put a quick end to the pestilence. Garrisons were visited by it, and the ranks of the armies were thinned. More than that, there was danger on the frontiers of which the masses knew nothing. Marcus declared in the Senate that “both Emperors were needed for the German war”. While the Parthian war was still afoot, arose the war with the Marcomanni, that had long been postponed by the diplomacy of the local governors. Such is the curt pronouncement of Marcus’ biographer. The quickly repulsed incursion of the Chatti into Upper Germany and Raetia was clearly only the prelude to the long struggle that forced the Emperor to exchange Rome for the camp. Here, as five years earlier in the East, the crisis began with a disaster.

Along the Raetian limes and the upper Danube there were no legionary camps. The garrisons on the middle and lower Danube had been weakened since the beginning of the war in the East, and the troops drawn from them were still on their way back, or had been worn out or used up in four years of campaigning and in the never-ending marches in Mesopotamia or their ranks had been thinned by the plague. Doubtless the weakness was skillfully masked, but one governor at least had misread the situation, for as late as May 5, 167 time-expired soldiers in the Lower Pannonian army were granted their discharge. The German peoples from the Saale to the lower Danube were kept divided, watched over, and long since pacified; some were old clients of Rome affording a passage to Roman trade to the north. These tribes, engaged in agriculture and cattle-raising in the old region of the late village-culture, who had long since occupied the northern half of that seat of the old ‘Illyrian’ peoples which the Danube divided, seemed to have lost their ancient valor. But once they were inspired to join their forces and strike, the Roman frontier defense was not strong enough to withstand the onset of these populous enemies, and the way was open to the provinces and to Italy. Nor could the western and northern borders of Dacia, the imperial bastion that stood out so boldly as a promontory in a sea of ' barbaric' peoples, or Moesia Inferior on the lower Danube count themselves more secure. Even Germania Inferior and Belgica were not free from danger.

A century before, the Roman frontiers had felt the shock of peoples from the North Sea to the Euxine; a century and again two centuries later they were to break under renewed onslaughts. Now, as the meagre records tell us, “all the tribes from the Illyrian limes to Gaul conspired together” and, more than that, “other peoples came to the frontiers in flight before more northerly conquerors, and threatened war if they were not allowed entry”. The sole impulse of this is not to be found in the migration of the Goths from their homes on the estuary of the Vistula in north-east Germany. They had long since driven the Burgundi south-westwards, and the Vandals to Silesia, and also subdued groups of these last. They now set out to win new lands in the black-earth area of South Russia, passing through Poland and along the edges of the old Dual Monarchy, thence through Volhynia and Podolia and Bessarabia to the Black Sea. Thus their main body, clearly of set purpose, avoided contact with the Empire and did not even enter the country of its immediate neighbors. All they did was to alarm the tribes that they met north and east of the Carpathians. Thus the Goths were only one source of the movement. But no sooner was the war begun than in 167 Langobardi and Obii crossed the Danube into Upper Pannonia. There is no record of their earlier presence in this reservoir of Germans north of the Danube, so that they must have migrated soon before the war from the lower Elbe by way of Silesia and the Western Beskid range, down the Waag to the region of Brigetio in their search for land. These then were also the conquering peoples that drove before them other tribes on to the borders of the Empire. The tribes of the 'Vandals' were on the move, from the Upper Oder; the Victuali and Charii reaching the country of the Marcomanni, the Asdingi, the borders of Dacia. About AD 170 Chauci from the lower Elbe pressed across the Rhine, and perhaps by sea, into Belgica. So widespread was the stir among the free Germans, where long peace had made all seem to the Romans settled beyond chance of change. Finally, there was yet a third focus of trouble. The incursion of Chatti, the western neighbors of the northern Hermunduri, that was repeated in 169 but was repelled by the troops in the Mainz area, though it extended to a dimly recorded unrest among the Sequani in Germania Superior, cannot be a mere coincidence. For the tribes were in touch with each other and knew well what each was about. This third focus of trouble lies between the Elbe and Danube and it is the peoples that had “conspired together”, clearly summoned to an alliance in arms by Ballomar the king of the Marcomanni. The levies must have been mobilized before the first battles were joined and have been concentrated in 167. The first great thrust came from them, and they bore the heaviest burden of the war.

