Even after this Aurelius was not allowed to rest. From Rome, to which he had returned, he marched to Germany to carry on the war against the tribes which harassed the empire. There the alarming news reached him that Avidius Cassius, the brave and experienced commander of the Roman troops in Asia, had revolted and proclaimed himself emperor. But the rebellion did not last long. Cassius had only enjoyed his self-conferred honour for three months, when he was assassinated, and his head was brought to Marcus. With characteristic magnanimity, Marcus did not thank the assassins for what they had done; on the contrary, he begged the senate to pardon all the family of Cassius, and to allow his life to be the only one forfeited on account of the civil war. This was agreed to, and it must be considered as a proof of the wisdom of Aurelius's clemency, that he had little or no trouble in pacifying the provinces which had been the scene of rebellion. He treated them all with forbearance, and it is said that when he arrived in Syria, and the correspondence of Cassius was brought him, he burnt it without reading it. During this journey of pacification his wife Faustina, who had borne him eleven children, died. The gossiping historians of the time, particularly Dion Cassius and Capitolinus, charge Faustina with the most shameless infidelity to her husband, who is even blamed for not paying heed to her crimes. But none of these stories rest on evidence which can fairly be considered trustworthy; while, on the other hand, there can be no doubt whatever that Aurelius loved his wife tenderly, and trusted her implicitly while she lived, and mourned deeply for her loss. It would seem that Aurelius, after the death of Faustina and the pacification of Syria, proceeded, on his return to Italy, through Athens, and was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, the reason assigned for his doing so being, that it was his custom to conform to the established rites of any country in which he happened to find himself. Along with his son Commodus he entered Rome in 176, and obtained a triumph for victories in Germany. In 177 occurred that persecution of Christians, the share of Aurelius in which has caused great difference of opinion, and during which Attalus and others were put to death. Meanwhile the war on the German frontier continued, and the hostile tribes were defeated as on former occasions. In this campaign Aurelius led his own forces; and, probably on that account, he was attacked by some infectious disease, which ultimately cut him off, after a short illness, accord ing to one account, in his camp at Sirmium (Mitrovitz) on the Save, in Lower Pannonia, and, according to another, at Vindobona (Vienna), on the 17th March 180 A.D., in the fifty-ninth year of his age. His ashes (according to some authorities, his body) were taken to Rome, and he was deified. Those who could afford the cost obtained his statue or bust, and, for a long time, statues of him held a place among the Penates of the Romans. Commodus, who was with his father when he died, erected to his memory the Antonine Column (now in the Piazza Colonna at Rome), round the shaft of which are sculptures in relief commemorating the miracle of the Thundering Legion and the various victories of Aurelius over the Quadi and the Marcomanni.
The one blemish in the life of Aurelius is his hostility to Christianity, which is the more remarkable that his morality comes nearer than any other heathen system to that of the New Testament. Attempts have been made to show that he was not responsible for the atrocities with which his reign is credited, but the evidence of Justin, of Athenagoras, of Apollinaris, and above all, of Melito, bishop of Sardia, and of the Church of Smyrna, is overwhelmingly to the effect that not only were there severe persecutions of Christians, in which men like Polycarp and Justin perished, but that the foundation of these persecutions was certain rescripts or constitutions issued by Aurelius as supplementary to the milder decrees of his predecessors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. In explanation, however, if not in extenuation, of the attitude of Aurelius towards Christianity, several circumstances should be taken into consideration. In the first place, it is evident that he knew little of the Christians, and absolutely nothing of Christian ethics. In his Meditations he makes only one reference (xi. 3) to the adherents of the new creed, and that of the most contemptuous character, showing that he confounded them all with certain fanatics of their number, whom even Clemens of Alexandria compares, on account of their thirst for martyrdom, to the Indian gymnosophists. How far this ignorance was culpable it is impossible at so remote a date to say. Further, it should be noted, in regard to the rescripts upon which the persecutions were founded, that, although they were in the name of the emperor, they may not have proceeded directly from him. There is no evidence that he was an active persecutor, except a passage in Orosius to the effect that there were persecutions of the Christians in Asia and Gallia “under the orders of Marcus;” and it should not be kept out of consideration that he was to some extent a constitutional monarch, and had to pay deference both to the consulta of the senate and the precedents of previous emperors. At the time there was a great popular outcry against the Christians on social and political, even more than on religious, grounds; and Aurelius may have been as much at the mercy of intriguers or fanatics when he gave his sanction to the butcheries of Christians in Asia Minor, as William III. was at the mercy of Stair and Breadalbane, the real authors of the massacre of Glencoe. Finally, it should be borne in mind that, in the reign of Aurelius, the Christians had assumed a much bolder attitude than they had hitherto done. Not only had they caused first interest and then alarm by the rapid increase of their numbers, but, not content with a bare toleration in the empire, they declared war against all heathen rites, and, at least indirectly, against the Government which permitted them to exist. In the eyes of Aurelius they were atheists and foes of that social order which he considered it the first of a citizen's duties to maintain, and it is quite possible that, although the most amiable of men and of rulers, he may have conceived it to be his duty to sanction measures for the extermination of such wretches. Still his action at the time must be considered, as John Stuart Mill puts it, as “one of the most tragical facts in all history.”
known by the title of his Reflections, or his Meditations, although that is not the name which he gave to it himself, and of the genuineness of the authorship no doubts are now entertained. It is believed that the emperor also wrote an autobiography, which has perished with other treasures of antiquity. The Meditations were written, it is evident, as occasion offered, in the midst of public business, and even on the eve of battles on which the fate of the empire depended, hence their fragmentary appear ance, but hence also much of their practical value and even of their charm. It is believed by many critics that they were intended for the guidance in life of Aurelius's son, Commodus. If so, history records how lamentably they failed in accomplishing their immediate effect, for Commodus proved one of the greatest sensualists, buffoons, and tyrants that disgraced even the Roman purple. But they have been considered as one of the most precious of the legacies of antiquity, as, in fact, the best of non-inspired reflections on practical morality. They have been
recognised as among the most effectual stimuli to strugglers