CHAPTER IX

THE ANTONINES

VI.

INTERNAL POLICY

“The universal cause is a wintry torrent: it sweeps all before it. But how paltry are both these political affairs and the mannikins who, as they think, act as philosophers. Drivellers all. What then, man? Do what now nature claims of you: strive forward, if it is granted you, and do not look round to see if anyone will know of it. Hope not for Plato’s Republic. Be content if the least thing goes forward, and consider the issue even of this as no small thing. For who then changes his opinion? But apart from a change of opinion what is it all but a servitude of those who groan under it and pretend to be obedient? Come now and tell me of Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. Men shall see if they saw what man’s common nature wished, and if they educated themselves. If they played tragedy, no one has condemned me to be their imitator. Simple and modest is the work of philosophy. Lead me not away to pompousness and conceit?” In his public life Marcus’ bearing was that of a philosopher. In his own thoughts he was no revolutionary, nor was it in his passionless nature to create Utopias. He hardly laid a finger on the existing order of things. He preserved with pedantic care the rights of the whole community, of the orders and of individuals, and their duties. When he asked for funds for the Second Marcomannic War he played on the old maxim—“res publica est res populi”, and declared simply that he possessed nothing and was even lodged by the State. Thus he made the property of the Emperor liable to be searched for runaway slaves, to make real the right of the agents of the State’s authority. Though he had sold the treasures of the palace to meet the needs of the crisis and avoided enriching the fiscus, he did not abolish its treasuries or give away his possessions. The People did not become active again but remained the object of his constant care: Italy was more and more taken under his charge and set on a level with the provinces.

The Senate was a pliable instrument even at the time of Cassius’ rebellion, when it visited him with outlawry and confiscation: Marcus allowed the Senate to decree the joint rule of Verus and of Commodus, assigned to it debate and decision on all great matters of State, such as the declaration of war on the Northern peoples and the treaties with them. He was scrupulous to maintain the Senate’s jurisdiction, was careful to avoid passing sentence on senators, he requested the Senate to be merciful when, in its care for him, it would judge too harshly the rebels sent before it. Where possible, he showed it honor. He stepped down from his triumphal car in the Circus to pass on foot before it. He did not admit equestrian advisers to his consilium if a senator was to be tried. He was instant in forbidding marriage between a lady of senatorial rank and a freedman. It may have been at his suggestion that the Senate decreed that no one of its members might marry or retain as wife anyone condemned by a public court. Despite his own wishes he would not have a senator appointed Prefect of the Guard as it would have involved a step down into the equestrian order. He entrusted new offices to senators and used senatorial magistrates as judges of appeal, as he gave the Senate the final judgment within the scope of the consular jurisdiction. He discussed with leading senators the problems of domestic and foreign policy.

SENATE AND EQUITES 

All this he could do for the Senate was in his hand. When he was in Rome he was regular at its sessions and would hasten in from Campania to make proposals in person. But he did not hesitate to promote to the Senate many of his friends, even equites, who had done good service, or to assist senators to regain their rank if they had lost it through unmerited poverty. Men from all the provinces were allowed to reach the highest offices of State. There was one rule, that no one reached the Curia with whom the Emperor was not acquainted. Neither wealth nor illustrious descent counted with him, only merit. The future emperor, Pertinax, born ‘in the Apennines’, son of a freedman, became senator and consul. Pompeianus the Syrian son of an eques, Petronius Sura Mamertinus grandson of an eques, Antistius Burrus an African, became his sons-in-law. Marcus decreed that senators need only have one-quarter of their property in Italian land. Since the days when Claudius had admitted to the Curia provincials ‘who could adorn it’, things had gone so far that the high society of Rome and the aristocracy of the empire had little stake in Italy and were in only small measure of Italian birth, and even the Romanized upper class of Spain was already spent. It was from Africa, the East and the Danube area that new strength came. The new senators might believe themselves the guardians of an aristocratic tradition, and have the training, education, experience and class-consciousness that gave them the name of Roman, but they were not of one blood or of one intellectual outlook. They owed all to the Emperor’s favor and were his willing obedient followers. They worked in harmony with the Emperor, as, so his philosophy taught him, was the way of nature. While the old form was kept, it received new content. The Senate was to the Emperor like a vessel in which were mingled and preserved the finest essences of the whole Empire. But the Empire was order, and of this order he was master.

The equites were treated with no less care. They received new strength from the army, the cities of Italy and the provinces, from intellectuals, even from freedmen. The tradition shows that Marcus granted to many the distinction of the equus publicus. He gave those who served him as officials precedence over the rest, distinguished the three upper classes of them and exempted the two highest from plebeian punishments, making the exemption hereditary to the third generation. He rewarded the ambition of his secretary Tarrutenius Paternus with the post of Prefect of the Guard. Others he promoted to the same rank and to his consilium because of their capacity as jurists and made judicial decisions on their authority and responsibility. He appointed assistants to help the heads of the departments of finance and the food-supply, and equestrian procurators to assist the praefecti alimentorum in administering their funds. In all this may be seen the progressive organization of the magistrates and officials into a perfected bureaucracy, the promotion of the court aristocracy, the fostering of its class-consciousness, but no sign of a fundamental abandonment of the old order, no sign of revolutionary innovation.