This war, which lasted with one interruption, hardly two years long (175-7), till 180, began about June 167 in Upper Pannonia. The Langobardi and Obii crossed the Danube, plainly by agreement with the Quadi, through whose lands they must have passed. They were routed by the legion at Brigetio and two alae, so that perhaps 6000 fighting men escaped. Peace was negotiated at their request through the mediation of Ballomar and ten kings leagued with him, whose envoys thereupon returned home to become themselves the insurgents. Of the remnant of the 6000 men nothing more is heard. But at the same time there must have been an incursion—perhaps of the Iazyges —into Dacia, where the gold mines had to be abandoned. Then came a short respite, until in the late summer of 167 the kings of the Marcomanni and Quadi, reinforced by the Vandal Victuali and perhaps also the Charii and the 6000 Langobardi, crossed the Danube. A Roman army of nearly 20,000 men was borne down by numbers, and the enemy pressed through the Julian Alps into the north Of Italy. They besieged Aquileia at the end of the Alpine roads, stormed and burnt Opitergium and spread terror as far as Verona: Rome trembled before this new Cimbric invasion. But the advance halted.

The collapse of the frontier defense, the serious threat to Dacia and the lands south of the middle Danube, even to Italy and southern Illyricum, coincided with the spread of the pestilence which raged with especial violence in the camps. Nor was this all: the Imperial treasuries were in a worse case than usual. Marcus faced the crisis with calm determination. Rather than lay new taxation on the impoverished provincials, he sold the golden vessels and art treasures of the Imperial palaces. He decreed the most far-reaching defensive measures, which were carried through in the following year: two new legions were raised, II Pia and III Concors; slaves, volunteers, gladiators were accepted as recruits, as only happened in moments of the greatest danger; even the brigands of Dardania and Dalmatia were drafted into the local militias, the city police in Asia Minor were enrolled in the army; new cohorts were raised. To add attack to defense, German tribal groups were hired to fight against the Germans, and even Scythian Sacae. The roads over the Italian passes were blocked, towns in the danger zone were fortified, nor less cities as remote as Salonae in Dalmatia and Philippopolis in Thrace. On the lower Danube and in Dacia, Dacia Porolissensis and Dacia Apulensis were at first united with Dacia Malvensis, apparently under Sex. Calpurnius Agricola, into a single military area (III Daciae), and the V Macedonica was moved from Troesmis to Potaissa (167). For 168 perhaps this command was extended to include Moesia Superior and was transferred to Claudius Fronto, who had distinguished himself in the Parthian War. All these are but instances from the facts that chance has preserved from the years 167-72. They reveal at once the determination of the Emperor and the wide range of the crisis, and attest once more Marcus’ military and political insight. While in pursuance of Trajan’s policy he sought to maintain and strengthen, so far as might be, Dacia, as the bulwark of the North-East, he not only protected the inner provinces and the communications between West and East but made secure his base for every enveloping or flanking movement that might serve the defense or even, when the time came, make possible an offensive against the enemy. Thus he was prepared to strain every nerve to restore the situation, and faced the prospect of a long war.

