Marcus Aurelius - Philosopher Emperor

Penning his seminal work on the Roman Empire's decline, Edward Gibbon wrote that, if a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the ascension of Commodus. During this century of Pax Romana, some of the greatest emperors ever to rule the eternal city's vast dominions came to power, but it was nevertheless a universal fact that imperial ages of gold will inevitably fade. In the twilight of this era, a thoughtful young man rose to inherit the purple, serving as the era's glorious swan song before everything began falling to pieces, partly due to his own actions. Welcome to our video on Rome's philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius. We often say that wars are fought on limited information and the side who knows more has a distinct advantage. Well, that is the case for the stock market too. 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Born in April of 121 in Rome's affluent Caelian hill district of villas and mansions, Marcus Aurelius was given the name of his father and grandfather, Marcus Annius Verus. Having grown wealthy from the olive oil trade in their native Baetica, Italo-Hispanic Marcus' Annii clan first rose to political prominence during the Flavian era, when his grandfather was first elevated to patrician status and then occupied multiple magistracies, including that of the city prefect of Rome and the consulship. By Hadrian's time, the Annii were exceptionally influential and occupied a place within the emperor's inner circle. It was in this environment that young Marcus grew up. In fact, Hadrian seems to have taken notice of the young man almost immediately, showering him with honors and favors in aid of, in the future, making him his protégé. At the age of just 6, for example, Marcus was enrolled in the equites at Hadrian's personal nomination. Just a year later, he started his education in a manner that we might call homeschooling. Marcus was educated in many things by private tutors and slaves hired by his grandfather, including drama, music, poetry, and literature, but it was the first drips of Stoic teachings which truly captured his mind, tutored by a Greek slave teacher, who were all the rage in Roman high society at the time. Once, during his early teenage years, his frequently absent mother Domitia Lucilla caught her son sleeping on hard, bare ground wearing only a philosopher's cloak, like a true Stoic should. By the time he was permitted to don the toga virilis of manhood at the age of 15, Hadrian had decided on the In 138, as the paranoid and increasingly violent emperor lay on his deathbed, he chose to adopt an unambitious, long-time senator as his son and heir, the future Antoninus Pius. This came with the condition that Antoninus would then adopt 17-year-old Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as his own successors. The aged magistrate was clearly a stopgap measure, designed to last only until young Marcus was experienced enough to ascend the throne, with Verus as a contingency measure. His settlement resolved, Hadrian died in July 138. It is said that Marcus was absolutely mortified by his new status. During the famously peaceful reign of Antoninus Pius, Marcus completed his formal education under the supervision of men such as Cornelius Fronto, the greatest rhetorician of his age, and Junius Rusticus, who nurtured the young prince's love of Stoicism. Marcus also continued to prove himself a dutiful and worthy, although physically frail, heir to the empire. He was appointed to the caester position, followed by a two-time stint as consul, as well as receiving both the tribunician and proconsular powers, all signals as to who would be the successor. Soon enough, coins were minted promoting Marcus as Caesar of Rome. To link him even more closely with Antoninus, he married the princeps' daughter Faustina in 145, who bore the first of Marcus' 13 children just two years later. Far from being a temporary stand-in, however, Antoninus survived for over two decades. It is a credit to Marcus' character that, in the Roman imperial world of assassination and power politics, he didn't just depose his adopted father as many others would have. This loyalty can be explained by the closeness shared by the two men. When one of Marcus' beloved tutors died, he expressed excessive grief, which was regarded as un-Roman by some of the courtiers, who complained about it to the emperor. However, Antoninus immediately had Marcus' back, telling his entourage to let him be a human being for once. It was a conscious recognition of just how different Marcus was expected to be as emperor, and the stress it must have brought him. On March 7th 161, when a 74-year-old Antoninus was on his deathbed, he expressed a wish that his adopted son and heir would treat the Roman Empire as well as he had Faustina. After inheriting the supreme authority, Marcus Aurelius' first act was to delegate a part of that power away by insisting to the senate that Lucius Verus, his adopted brother, become his junior co-emperor. Immediately following their meeting with the senate, Marcus Aurelius and his younger colleague customarily granted each Praetorian guardsman a donative of 20,000 sesterces to ensure their loyalty, after which they oversaw Antoninus' funeral and unopposed deification by the senate. Rome's ship of state sailed smoothly for the first half-year of this dual reign, but then everything began falling apart. The autumn of 161 saw torrential downpours, which flooded the Tiber and particularly affected Rome, killing many and leaving many homeless. Marcus did his best to alleviate the city's suffering. As if it wasn't enough, even worse and more shocking news arrived from the eastern provinces at about the same time. Emboldened by Antoninus Pius' tepid military stature, an aggressive Parthian king, Vologases IV, invaded the traditional Roman ally kingdom of Armenia. Initially, Vologases' force managed to destroy a few Roman armies sent to stop them. By the time reports reached Rome, Syria was in danger and the situation was critical. As neither Augustus had any military experience, Marcus sent Lucius Verus as figurehead to represent the imperial house at