burned the papers of Cassius without reading them, so that he might not be at liberty to sus- pect any as traitors; treated the provinces which had rebelled with extreme gentleness; disarmed the enmity and dispelled the fears of the noliles who had openly favored his insurgent liautenant. While he was pursuing his work of restoring tranquillitj-, Faustina died in an ob- scure village at the foot of Jlount Tauru>; and her husband (and this was perhaps the greatest defect in his character), though undoubtedly conscious of her glaring profligacy and infidelity, paid the most lavish honors to her memory.
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 — Platonic, .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 lie believed in so truly, a vital and dominant reality. Toward the close of the year 176, he reached Italy, 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, 180, after a reign of twenty years.
Marcus Aurclius 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- haps, as a modern pliilosophie 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 Epictctus. Stoics were his teachers — Diognotus, Apollonius, and Junius Rusticus; and he himself is to be con- sidered one of the most thouglitful teachers of the school. Oratory he studied under Herodes, Atticus,and Cornelius Fronto. His love of learn- ing was insatiable. Even after he had attained to the highest dignity of the State, he did not disdain to attend the school of Sextus of Ch«- ronea. Jlen of letters were his most intimate friends, and received the highest lionors, both when alie and dead. His range of studies was extensive, embracing morals, metaphysics, math- ematics, jurisprudence, music, poetry, and paint- ing. Nor must we forget that these were cultivated not merely in the spring-time of his life, when enthiisiasm was strong and experience had not saddened his thoughts, and when study was his only lal)or, but 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 ^ar 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 of 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 tliis matter. The most popular one is that lie for once allowed himself to be led away by evil counselors; but a deeper reason is to be found in that very earnestness with which he clung to the old heathen faith of his ancestors. He 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 tliat it would hold no commerce with the older religion, but condemned it, generally in the strongest terms. It was, therefore, compara- tively ea.sy, even for so humane a ruler, to imag- ine it his duty to extirpate this unnaturally lios- tile sect. John Stuart Mill finds, in this tragic error of the great Emjieror, a most striking warning against the danger of interfer- ing with the liberty of thought.
In 177, Aurclius 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 16, 178), wliile large numbers perished in the furious persecution at Lugdunum (Lyons), in Gaul. Athcnagoras of Athens, a. Christi.an philosopher, addressed to the Emperor a defense {Ajwlogia) of the Christians, still ex- tant, which did not avail to check the martyr- dom.
Aurclius was the author of a beautiful ethical work, the Meditations, written in Greek, the finest product of the Stoic philosophj'. It is edited bv Stich (Leipzig, 1882) : translated by Long (London, 1862), Rcndall (London, 1897), and (in selections) by Smith (Lond(m, 1899). Consult: Farnw, Seekers After God (London, 1868) ; Renan, Marc-Anrele (Paris, I88I; trans- lated, London, 1S88).
AURELIUS, Marcus, Statue of. A fine bronze equestrian statue in Rome, which, during the Middle Ages, stood near the Lateran, and was removed in 1538 to its present commanding position on the Capitoline Hill. Its preservation is probably due to the fact that it was popularly believed to be the statue of Constantine. the first Cliristian Emperor. In 1347, when Rienzi was chosen to the tribuneship, wine and water