While all this was in hand, troops were drawn from the provinces, even as far afield as Cappadocia, Egypt and the Rhine. As an emergency measure to provide for the secure control also of the East, Avidius Cassius, the governor of Syria, was given command over all Asia Minor. But the Emperor’s main care was the freeing of Italy and the regaining of the lost provinces. In this grave hour he shrank from placing Verus alone at the head of the army, so that in the early spring of 168 both Emperors took the field. Aquileia was relieved, and the pursuit of the retiring Germans was pressed. In an engagement on Italian soil Victorinus, the Prefect of the Guard, was killed, and the Romans suffered heavy losses that attest the devotion of the troops and, not less, the fighting qualities of the enemy, among whom the king of the Quadi fell in the battle. Despite the counsels of the unmanly Verus, the generals did not call a halt, while among the Germans the “promoters of a revolt”, made scapegoats for the ill-fortune that attended their retreat, were killed. The Quadi declared that they would only recognize a king approved by the Emperors, and envoys from “most of the tribes” pleaded for “forgiveness for their defection from Rome”. Thus Italy and Illyricum were secured, but the provinces north of the Alps were not yet won back; and Marcus did not trust the Germans. But he was pressed to return to Rome and gave way. In January 169, Verus, as he sat by him in their carriage, suddenly died of apoplexy. Marcus brought the body home to burial and apotheosis. He was freed from a burden. In September he left Rome again, despite the death of his little six-year-old son, Annius Verus. His closest counselor was now the former governor of Pannonia Inferior, Claudius Pompeianus, son of a knight from Antioch. He was the second Syrian to be thus trusted with great responsibility. The Emperor bound him to himself by a marriage with his second daughter, Lucilla Augusta, the widow of Verus, disregarding the cavils of mother and daughter for whom this husband was neither young enough nor aristocratic enough.

The outlook was still dark. The newly formed legions held the Alpine passes covering the roads to Comum and Tridentum. There must have been more German attacks, in which the Praetorian Prefect Macrinius Vindex was defeated and killed. But the coins of 170 attest a victory, apparently won by Pompeianus as lieutenant of the Emperor. Invasions of Chatti into Upper Germany and of Chauci, probably next year, into Belgica were repulsed by Didius Julianus (the future emperor), and insurrections in the Sequani country were quelled. But there was heavy and prolonged fighting to hold Dacia. The Iazyges of the plain of the Theiss attacked from the west, and in 171 Claudius Fronto fell in a severe engagement, the capital Sarmizegethusa was threatened, and the country was only rescued by reinforcements from Lower Moesia. In AD 170 the Costoboci broke through on the lower Danube, pressed on across the Balkans and through Macedonia to the very heart of Greece, where they plundered and destroyed the Periclean temple of the Mysteries at Eleusis. They were driven out again, and after their invasion the tide began to turn.

There were isolated movements outside the Northern theatre of war in the following years. The Bucoli rose in the Nile Delta and Alexandria was in straits until, in 172-3, Avidius crushed them. Mauri from north-west Morocco harassed southern Spain, but were driven out by hastily-gathered forces in 173-4. There was a war in Britain, troubles in Armenia and on the coast of the Pontus, a rising in the new capital of Armenia which ended in the intervention of the legatus of Cappadocia and the restoration of King Sohaemus. But all this belonged to the recurrent complications in the four corners of the empire, and did not touch the main problems. These still awaited solution. Recent experience had shown how serious they were. Restitutio in integrum was not enough, even if the weakening of the frontiers was regarded as transient and due to the emergency caused by the plague. A like situation might arise any moment, if ever the Northern peoples chose to attack. If the Empire was to live secure, the enemy must be destroyed. Marcus had shown in the East that he was not content to clear the honor of Roman arms, to make Armenia once more a Roman protectorate. His vigorous thrust against Parthia proved that at least an offensive-defense was in his mind.

THE GRAND STRATEGY

How else could he act now? “He meant to make the country of the Marcomanni a province, and also Sarmatia, and he would have done so, had not Avidius Cassius rebelled”. So writes his biographer under the year 175, and his grim persistence in breaking the power of the enemy reached a point when “had he lived one more year, he would have made provinces of the lands of the Marcomanni, the Hermunduri, the Sarmatae and the Quadi”. So at least declared the same writer in speaking of Marcus’ death. It is true that the ground had been prepared by his operations and their success. He was continuing the ideas of Trajan, acting in the spirit of all Roman imperialism, that transcended the work of one man or one age and in many generations had created the Empire. Parthia or even Mesopotamia might be thought too distant from the heart of the empire to be permanently subjected to the will of Rome, which had never failed at the decisive moment to stay any attacks they might launch. But now it was the vital front that must be held: if that collapsed, it meant danger, panic, ruin for Italy. Augustus had bequeathed to his successors the policy of keeping the Danube the northern frontier; but that policy had been overtaken by the conquests of the Flavian dynasty and above all of Trajan. The new policy had proved itself the only possible one to meet the recent crisis. The latest plans attributed to Caesar, the idea of allowing no independent powers in the North, may now have suddenly revealed itself as the Imperial strategy. The Rhine frontier and its southern glacis, together with the Dacian bastion thrust forward from the lower Danube, had proved strong corner-stones of the defense. But on the upper and middle reaches of the river the frontier ran far nearer Italy. The deep salient of the Sarmatian (Hungarian) plain meant ever-present danger of unrest and a needless lengthening of the Empire's frontier. Were the wars of two centuries crowned by the annexation of the lands of the Marcomanni and then of the Quadi, Bohemia and Moravia, the whole length of the Hercynian mountains could be made the northern wall of the Empire. The country of the Naristae and Hermunduri as far as the Thuringerwald could be included and fully pacified within a man’s lifetime. Such, viewed from Rome with Rome’s security as prime motive, was the logic of the situation. Rome’s interests demanded the offensive, and Marcus pursued it with far-ranging strategic vision.