war, accompanied by a formidable general staff who would fight the war for him. While Verus travelled to the east at a leisurely pace and his generals began planning, Marcus Aurelius remained in Rome, personally administering Rome's financial, organizational, and legal matters, performing the day-to-day tasks which are often eclipsed in our historical narrative by accomplishments of military and diplomatic natures. As Roman armies were battling their Parthian counterparts in the east, Marcus Aurelius reintroduced Hadrian's unpopular but effective system of administering Italy with four special magistrates, with a limited authority to ease the Senate's worries. Good governance was balanced with the need to keep Rome's age-old aristocracy content. However, the Emperor refused to place the Senate's privileges above his empire's well-being. To ensure a constant inflow of competent magistrates and officials, Marcus increased the scope of positions available to equites and increased their salaries. The Emperor's accountant, the Rationibus, for example, was appointed from among the equites in Marcus' reign. An emulation of the Senate's ancient ladder of magistracies, the cursus honorum, was also developed for equites to rise through the ranks and show their prowess, thereby increasing the pool of talented candidates. Through this system would come many of the next generation's great figures, such as Pertinax and Septimius Severus. At the same time, Rome's Emperor also deftly increased senatorial prospects as well, compensating its members when he was forced to expropriate their provinces for imperial purposes, appointing them to additional posts, deferring to their judgment on many matters, and patronizing new senatorial families from across the empire. Marcus Aurelius' most impressive talent as Emperor was in judicial affairs. He was good with legal matters and seemed to enjoy dealing dutifully with the grinding, petition-filled life of a supreme administrator. When appropriate, such as dealing with cases of tax evasion, Marcus was a strict legalist, who enforced the full letter of the law. However, the Emperor was also capable of exercising compassion in the spirit of the law. In one of the cases, a Roman woman who had unknowingly married her uncle appealed to him on the grounds that they both had no idea this was the case. Marcus sympathized with her predicament, and although such a relation was technically illegal, he confirmed the legitimate status of their children. At the same time, he was active in building the military, and kept one eye on the Danube frontier, raising Legios II and III Italica to bolster the area. By late 165, Marcus' generals in the east had turned back the Parthians, and even pushed deep into Mesopotamia, re-establishing control over local client kingdoms such as Osrinnae. The hero of the war, Ovidius Cassius, even sacked the twin Parthian capitals of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, before making a bold foray into Media. For his extraordinary service, Cassius was appointed as Marcus' Prefect of Egypt, and de facto Viceroy of the East. As the legionary officer corps was doing most of the hard work, Lucius Verus was indulging in luxuries and vice offered by the cities of Laodicea and Antioch. He took the undeserved title of Parthicus Maximus anyway. When he and the legions returned home in 166, however, they brought much more than mere victory with them. Contracted during wartime and spread throughout the Roman Empire by soldiers returning to their frontier garrisons, a smallpox epidemic, known to us as the Antonine Plague, wiped out swathes of the population, critically decreasing the imperial tax base and manpower. In densely packed Rome, the great physician Galen and Senator Cassius Dio apocalyptically described thousands of deaths per day, and the Historia Augusta states that the dead were carried away on carts and wagons, thousands died, including many prominent persons. Marcus alleviated the suffering of Rome's population as effectively as he could. Burial procedures were regulated, public funerals paid for by the state, and religious festivals were held to please the angry gods and to calm the demoralized population. Yet the plague's extraordinarily devastating impact was made worse when a storm broke in the north. In late 166, a small probing force of Germanic warriors attacked Pannonia, but were repelled and diplomatically handled by a local governor. The next year, a massive confederation of Transdanubian tribes stretching from the Gallic to the Dacian border began attacking Roman territory, seeking more favourable conditions and entrance into the Empire. The Germanic horde punched through all defences in its path, plundering the provinces until it breached Italy and arrived outside the wealthy city of Aquileia. No barbarian force had entered Italy since the Cimbrian War 300 years before, but this horde could not siege the city and retreated north, leaving an atmosphere of terror and a path of destruction behind them. With the Empire being sapped to death by plague, Marcus Aurelius started pragmatically mustering the necessary reinforcements from whatever sources he could, however disreputable. Criminals and bandits were offered amnesty and pay if they served, while slaves and gladiators were given their freedom. To raise funds, the Emperor also sold off the imperial silverware and even some of his wife Faustina's ornate clothing, possibly as a symbolic gesture to show that he too was willing to make sacrifices. Though delayed due to the disease, Marcus Aurelius departed Italy for the very first time in spring 168, dragging a reluctant Verus with him. However, when the imperial procession reached Altynum, the junior Augustus suffered a stroke and died unexpectedly, leaving Marcus as sole ruler of the Roman world. Despite his contempt for war and lack of experience, the Emperor reached his tumultuous Danube frontier and made a Pannonian city called Sirmium his headquarters. The war, which began with a colossal Roman offensive across the Danube in 170, was a grinding, brutal back-and-forth slog between Rome and its surprisingly powerful Germanic neighbours. While the Greenhorn