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Memoirs of Trevoux, July 1751, art. 74.

He takes a

concubine.

Ant. 29.

and Faustina to be placed in the temple of Venus; and that before these statues all the young women who should be married should come with their future husbands to offer sacrifices; that there should be carried to the theatre the image of Faustina in gold every time Aurelius assisted at the show; that it should be put in the same place she used when alive, and that the ladies of the first rank should sit round by way of train. To the Faustinian girls established by Titus Antoninus, Aurelius added others in honour of his wife. Had he then a design to invite all the married and unmarried women of Rome to become Faustinas ?

He studied how to immortalize, by monuments of every kind, the name of a wife whom nothing suited so well as oblivion. There is yet to be seen, in the cabinet of the capitol, a fragment of a triumphal arch of Aurelius, where the apotheosis of Faustina is represented. He established a colony in the village where she died, and made it a city, which he called Faustinapolis: but what exceeds all bounds is this, that in a work where he was under no necessity to speak of Faustina, he makes a panegyric upon her, and congratulates himself, and thanks the gods for giving him a wife full of gentleness, tender affection, and evenness of manners. This is carrying goodness too far, it is forgetting that all the virtues consist in a medium, beyond which they become vices.

Another thing of a different kind appears to me Capit. M. singular, that this prince then, above fifty-four years old, and always infirm, should take a concubine after the death of his wife. Fabia or Fadia, sister of L. Verus, passionately wished to marry him, to become empress. Aurelius justly thought he should not give his children a mother-in-law; but he had not resolution to dispense with a concubine, and chose the daughter of the intendant of his wife's household.

I return

Alexandria

Id. ibid. 26,

I return to the expeditions undertaken by Aure- He visits lius after the revolt and death of Cassius. From and Athens. Syria he went into Egypt, and came to Alexandria, 27. and Dio. which had discovered great warmth for the rebellious party; nevertheless, as the Alexandrians had not been so bad as the Antiochians, he easily forgave them, and lived in their city more like a citizen and a philosopher than an emperor.

After he had restored order and peace in the eastern parts of the empire, he prepared to return to Italy, and passed through Athens; there he was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. He gratified the Athenians with sundry honourable and useful privileges; and as that city had been in all times the mother of arts and sciences, and drew an infinite number of strangers thither to improve themselves in learning, he reckoned, that to establish professors at Athens was to make himself the benefactor of mankind; he therefore appointed some with good salaries for all the different branches of literature.

into Italy,

On his return to Italy, he was taken in a storm; He returns however, he safely arrived at Brundusium, and immediately he and all his retinue put on the gown or habit of peace. He never suffered the soldiers to appear in a warlike dress at Rome or in Italy.

The triumphant return of Aurelius was a matter of great joy to the metropolis. He returned conqueror of the Marcomanni and Quadi, and the peace-maker of all the East. Upon the occasion of so many happy events, the emperor's family had received additional honours and dignities. The emperor, during this expedition, had named Pompeianus, his son-in-law, for the consulship, and loaded his son Commodus with several titles which brought him near to the sovereign rank, to which he raised him soon after. The people rejoiced to see this prince, as he advanced in age, rise in splendour and dignity, but without reason; and it must be owned, that in Aurelius's behaviour to his son, it was easier

Account of

his over-in

his son

Bad charac

ter of this prince.

to discover the indulgent father than the man of
abilities and good discernment.

Commodus had shown himself, from his youth, dulgent be- such as he afterwards proved, without dignity, haviour to without sentiment, without courage, susceptible of Commodus all bad impressions, but averse to every kind of good that was endeavoured to be instilled into him. He had a strong passion for pleasure, with a violent aversion to business. If he had any talents, they were such as did not suit his rank; he knew how to dance and sing, he was a comedian and gladiator; but the masters whom his father placed about him, to improve his understanding, and the lessons of prudence and virtue which he gave himself, did not meet with any admittance or good inclination in this prince; such is the power of natural disposition, or of the bad counsel of courtiers, says the historian*. The passions soon discovered themselves in him, and his very infancy began to be sullied with debauch; at the age of twelve he discovered his cruelty, by ordering the person who had not sufficiently warmed his bath to be thrown into a hot furnace; and his preceptor was obliged to cause a sheep's-skin to be burnt in the furnace, that the young prince might be deceived with the smell, and believe his orders had been executed.