The goal was all but reached despite the astonishing resistance of the enemy. But the tragical intervention of two unforeseeable events twice robbed Marcus of the crown of achievement that would have set his name among the great names of Rome. The rebellion of Avidius Cassius enforced a breaking off in the earlier moment of success; the death of the Emperor on the verge of accomplishment was followed by abandonment of his greatest purpose by his own son Commodus. In AD 117 Trajan had left to his nephew Hadrian the task of perfecting his work, and Hadrian had turned aside to other ends: in 180 the destiny of the first two Spanish Emperors was repeated, when Commodus, for whatever reason, failed to press home the high endeavors of his father.

A detailed reconstruction of the great offensive that lasted, with only a seeming interruption in 175-7, till 180 cannot be given in these pages. The literary tradition is fragmentary; the interpretation of the Column of Marcus Aurelius presents many problems; and there is here no space for the disquisition on points of detail which must underlie such a reconstruction. The task is made harder by the fact that we have no clear knowledge of the exploits of Claudius Pompeianus save that he appears on the Column behind Marcus as Licinius Sura appeared behind Trajan. Almost worse than that, our picture of the Emperor himself is overmuch dominated by the Meditations that he set down in these years. Is Frederick the Great to be judged only by his poems? The chances of Time have given us the revelation of the Emperor communing with his philosophical soul, but has denied us, almost wholly, his political decrees and his military records. Priceless as the Meditations are in revealing the inmost thoughts of his intellectual conflicts, the self-consciousness of the time in its level and character, yet herein they are the creations of the changing moment, while statecraft and war were more durable stuff and of lasting significance. Thus only the main events are recorded, and the Empire currency with its clear images and superscriptions is a surer guide.

THE FIRST DECADE OF MARCUS

With AD 171 the reign of Marcus ended its first decade, five years after the vows to secure its prosperous fulfilment. Grave as had been these last years, the worst was over. The divinities of Rome, Juppiter, Mars, Roma, Minerva, the patron goddess of his joint rule with Antoninus, all appear again on the coins—Salus has guarded him, Victory has been at his side. With the fulfillment of the old, new vows were made for the second decade. The armies were united in loyalty, their devotion to duty matching the Emperor’s example. There was a victory in 171 which brought the sixth acclamation as imperator and re-established Roman control of Raetia and Noricum. Its effects were perhaps still felt in the next year, which may have witnessed the crossing of the Danube, an achievement of Marcus’ virtus which emboldened the Senate to proclaim that, thanks to the foresight and good fortune of the Emperor, Germany was conquered and the day of clemency had come. In 173 the record of achievement in the last two years is received with joy. The gods had done their parts, Juppiter himself had hurled his thunderbolts against the fallen enemy. The piety (religio) of the Emperor dedicated in Rome a temple to the Egyptian Hermes fulfilling the vow of his priest. The city hoped that Marcus would return bringing peace, now “Germany is subdued”, and honored him as Germanicus for his victory, as ‘Restitutor Italiae’ for the Securitas’ he had vouchsafed to it. Had not the time for his triumph come ? In 174 there were like hopes, but they were vain. A new victory brought a seventh acclamation, and the expectation that Marcus would return, as Verus had done, a Hercules crowned by Victory bringing peace. In 175 yet another victory is announced, and the eighth acclamation for the Emperor’s campaigns across the Danube with the gods’ help. Even before this types such as Annona Augusti, Concordia exercitum, Fides and the like revealed the new situation created by the treason of Avidius Cassius with its threat to the corn-supply of Rome. The grant to Commodus of the right to strike coins and a largesse to the People attested the danger to the dynasty and the saving of dynasty and People alike by the exertions of the Emperor and his loyal armies. With the conclusion of the war Marcus receives the title ‘Sarmaticus’. Thus the two first phases of the offensive are ended, but the Empire currency of the next two years celebrates wars and victories ‘de Germanis’ and ‘de Sarmatis’ and the pax aeterna Augusti.

