On his way home he visited Lower Egypt and Greece, displaying everywhere the noblest solici tude for the welfare of his vast Empire, and drawing forth from his subjects, who were aston ished at his goodness, sentiments of the pro foundest admiration and regard. At Athens, which this Imperial pagan philosopher must have venerated as a pious Jew did the city of Jerusa lem, he showed a catholicity of intellect worthy of his great heart, by founding chairs of philoso phy for each of the four chief sects—Platonie, Stoic, Peripatetic, and Epicurean. No man ever labored more earnestly to make that heathen faith which he loved so well, and that heathen philosophy which he believed in so truly, a vital and dominant reality. Toward the close of the year 176, he reached ]taly, and celebrated his merciful and bloodless triumph on De cember 23. In the succeeding autumn he de parted for Germany, where fresh disturbances had broken out among the restless and volatile barbarians. He was again successful in several sanguinary engagements; but his originally weak constitution, shattered by perpetual anx iety and fatigue, at length failed, and he died, either at Vienna or at Sirmium, on March 17, ISO, after a reign of twenty years.
Marcus Aurelius was the flower of the Stoic philosophy. It seems almost inexplicable that so harsh and crabbed a system should have pro duced so pure and gentle an example of humanity as the records of pagan history can show. Per Imps, as a modern philosophic theologian sug gests, it was because Stoicism was the most solid and practical of the philosophic theories, and the one which most earnestly opposed itself to the rapidly increasing licentiousness of the time, that the chaste heart of the youth was drawn toward it At 12 years of age, he avowed him self a follower of Zeno and Epictetus. Stoics were his teachers—Diog,notus, ApoHollins, and Junius Rustieus; and he himself is to be con sidered one of the most thoughtful teachers of the school. Oratory he studied under Herodes, Atticus,and Cornelius Pronto. His love of learn ing was insatiable. Even after lie had attained to the highest dignity of the State, he did not disdain to attend the school of Sextus of Clue ronea. :lien of letters were his most intimate friends, and received the highest honors, both when aline and dead. His range of studies was extensive, embracing morals, metaphysics, math ematics, jurisprudence, innsic, poetry, and paint ing. Nor must we forget that these were cultivated not merely in the spring-time of his life, when enthusiasm was strong and experience had not saddened his thoughts, and when study was his only labor, hut during the tumults of perpetual war, and the distraction necessarily arising from the government of so vast an Em pire. The man who loved peace with his whole soul died without beholding it, and yet the everlasting presence of war never tempted him to sink into a mere warrior. He maintained,un
corrupted to the end of his noble life, his philo sophic and philanthropic aspirations. After his decease, which was felt to be a national calamity, every Roman citizen, and many others in distant portions of the Empire, procured an image or statue of him, which more than a hundred years after was still found among their household gods. He became almost an object of worship, and was believed to appear in dreams, like the saints ol subsequent Christian ages.
There is one feature in his character, however, which it would be dishonest to pass over—his hostility to Christianity. He was a persecutor of the new religion; and, it is clearly demon strated, was cognizant, to a certain extent at least, of the atrocities perpetrated upon its fol lowers. Numerous explanations have been of fered of his conduct in this matter. The most popular one is that he for once allowed himself to he led away by evil counselors; but a deeper reason is to be found in that very earnestness with which lie clung to the old heathen faith of his ancestors. lie believed it to be true, and to be the parent of those philosophies which had sprung up out of the same soil; he saw that a new religion, the character of which had been assiduously, though perhaps unconsciously, mis represented to him, both as an immoral supersti tion and a mysterious political conspiracy, was secretly spreading throughout the Empire, and that it would bold no commerce with the older religion, but condemned it, generally in the strongest terms. It was, therefore, compara tively easy, even for so humane a ruler, to imag ine it his duty to extirpate this unnaturally hos tile sect. John Stuart Mill finds, in this tragic error of the great Emperor, a most striking warning against the danger of interfer ing with the liberty of thought.
In 177, Aurelius published his first edict against the Christians, and the persecution lasted during this and the following year. The aged Polycarp was burned at the stake at Smyrna, and Saint Cecilia was martyred at Rome (Sep tember IC, I7S), while large numbers perished in the furious persecution at Lugdunum (Lyons), in Gaul. Athenagoras of .Athens, a. Christian philosopher, addressed to the Emperor a defense (Apologia) of the Christians, still ex tant, which did not avail to check the martyr. dom.
Aurelius was the author of a beautiful ethical work, the Meditations, written in Greek, the finest product of the Stoic philosophy. It is edited by Stich (Leipzig, ISS2) : translated by Long (London, 1S62), Rendall (London, 1S97), and (in selections) by Smith (London, ISM. Consult: Farraor, Seekers After God (London, 1S6S) ; Rensn, Mare-Aunge (Paris, ISSI; trans lated, London, ISSS).