So far as the mass of the citizens was concerned, Marcus had their prosperity at heart in good and bad times alike. Seven largesses amounting in all to 850 denarii to those entitled to receive them (perhaps a total of 125,000,000), widespread provision of food, benefactions to the youth of Italy in connection with the betrothal of his daughter Lucilla and the death of his consort Faustina, grants to the Italian cities after bad harvests and famine attest his care. Throughout the empire he made efforts to alleviate the sufferings due to the plague, and gave assistance to cities that had suffered catastrophe, as Smyrna, Nicomedia, Ephesus, Antioch and Carthage. Conquered peoples were forced to make reparations for the effects of their invasions and were transplanted to make good the depopulation of the northern provinces. Here, too, his methods were traditional, with laws, regulations and administrative action. He was tireless, patient and conscientious in jurisdiction whether he was in Rome or at his headquarters at the front. To ensure continuity in dealing with litigation, he raised the number of court days to 23o. In rules of law he was strictly just, humane, equitable, inflexible where grave offences were concerned. He was on his guard with informers and was careful to avoid the reproach that the Fiscus enriched itself from their victims. In all he was concerned to preserve or revive old-established law rather than to revolutionize it.

Such novelties as he introduced fitted his character. In times of grave emergency he had used slaves, gladiators and bandits as soldiers, but he was not inspired to give freedom to their like. In the Stoic’s commonwealth of man, only freemen were his equals. He might have been a great revolutionary had he boldly made fundamental changes in the legal position of slaves or freedmen or had at least made good his vision of equal rights for all and conferred citizenship on all non-Roman provincials. Thus he would have given internal unity as well as external security to the Empire. But between ideal and reality there was the clearest disharmony. It is true that he laid it down that the retrial of a decision declaring a man free-born might not be claimed after five years, and was ruled out by his death. But, as the jurist Marcian saw, a retrial might improve the position of a slave. Marcus maintained the sharp distinctions between free-born, freedmen and slaves. He might promote freedmen to be equites and advance their sons to the Senate, or, continuing his predecessors’ development of law about slaves, he might enable a slave to win his freedom, if he had been kept in bondage although his enfranchisement was made a condition in his sale; all that was needed was that he or a third party on his behalf should hand over to his counsel the money to buy his freedom. He might allow a man manumitted by a will to accept along with his freedom an estate so burdened with debts that no one had accepted it, if he paid the debts on it. But were these decisions due to justice or only evasions of the issue, since the wish of the emancipator needed to be reinforced by a payment on the part of the slave? So, too, Marcus allowed freedmen to have ingenui rather than freedmen as patroni only in exceptional cases. So far was he removed from any radical reforms. He was the first emperor to set up a praetor tutelaris for Italy and empowered him (as the governor’s legate in the provinces and the Juridicus in Egypt) to appoint guardians for citizen wards who were legally compelled to act unless within a stated time they proved a right to exemption. The ancient Lex Plaetoria of 186 BC had prescribed the appointment of a curator to manage the property of an orphan from his majority to the age of 25 if he was extravagant or feeble-minded. This Marcus now extended to the case of all propertied citizens of this age. The person under tutelage lost his control of his property, which passed under strict rules to the curator, who had laid upon him responsibilities towards the State, which in turn protected his ward against his incapacity, greed or negligence. All this meant even more State interference and control in private life.

MARCUS AS LAWGIVER 

His belief that the responsibility of an act rests only on the doer of it was the motive of his decision that a son should not be tainted by his father’s crime or punishment, and that a man born while his father or mother was in exile should not be excluded from being decurio in any municipality in the Empire. This was ‘humane’ rather than Roman doctrine, and broke the bonds that bound blood-kin, and limited the operation of the patria potestas. Thus, too, Marcus granted soldiers who were still under patria potestas the right to dispose freely, and even by will, of all they had earned during their time of service. A further step towards the loosening of this powerful institution of Roman law was the S.C. Orfitianum of AD 178. In this a mother was permitted without a will to pass on her inherited property to her children, whether sons or daughters, to the exclusion of her own blood-kindred and agnates, or at least in preference to them. He also made children of a marriage that was legally invalid but accepted as valid by a husband to rank with those of a legal marriage.