Such is the outline of events given by the Empire coins, the official legend that transfigures the war into a steady ascent as from peak to peak of a mountain chain. The toils that beset the path to victory must be deduced from the rest of the tradition. The Guard was concentrated in the theatre of war and a mobile field-army was constituted of detachments from the several legions and auxilia, an anticipation of what was later to be the fixed practice. Thus the frontier garrisons were nowhere withdrawn. Noricum and Raetia had to be guarded against a new surprise attack, probably by the two new legions, even if the strong fortress-camp of Castra Regina (Regensburg) was not established until 179. The needs of the hour overrode the normal functions of the provincial governors. The union of Dacia and Moesia Superior in a single command continued after the severe battle in which Claudius Fronto fell and the saving of Dacia and its capital by Berenicianus. He now held command there with two legions and all their auxilia and the ius gladii, though he was only legatus legionis. No less did the emergency dictate the allotment of posts in the field-army, where Praetorian Prefects, procurators, even the Emperor's private secretary Tarrutenius Paternus, an eques by birth, appear to supplant the high senatorial officers. It is possible that we may see here the hand of Pompeianus. At least he was able, despite early suspicions of Marcus, to find employment for the future ruler, Helvius Pertinax. The Emperor’s bearing won the loyal service of the army.

The ‘German victory’ attested by the coins of 171 can hardly belong to the offensive, which did not begin till the next year. Rather it is the success that led to the regaining of Noricum and Raetia. The offensive itself was based on Pannonia, and started from the legionary camp of Carnuntum with its bridgehead across the Danube. There for three years was Marcus’ headquarters, as it had been that of Tiberius in his war against the Marcomanni and of Trajan against the Suebi. In 172 the Emperor led his columns across the Danube and advanced up the valley of the March against the Quadi. The Suebi that lay in his path were quickly reduced, and those taken prisoner were executed as rebels. The campaign against the Quadi began with a deep penetration of their country, for it was the Emperor’s purpose to follow his famous predecessors, and drive a wedge between the confederate powers so as to break up their coalition, to crush Marcomanni and Sarmatians separately by turning against each of them in superior force, and at the same time to block the way against German invasions from the north.

THE COUNTER-OFFENSIVE 

The course of the war shows his steady persistence in this strategy. The Quadi met him at a river that may be the Thaya. They assailed his camp with a siege-tower, but this Roman device against Romans was destroyed by lightning, which the soldiers greeted as the present help of Juppiter. The advance into the mountains of Moravia was attended by two further portents. One of these, the ‘miraculous storm of rain’, officially ascribed to the prayers of an Egyptian priest but claimed by a Christian story as vouchsafed by their God to the petition of Christian soldiers in the Cappadocian legion XII Fulminata, broke the spirit of the enemy, who made their submission. The conditions were severe. They surrendered their cattle and horses and 13,000 prisoners and deserters carried off from Pannonia, clearly to make good the damage their invasions had inflicted on the provinces. They pledged themselves to close their borders against Marcomanni and Iazyges and to abstain from all marketing, to prevent espionage and the procuring of weapons and supplies. Then the Romans turned their arms eastwards and were joined by the German Lacringi, who agreed to supply contingents. A force under Tarrutenius Paternus reached the upper Gran, where the Cotini gave their adhesion, while farther south the main body subdued the horsemen of the Buri. At last in late autumn the victorious army returned to the Danube. The first book of the Meditations written during the campaign on the Gran contains the Emperor’s affectionate memories of those who had shaped his intellectual being and ends with the words. “All this needs the help of the gods and good fortune”. As though in answer, Rome spent itself in thanks to the foresight, fortune, valor and clemency of its sovereign for the ‘subjugation of Germany’. How different a picture from that which the Emperor drew of himself in the almost sensual minute assessment of his own qualities of mind.

