LIFE
Germans, who had broken through the frontier defences, crossed the Brenner Pass, and were actually investing Aquileia, in the neighbourhood of Trieste. The threat of 300 years earlier, when Marius broke the inroads of the Cimbri and Teutones, seemed again to menace the valley of the Po, perhaps Rome itself. What followed is obscure; there was serious fighting and the enemy were driven back by the two Emperors in a.d. 166, so that the immediate danger was relieved. In 168–9 there was another expedition which was hindered by a fresh outbreak of plague, and in January of the latter year L. Aurelius Verus died of apoplexy at Altinum, as the two Emperors were returning towards Rome from the area of pestilence. Marcus now ruled alone, until in a.d. 177 he raised his son Commodus to the position of joint Emperor, which Lucius had enjoyed.
The remainder of the reign was mostly spent in northern warfare, at first against the tribes in Bohemia, later farther east on the edge of the Roumanian salient. The war falls into two periods, a.d. 169–75 and a.d. 177–80. The first period was closed by the revolt of Avidius Cassius, the successful general of the Parthian war. Marcus had given him large powers to control the Eastern Provinces as governor of Syria. In April a.d. 175 he declared himself Emperor at Antioch. Marcus at once made a necessary armistice with the tribes beyond the Danube, moving a large body of troops under chosen leaders to crush the pretender. He showed his determination to hold his position by causing his son Commodus to come of age on 19 May a.d. 175. In July Cassius was assassinated and his 'brief dream of supremacy closed after three months and six days'. Marcus treated the conspirator's family and the principal rebels with leniency, but his actions show that the later accounts of his willingness to abdicate are mere inventions. Equally absurd is the fiction that Faustina herself was implicated with Cassius.