In all this he may have been following his own ideals. On the other hand he seems to stress the distinction between citizens and non-citizens in the setting up perhaps in 177 or 178 of a register of births, an institution of which he may have learnt in Egypt but which already existed in Africa. In future every child of a Roman citizen was to be registered within thirty days of birth, in Rome with the praefecti aerarii, in provinces where it did not already exist, in the record-office of the governor, “in order that anyone born in a province could produce documentary evidence, if his free birth was challenged”. Here was another bureaucratic interference in private life and at the same time a further security for the privileged class in the Empire. This comprehensive measure did more than facilitate legal decisions in doubtful cases, it helped to control the present and future generations of citizens in all parts of the empire. The time had passed when the cives Romani were an august minority in the provinces. The granting of citizenship to soldiers and private persons had made a profound change. The new institution, indeed, points directly to the Edict of Caracalla of 212, which at the very moment when those first registered came to manhood conferred citizenship on all peregrini except dediticii. Thus may be seen a process of unification and codification which is characteristic in this as in the whole period of Marcus Aurelius. Though he did not venture to consummate the process in any sphere of domestic policy, the tendency was not to be checked. Where he would not hold it back, it passed him by. Where his Stoic inclinations and humane impulses gave it scope, it made them a stepping stone for further advance.

Simply brought up by his mother and, even as a child, thrifty so that he could be generous when he would, Marcus was frugal all his life, and was sometimes censured as miserly for his economical care of the State’s finance. It is true that he matched his predecessors in his largesses, and sacrificed his possessions to avoid taxing impoverished provincials. He enjoined on his officials moderation in enforcing the claims of the fiscus and taxation in times of stress. He did not lavish on buildings such sums as Hadrian had done. He spent his money not on architectural splendor but on absolutely necessary reconstruction, or the improvement of roads which assisted the defense of the Empire, the advancement of commerce, of fortresses and camps and of cities. No doubt his wars cost the State treasury dear. But he strove manfully to be economical and to avoid extravagance. He strengthened the control of public finances in the communities of Italy and the provinces, making many regulations to guide the curatores who watched over them. He forbade lavish expenditure on actors. In a decree of 178, issued in the name of himself and Commodus, extravagant prices for gladiators were prohibited, and expenditure on games in the cities was strictly regulated according to their wealth and importance. When he drafted gladiators in the army, it was said in mockery “he wished to force the people to be philosophers”. In the time when he was far from Rome he kept the mob in good humour by calling on the rich to provide them with amusements. In 177 he brought himself to give games of diverse kinds, including the baiting of wild beasts, to celebrate his victories and the naming of Commodus as Augustus. But he hated slaughter and made the gladiators fight with blunted weapons. He regulated the giving of shows and limited expenditure on them. The tax payable by lanistae was abolished at a cost to the fiscus of 20 to 3o million sesterces a year, rather than have the Imperial treasury enriched by wealth tainted with blood. Arrears of taxation to a total sum of 50 million sesterces were remitted. “We have to thank above all our great Emperors, who by healing measures and sacrifices by the Treasury have restored the shaken order of the communities and the property of the leading men that was on the brink of ruin”. So men spoke in the Senate in debating the edict embodying these reforms, thus revealing clearly an educated man’s acceptance of the value of human life and of an austerer ethical standard, the deep revulsion of intellectual asceticism against the mob’s delight in spectacles of bloodshed and the statesman’s resolution to organize relief of distress for communities and individuals and to produce more uniformity with stricter control. It is a part of Marcus’ general amelioration of civic life during his reign. But despite the great expenditure and sacrifices of revenue, which must have gone far to empty the State's treasury, could Marcus really hope that these remedies could heal the deep wounds which the times of stress had inflicted on the Empire and its people?

Besides this stricter control and organization of Italy more like the provinces and the care for all the provinces, in which indeed there was sore need of help, Marcus sought to make Roman authority permeate the newly conquered countries, though this proved to be a vain expenditure of strength. He strove, as has been seen, to make good the depopulation by war and pestilence by the forcible settlement of northern barbarians, who were assigned to great estates as laborers, free but bound to the soil and without land of their own, or became tenants of small holdings or soldiers. Thus they were merged in these provincial populations and no doubt helped to bring to these regions fresh vigor. But at the same time they added a new and strong element in the effort of the provinces to overcome or annex to themselves the central control of the Empire. Beneath the thin veil of Graeco-Roman culture the forces of provincial civilization became steadily more visible. To the claim of men to be citizens, equal with the Romans, of a unified Empire, was added the claim of their gods, even the gods of the obscurer corners of the provinces, to be made equal with Juppiter Optimus Maximus. The day was near when the gods in the Imperial Pantheon were to be organized as a unity under a single lord. The Imperial race of Rome and Italy, the culture of Greece and Rome were hastening to their downfall, and it was not in Marcus’ power to hinder it, any more than it had been to conquer distress and bring back new prosperity. The days when men spoke of the ‘felicity of the age’ were past; his belief in a predestined divinely-ordained chain of events forbade him to bring salvation. As, far from Rome, he laid him down to die, there was still sore distress and grave anxiety beset all men of good-will. When he was asked for the password for the last time this was his answer “Go to the rising sun, my sun is settings”. Ready, as he ever wished to be, Marcus died. But his farewell not only pointed a way to hope; it set to his people a final riddle.

VII.

THE ACCESSION AND REIGN OF COMMODUS