But only a part of the dangerous Germans, who were the objects of vengeance, had been subdued. In 173 came the turn of the Marcomanni. The campaign will not have started from Carnuntum, but rather from Castra Regina or some point between the two. The enemy disputed the crossing of the Danube but were defeated. Marcus’ biographer adds simply “the booty was restored to the provincials”. Which must mean that they made reparation as the Quadi had done. This was followed by a treaty of peace with other Germans, who will have been the Naristae. A further advance which must have penetrated into Bohemia won back other Germans, perhaps Hermunduri, to a treaty that needed the Senate’s ratification. The Emperor’s clemency was justified in that he was spared conflicts with groups west of the Bohmerwald, of which we hear nothing more, and won them back to Rome. After fresh operations other Germans were bound by treaty, perhaps the Vandal Charii and Victuali, while the Asdingi already were in Rome’s service. The country of the Marcomanni was occupied, and therewith ended that war. By applying the principle ‘divide et impera’, with steel and gold, “Germany was subdued”.

In the next year the work of conquest was completed. Hosts of humbled enemies were transplanted to Dacia, Pannonia, Moesia, Germania and Italy to reinforce the populations thinned by the pestilence, until Marcomanni settled at Ravenna rose in revolt and dared to hold the city, whereupon no more barbarians were brought to Italy and those already there were ejected. The Quadi were taxed with imperfect performance of their treaty duties and were once more attacked and reduced while their king was made a fugitive. Then came a new enterprise, in which the German peoples appear as auxiliaries. Its main objective was the Costoboci of Galicia to punish them for their invasion of the Empire as far as Athens and Eleusis. In this expedition the King of the Quadi, Ariogaisus, was captured and banished to Alexandria. On the march home the war against the Sarmatians was begun which lasted until about the end of June 175. First came two victories, which brought a seventh imperatorial acclamation, and the opening of negotiations with one of their two kings, only to be frustrated by the other, so that operations continued until they were concentrated in the swampy southern plain of their territory. But no decision was reached. The news of the revolt of Avidius Cassius induced a peace on the terms granted to the Quadi and Marcomanni (end of July, 175). They ceded only a strip of land along the left bank of the Danube. Marcus showed to them the clemency he had showed to his other enemies. He received an eighth acclamation as imperator and assumed the title Sarmaticus. Commodus was summoned to his camp from Rome and on July 7, the day on which Romulus had vanished from men to join the gods, he assumed the toga virilis. The choice of the day was to have its significance.

