Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/124

CHAP. IV.
_____to the prejudices of every age, reflected some disgrace on the injured husband. He promoted several of her lovers to posts of honour and profit^[1]; and during a connection of thirty years, invariably gave her proofs of the most tender confidence, and of a respect which ended not with her life. In his meditations, he thanks the gods, who had bestowed on him a wife so faithful so gentle, and of such a wonderful simplicity of manners^[2]. The obsequious senate, at his earnest request declared her a goddess. She was represented in her temples with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Ceres and it was decreed, that, on the day of their nuptials, the youth of either sex should pay their vows before the altar of their chaste patroness^[3].

to his son Commodus.The monstrous vices of the son have cast a shade on the purity of the father's virtues. It has been objected to Marcus, that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy; and that 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 power. He lived but four years afterwards ; but he lived long

1. Hist. August, p. 34.
2. Meditat. 1. i. The world has laughed at the credulity of Marcus ; but madam Dacier assures us, (and we may credit a lady,) that the husband will always be deceived, if the wife condescends to dissemble.
3. Dion Cassius, 1. Ixxi. p. 1 195. Hist. August, p. 33. Commentaire de Spanheim sur les Caesars de Julien, p. 289. The deification of Faustina is the only defect which Julian's criticism is able to discover in the all-accomplished character of Marcus.