Princeps and his chosen council of veteran officers directed a campaign against the barbarian coalition's leaders, the Marcomanni and Quadi, other fronts burst into life. On the Rhine, smaller tribes assisted with raids into imperial territory, while in the south, Sarmatian Iasiges and Kostiboki made full-scale attacks, with the latter even managing to penetrate Greece and destroy the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries shrine. This nasty kind of warfare, which involved wholesale slaughter and pillage on both sides and near-genocide on the part of the Romans, was entirely unfamiliar to Marcus, who moved his base to Carnotum in 171. As author Frank MacLynn puts it, the essential tragedy of Marcus Aurelius was that he, a reclusive and bookish would-be philosopher-king, had to spend his reign in continual warfare. Whether he wanted to be or not, the Emperor proved an effective supreme commander, due in large part to his ability to choose effective officers and defer to their expertise when it was prudent. While conducting the war, the Princeps also continued responding to petitions and judging legal cases, putting himself under immense pressure. Marcus Aurelius dealt with the mental strain of his circumstances by writing what would ironically become one of the most well-known pieces of Stoic philosophy and life advice in history, the Meditations. Such a deliberate title gives the illusion that Marcus' words were intentionally published, but in fact, his writings were almost definitely for his eyes only. Similarly to J.R.R. Tolkien, however, who used his horrifying experiences during World War I to create his extensive universe, Marcus Aurelius' 12 Books of Reflections, which are packed with contemplation relating to death, were certainly inspired by the terrible Marcomannic Wars. A tranquil Marcus Aurelius, happy in Rome or in the country with his family and his books, says author and professor Anthony R. Burley, would probably never have put pen to paper. As the Roman legions shifted from place to place during the fighting of the early 170s, Marcus continued to write whenever he found the time, detailing matters far too extensively to discuss fully here, including his duties as emperor, trouble sleeping, and even musing about withdrawing from life completely. To summarize the Meditations does not do Marcus' writings justice, but one passage in particular shows his general attitude towards life. If you do the work on hand following the rule of right with enthusiasm, manfully, and with kindheartedness, and allow no side issues to interrupt, but preserve the divinity within you pure and upright, as if you might even now have to return it to its giver, if you make this firm, expecting nothing and avoiding nothing, but are content with your present activity in accordance with nature, and with old-fashioned truthfulness in what you say and speak, you will live a happy life. It is this kind of thought which likely led to Marcus' writings' survival after his death, and which engender keen attention in the 21st century. Go and read the Meditations for yourself, you will not regret it. Though never forget that their imperial author likely would not have cared if you did, if his own words are to be believed. Shall mere fame distract you? Look at the speed of total oblivion of all, and the void of endless time on either side of us, and the hollowness of applause. By 175, Marcus' legions were already occupying part of Marcomannia, and had forced many of their allies to conclude peace. He shifted south at this point, determined to exterminate the Sarmatians' root and stem, and annex their lands as Romanised provinces. However, with the campaign only weeks old, news arrived from Cappadocia that changed everything. Prompted by false rumours that Marcus Aurelius was dead, exacerbated by letters he had received from his old friend Faustina about his failing health, the Emperor's trusted Eastern Viceroy, Ovidius Cassius, declared himself Augustus and seized the eastern provinces south of Taurus for himself. The Imperial Governor in Asia Minor, Martius Verus, another hero of the Parthian War however, remained loyal, refusing to desert the Emperor and instead sending a messenger to alert him to the threat. Even though Cassius quickly realised that the rumours had been false, he was in far too deep to simply repent, and so continued his bid for the throne. In response, Marcus Aurelius summoned his 15-year-old son Commodus to Germania, and made it clear that he was ready to claim the purple if necessary. Before preparations were complete for the march against the usurper, Cassius was assassinated by a loyalist centurion known only as Antonius, after a dream of empire lasting 3 months and 6 days. His head was sent to Marcus, who refused to even see it. After strong-arming the defeated Aesages into a hasty peace, which saw 5,500 of their cavalry sent to Britannia as auxiliaries, Marcus toured the east in order to assure its loyalty, before returning to Rome and making Commodus his co-emperor in 177. The journey was too much for Faustina, who died en route. Rumours persist that she was poisoned for her part in Cassius' revolt. August 178 saw both father and son depart Rome for the Expeditio Germanica Secunda, the second phase of the Marcomannic Wars. After two more years of conflict, in which Marcus came very close to provincialising the Marcomannic, Quadi and Aesages lands, the emperor fell seriously ill with plague in March 180. When the troops found out, they were greatly grieved, for they loved him as none other. One night, as the emperor's condition worsened, a tribune asked him for the night's watchword and was told to go to the rising sun, for I am already setting. He was giving Commodus to the protection of the soldiers, and with that done, he passed away. With him, unknown to everyone, also died the Pax Romana. We will talk about Roman history more in the coming months, so make sure you are subscribed to our channel and have pressed the bell button. We would like to express our gratitude to our Patreon supporters and channel members, who make the creation of our videos possible. 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