Marcus Aurelius afterwards reigned alone, and with prudent energy faced successfully many serious trials—insurrections in distant provinces, pestilence at home, inundations and earthquakes which devastated large sections of the Imperial City and ruined the great granaries on which depended the food supply of the teeming population. Fierce, intractable enemies threatened the empire closely and persistently throughout his life. Although by predilection a man of peace, he was a resolute soldier who fought many strenuous campaigns and brought many savage races into absolute submission. He could act with the sternest severity, but he showed extraordinary magnanimity to one insubordinate lieutenant, and treated rebellious provinces with extreme gentleness. He was so mild and merciful that under no provocation did he lose his temper, and his humanity showed itself in his concern for his fellow creatures; even for the gladiators whom he would not allow to practise fencing with sharp swords. His labours were incessant; his campaigns most arduous. For eight successive winters he warred upon the frozen banks of the Danube, and seriously injured his originally weak constitution by the hardships and unending anxieties he endured.
With all his great achievements and the conspicuous services he rendered to his country, his fame rests mainly on that delightful book of meditations embodying his serene philosophy which is still read and admired by the whole world. This “noblest, wisest, purest, most virtuous and self-denying gentleman that ever in any age wore the imperial robes,” died at Vienna A.D. 180, after a reign of twenty years. He met death quietly and with dignity, not as a calamity but as a blessing: “Turn me to the rising sun for I am setting,” he said to his attendants, and covering his head he composed himself for sleep. No man bore crosses with more fortitude and no man was more sorely tried.
Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius, lives in history as the most abandoned of her sex, and his son, Commodus, although educated with the utmost solicitude, was one of the most glaring instances of wasted effort. “The monstrous vices of the son,” says Gibbon, “have cast a shade on the purity of the father’s virtues.” It has been said that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy, when he chose a successor in his own family rather than in the republic. Nothing, however, was neglected by the anxious father, and by the men of virtue and learning whom he summoned to his assistance, to expand the narrow mind of young Commodus, to correct his growing vices and to render him worthy of the throne for which he was designed. But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous. The distasteful lesson of a grave philosopher was, in a moment, obliterated by the whisper of a profligate favourite, and Marcus himself blasted the fruits of this laboured education by admitting his son at the age of fourteen or fifteen to a full participation of the imperial powers. Yet Commodus was not as he has been represented, a tiger, born with an insatiate thirst for human blood and capable from his infancy of the most inhuman actions. “Nature had formed him of a weak rather than a wicked disposition. His simplicity and timidity rendered him the slave of his attendants, who gradually corrupted his mind. His cruelty, which at first obeyed the dictates of others, degenerated into habit and at length became the ruling passion of his soul.” He was wasteful and weakly extravagant, prodigal in his expenditure on his personal amusements, especially in gladiatorial exhibitions in which he himself engaged. He liked to pose as the Roman Hercules, and entered the arena to slay ostriches and panthers, the camel, leopard, elephant and the rhinoceros; he fought hundreds of times as a retiarius in combat with a secutor and stooped to receive a salary from the common fund for the gladiators in proof of his preëminence. He was slavishly fond of singing, dancing and playing the buffoon; he was a glutton and profligate who wallowed in the most sensuous abominations, and after the life of this monster and madman had been threatened by many plots, he was at last poisoned in his own palace by Marcia, his mistress, who, finding the drug too slow in action, caused him to be strangled by one of his gladiators. His body was refused burial by the Senate and thrown into the Tiber, but the Emperor Pertinax recovered it and had it secretly conveyed to the mausoleum. The memory of Commodus was branded with eternal infamy; it was ordered that his honours should be reversed; his titles erased from the public monuments; his statues thrown down; his body dragged with a hook into the stripping room of the gladiators and exposed to public contumacy.
The last occasion on which the tomb was used was for the interment of the Emperor Septimus Severus A.D. 211, an able, vigorous and just ruler who fought his way to the throne against two competitors; all three of them were generals of armies which supported their pretensions. Severus was at the head of the Pannonian legions, and occupied the country between the Danube and the Adriatic. He was nearest to Rome, so that, by using almost incredible expedition, he made successful head against his competitors, and was the first to advance and seize the city. He secured his position by many acts of cruelty, but when once safe, governed with justice and showed himself a man of character. He took Marcus Aurelius for his model, and was devoted to philosophy and study, but not averse to war. His last campaign was in Britain, and he undertook it in the vain hope of putting an end to the fierce quarrels existing between his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, who hated each other almost from birth. They were both poor commonplace creatures, devoid of talent and implacably jealous of each other, although their father treated them with studied impartiality and associated both with him on the throne so that Rome had three emperors at one and the same time. He carried both sons with him into Britain, where at an advanced age and suffering acutely from gout, he laid himself out for the complete conquest of the islands, even to their most northern extremities, but death overtook him at York. His remains were taken back to Rome to be honoured with a magnificent funeral and his ashes were laid in Hadrian’s tomb.
With the burial of Septimus Severus ended the first purpose which this great monument was intended to serve. When next it appears in authentic writings, it is in a military character, as part and parcel of the defences of Rome. Troublous times were at hand for the Eternal City and its very existence was threatened by the rising tide of more stalwart peoples. Hordes of barbarians from northern and central Europe were about to overflow the remote barriers and far flung frontiers of the empire; Goths, Visigoths, Franks, Lombards and Huns swept south in an irrepressible stream of invasion. The mausoleum became a fortress and was incorporated in the circumvallation given to the city by Aurelian in 271 A.D., when he enclosed the Campus Martius within its limits and the left bank of the Tiber. The strength and commanding position of the mausoleum constituted it a place of great importance, a citadel and central point in the city walls. It was to play a great part now in the many fierce struggles for the possession of Rome. By this time the separation had taken place between East and West and Byzantium had become the seat of empire in the East, while in the West the court was fixed at Milan. Rome, deserted and neglected, saw ruin impending, and only escaped destruction at the hands of the barbarians by the victories of Stilicho, a distinguished general of the Western emperor, Theodosius. Honorius, his son, made a triumphal entry into Rome and sought to revive its splendours; but the barbarian menace drove him to strengthen the fortifications.
Ere long the Goths under Alaric advanced in great force to besiege the city. After three distinct and determined attacks the Goths at length captured and sacked it, but voluntarily withdrew with the spoils of war. The fall of Rome horrified the whole world and the shock was repeated when the Hun, Attila, the “scourge of God,” descended upon it in all his brutal fury. He retreated, it was said, impelled by superstitious terrors. Rome yielded, however, to Genseric, the wild and terrible king of the African Vandals, who pillaged the defenceless city for fourteen days, making frightful havoc and sweeping away all that the Goths had spared.
The damage inflicted in these devastating attacks was incalculable. Rome was nearly depopulated; within forty-five