It is not easy to determine what conduct Aurelius should have observed with his son Commodus; Julian solves the difficulty, and scruples not to affirm, that having a son-in-law, a man of eminent merit, capable to govern the empire, and in whose hands Commodus had been a thousand times better than in his own, Aurelius should have made Pompeianus his successor. I dare not entirely adopt so bold a judgment; I shall only observe, that the succession was not settled by any immutable law among the Romans,

Tantum valet ingenii vis, aut eorum qui in aula institu tores habentur. Lamprid.

{

Romans, as it is with us; that the appointment of an emperor had always at least the appearance of an election; and that Aurelius would have done nothing contrary to the constitution of the government, if he had adopted a successor in prejudice of his unworthy son. He was far from this opinion; there was no precaution which he did not take to secure the throne to Commodus, and he did for him what till then was without precedent.

After giving him the title of Cæsar when an infant, introducing him, when he entered into his fourteenth year, into all the public colleges of priests, and giving him the same year the manly gown, he declared him Prince of Youth. This ceremony was performed the seventh of July, in the year of Rome 926, in the presence of the army of Pannonia, where Aurelius had ordered his son upon the first news of Cassius's revolt, desiring undoubtedly to show to the mal-contents a successor out of his infancy, and already of an age to support him; so far Aurelius did no more than imitate what had been practised by many other emperors, and Commodus was then so young, that there was still room to hope,

Ant, 27.

Aurelius, when he set out for Syria and the East, Capit. M. carried his son along with him, and admitted him, during the expedition, into the tribunitial power with himself, pursuant to the desire of the senate in their acclamations. Commodus was therefore invested with this distinguishing mark of the sovereign power when he was not quite fifteen. This was new; never before had a prince of that age been raised to such a dignity. Aurelius went still further; Lamprid. he caused his son to be proclaimed emperor with himself upon the occasion of some victory of which we have no particular knowledge; he associated him in the triumph, as we shall soon mention, the twenty-third of December, in the year of Rome 927; and having named him consul the following

year,

year, after he had obtained from the senate a dispensation of his age. At last, that he might leave Tillem. M. no distinction between him and his son, he declaAurel. art. red him emperor; this was absolutely without example, and what is not to be excused.

24.

He soon had reason to repent; for this young prince, seeing himself raised so high, pretended he was become master of his own conduct; he would no longer suffer the regular and virtuous monitors whom his father had placed about him; he associated with men of no morals, and who flattered his wicked inclinations. Aurelius endeavoured to remove them from him; he turned them out of the palace; but Commodus sickening upon the grief this caused in him, the tender father had the weakness to replace about his son these advisers of corruption and debauch; then this young prince gave himself up to every kind of extravagance; wine, women, gaming, were his only employments; not content to fill the city with his irregularities, he even turned the palace into a place of infamy; he acted, at least in secret, the mean parts of a charioteer and gladiator; he disgraced himself by the most servile and shameful offices, so that he appeared rather born to disgrace than to the imperial digLamprid nity; and Aurelius thought himself obliged to suffer what he had put out of his power to prevent.

Commod.

12.

M. Aurelius's tri

gesses.
Capit. M.

Ant. 27.
Aurel. Vict.

Not to interrupt the account of this prince's conduct to his son, I have anticipated the order of time, and must now speak of what Aurelius did upon his return to Rome.

He triumphed with Commodus, as I have said, umph. Lar- over the Marcomanni, and other German nations he had conquered; this was his second triumph, and he accompanied it with games, shows, and largesses, which exceeded every thing that had been done by his predecessors on the like occasions. Dion relates that the emperor, according to the ancient practice, giving an account, in an assembly of the people, of

Dio.

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