AVIDIUS CASSIUS

The scene shifts to the East. Avidius Cassius had governed Syria for eight years and for almost six practically the whole of the East. He and the governor of Cappadocia, Martius Verus, had through all these grim times ensured the obedience of those provinces, though their legions had supplied large drafts to enable the wars in the North to be waged with energy and success. Now at last the results of Pius’ detachment, Verus’ inertia, Marcus’ consideration for his brother, the Emperor’s weakness and the wars in the North were plain to see. The prestige of the Imperial house was lower than it had been for a century. Harsh as he was, the Syrian Avidius counted for much in his own land. Men said his virtus fitted him to be emperor, and, if he was the son of an eques, so was the Syrian Pompeianus who had become Marcus’ son-in-law. Supported by a widespread conspiracy, from which only Martius Verus held aloof, a Syrian—no Italian like Pompey, Antony and Vespasian—dared to rise against Rome. There were rumors that the Empress Faustina, despairing of her consort’s health, had already offered Cassius her hand, and the Empire to preserve it for Commodus, as though the throne was in the gift of Pius’ daughter and not of the Senate and soldiers. Report had it that Marcus was dead and that Cassius had already spoken of him as divus, that the Sibylline oracle saw in Marcus the beast of the Apocalypse, and in Cassius the legitimate ruler. It was as though the Syrians sought to wrest from Rome world-power to restore it to its ancient possessor, the Orient. Cassius was proclaimed emperor, appointed a Praetorian Prefect and established his own Chancellery. Cilicia, Syria and Judaea were at once his, Egypt went over to him, and so threatened the food-supply of Rome. Cappadocia alone was held by Martius Verus and was a make-weight against the usurper. At the news, sent by Verus, Marcus was for a moment terrified, but he took courage again with his philosophy as a comforter. The ‘ingrate’, as Marcus named him, was declared outlaw by the Senate. But Commodus was hurried to the Emperor’s camp. Rome itself was restless as the rumor ran that Cassius was nearing the city. Detachments from Illyricum had to be sent to defend the city.

Breaking off the war against the Sarmatians, Marcus prepared in August to march against the enemy. He did not shrink from the task of defending his lawful right. He rejected barbarian help that was offered him, that aliens might not know the reproach of ‘Romans’ in mutual conflict. Then came news. Cassius had been killed by a centurion and the rebel’s head was brought to the Emperor. He refused to see those who brought it, and gave orders for its burial. “Who flees from his master is a runaway slave. But Law is the master, and who breaks the Law is a runaway”. The rule of his rival had lasted three months and six days, from about mid-April to towards the end of July 175.

Cassius’ death averted civil war and the need to maintain the cause of legitimacy by arms. Martius Verus resolutely crushed the movement at its centres Cyrrhus and Antioch, and administered the East till Marcus came. The Emperor at once took the only path. The vitality of Roman rule must be displayed in his own presence and the provinces of the East won back to loyalty. He passed in progress across Asia Minor, through Syria and its southern neighbors to Alexandria, and then retracing his steps through Syria, journeyed by way of Athens to Rome, which he reached after fifteen months of travel in the second half of November 176. Everywhere he showed clemency, even to Antioch and Cyrrhus. Disloyal officials were removed from their posts and the rule was laid down that in future no one should govern the province of his birth. When it fell to him to be judge, sentences were light, and mild judgments by the Senate were graciously approved. Among the scholars and philosophers of Alexandria he was the Stoic citizen of the world, sharing with them the franchise of their common home, the kosmos. As he brought his army back to Italy he gave orders that the troops should assume the toga, the garb of peace. Clemency, harmony, peace and security were his mission.

Fate had vouchsafed to him the salvation of the State from civil strife after the alarms of foreign wars, and he stood higher than those whose victories had achieved this in the past. The dynasty was preserved: he celebrated with his son Commodus, who became Imperator, the splendid triumph over Germans and Sarmatae, and a few days later, Commodus entered on the consulship. No Roman had held it so young, for he was not yet sixteen. Before many months had passed he had received the tribunicia potestas and was named Augustus. It was the zenith of Marcus’ fame, of the man who had written of those that had attained that zenith “What is the end of it all? Smoke and ashes and a legend—or not even a legend”. So he may have thought, but the world rejoiced in the Emperor’s clemency and the pax aeterna that he promised. He was himself lonelier than ever. Faustina, whose obedience, simplicity and tenderness had been his pride and comfort in his quiet meditations on the Gran, was no longer at his side. She had died suddenly on the journey through Asia Minor. Deeply mourned, she received, like her mother, the title of diva. Her long sojourns in the field deserved the name ‘Mater Castrorum’ that was bestowed on her, and her portrait was placed by that of the Emperors in the chapels where the armies worshipped their ensigns.

