Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Death.

In this campaign Aurelius, after a series of successes, was attacked, according to some authorities, by an infectious disease, of which he died after a week's illness, either in his camp at Sirmium (Mitrovitz), on the Save, in Lower Pannonia, or at Vindobona (Vienna), on March 17, i8o, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. Other accounts are: (I) that he was poisoned in the interests of Commodus (Dio. Cass. lxxi. 33, 4), that he died of a chronic stomachic disease; the latter is perhaps the most likely. His ashes (according to some authorities, his body) were taken to Rome. By common consent he was deified and all those who could afford the cost obtained his statue or bust ; for a long time his statues held a place among the penates of the Romans. Commodus, who was with his father when he died, erected to his memory the Antonine column (now in the Piazza Colonna at Rome), round the shaft of which are sculptures in relief com memorating the miracle of the thundering legion and the various victories of Aurelius over the Quadi and the Marcomanni. A bronze equestrian statue was set up in the Forum, now on the Capitol.

Aurelius was consistently hostile to Christianity, and persecu tion, unknown or forbidden under earlier reigns, was systemati cally pursued under his directions. His attitude was logical enough. The State religion was to him an essential part of the imperial system, and the Christians, particularly in their opposi tion to emperor-worship, were a danger to the established order. In his work on the internal administration Marcus Aurelius was equally untiring. His reign is especially notable for legal reforms, and an attempt to arrest the fall in the legitimate birth-rate. His provincial administration was not made easier by the drain on the Treasury caused by the defence of the empire. Against his will he had to increase taxation, and he risked alienating his sol diers by refusing an increase of pay. Last of a line of emperors who all seemed to come little short of the Stoic ideal of the phi losopher king, Marcus Aurelius was the best of them all.

Philosophy.

The book which contains the philosophy of Aurelius is known by the title of his Reflections, or Meditations, although that is not the name which he gave to it himself (Ta els kurbv). Of the genuineness of the work no doubts are now entertained. It is believed that he wrote also an autobiog

raphy, which has perished. The Meditations were written, it is evident, as occasion offered—in the midst of public business, and on the eve of battles on which the fate of the empire depended— hence their fragmentary appearance, but hence also much of their practical value and even of their charm.

Throughout his life he was a practising, but he was not strictly an orthodox, Stoic. In his hands Stoicism is a practical rule of life, not a philosophy of quietism. In the Meditations are no speculations on the absolute nature of the deity, and no clear expressions of opinion as to a future state. He is, above all things, a practical moralist. The goal in life to be aimed at, according to him, is not happiness, but tranquillity, or equanimity. This condition of mind can be obtained only by "living conformably to nature," that is to say, one's whole nature, and as a means to that man must cultivate the four chief virtues, each of which has its distinct sphere—wisdom, or the knowledge of good and evil; justice, or the giving to every man his due ; fortitude, or the enduring of labour and pain; and temperance, or moderation in all things. It is no "fugitive and cloistered virtue" that Aurelius seeks to encourage; on the contrary, man must lead the "life of the social animal." While he held that the prime principle in man is the social, "the next in order is not to yield to the persuasions of the body, when they are not conformable to the rational principle which must govern." This divinity "within a man," this "legislating faculty," which, looked at from one point of view, is conscience, and from another is reason, must be implicitly obeyed. He who thus obeys it will attain tranquillity of mind.

What gives the sentences of Marcus Aurelius their enduring value and fascination, and renders them superior to the utterances of Epictetus and Seneca, is that they are the gospel of his life. His precepts are simply the records of his practice. To the saint liness of the cloister he added the wisdom of the man of the world; he was constant in misfortune, not elated by prosperity, never "carrying things to the sweating-point," but preserving, in a time of universal corruption, unreality and self-indulgence, a nature sweet, pure, self-denying, unaffected.