THE ZENITH OF MARCUS 

But peace was not lasting. In 177 there was sharp fighting with the Mauretanians, which must have ended in a victory that year, in which Juppiter Propugnator gave his help, a victory that brought to Marcus a ninth acclamation, to Commodus a second acclamation as Imperator. The securing of the North was not complete, and there was new unrest on the Danube, which the provincial governors could not master. At last on August 3, 178 the Emperor and his son left Rome, but Commodus, whose marriage had been celebrated earlier than Marcus had wished, soon returned. Of the operations that followed, beyond or along the Danube, hardly any tradition has survived. Coins alone give some indications. There must have been a victory in 179, for Marcus and Commodus were again acclaimed Imperator. The campaign began with vota publica and a solemn declaration of war in the old Roman form and money was regularly allotted to it from the Treasury. In his conduct of it to victory, we hear again of ‘Fortuna Augusti’, of the ‘loyalty of the armies’, the Emperor’s virtus, the vouchsafing of victory and rejoicings in Rome. On a coin of Commodus there appears his patron Romulus as conqueror.

The Sarmatae of the Theiss valley and the Buri at first seem to have yielded, fearing that Marcus might bring in the Quadi against them. A treaty was made with them which secured some mitigation of that of 175. Only the provisions about meetings and markets, sailing on the Danube in their own boats and the possession of islands in the river were kept, and they were charged to transfer part of their population into the territory of the Roxolani. Three thousand Naristae, who declared themselves oppressed, were admitted to lands inside the Roman frontier. There must have been war with the Hermunduri, against whom was directed the building of Castra Regina in 179. But the main objective must have been the Marcomanni and Quadi. Of the operations of 177 and 178 we know hardly anything. Each of these peoples had to endure the presence of a Roman army of occupation of 20,000 men, and their envoys had to complain that their own peaceful agriculture was hampered, whereas the troops lacked for nothing, and sheltered deserters and escaped prisoners. Apparently their grievances were not redressed. Thereupon the Quadi resolved to attempt a migration with their whole population to the country of the Semnones on the middle Elbe. The Emperor discovered the plan in time and had the passes in the North barred against them. It was now, we may suppose, that the Prefect of the Guard Tarrutenius Paternus was sent “with a strong army to fight a decisive battle”, the barbarians, it is said, “fought the whole day through, but were slaughtered by the Romans and Marcus accepted his tenth acclamation as Imperator (179)”. It was his desire not to annex their country, but to punish its inhabitants.

With the crushing of the last resistance of peoples that strove to be free the operations of the great war reached their end. Twelve years of struggle and of ever more drastic counter-offensive to repay the attack on Italy in its hour of distress had laid the foundations for the extension of Roman rule over the land of the peoples it had destroyed. One more year only would be needed to complete the task. During the winter of 179-180 there was no fighting but only measures of organization. Then, before the crowning operations could begin, the Emperor died on March 17, 180. On his deathbed he adjured his son, who as early as the end of 179 had come from Rome, “not to neglect the last remainder of the war”. It can hardly be doubted that it was Marcus’ intention to annex everything from the Hermunduri to the Sarmatae, and he may claim the credit for having made it possible. Thus would have been achieved the protection of Italy by a wide zone of securely-held territory; the Northern frontier would be shorter, more defensible; the region in which the Northern peoples gathered from the plains of the North would be denied to them. With the decimation or transplanting of the people of this area, the dissolution of all opposition within it, the Germans would be deprived of the possibility of expansion and dammed up beyond the Hercynian forest, while the lands thus made provincial would be opened up to Mediterranean culture. Marcus and his helpers saw the problem from the angle of Rome’s strength: the country between north and south must be Roman. Such was the idea he strove so steadfastly to realize. Had he been vouchsafed one more year he would have brought to consummation the policy of Caesar, of Augustus in the wars with the Pannonians and Dacians, of the Flavians and of Trajan. Marcus also preserved, one is everywhere conscious of it, the appearance of ‘just’ war. It did not greatly trouble him that he dealt with other men’s fate as the hunter who “catches a hare;—if you probe into the reason for their acts, are not these hunters all robbers?” He saw also aliens only from the Roman angle, that of the world’s centre. These were appearances on the circumference, parts of that all, to whose ordinances they, like everyone, were subject. “But when an unalterable necessity is there, why strain against it?All is ordained by nature to change and go under, that something other may take its place”.

V.

THE EMPEROR AND THE AGE