It was March 7, 161 AD. Nearing 75 years of age, the ailing Emperor Antoninus Pius, the longest lived emperor since the Principate's second ruler, Tiberius, who died in 37 at the age of 79, retired for the evening, knowing he had not long to live. Earlier that day he'd summoned his Imperial Council and announced he was transferring power to his adoptive son. As he lay in bed, his guard asked for the customary password to be used by the night-watch this evening. Antoninus responded "AEQUANIMITAS" (equanimity in English). He died in his sleep that night. The password was an appropriate capstone to his life.
When the Empire in the West ceased to exist more than three centuries later, no ruler would have even reached the age of 70, except for Gordian I, who reigned for all of 21 days in 238 before committing suicide at 78 and Tacitus, who held the throne for nine months in 276.
Antoninus became emperor on July 11, 138. He is one of five Roman rulers popularly known, following the terminology of Edward Gibbon (author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in the late 18th century), as the Good Emperors who governed from 96 to 180. Many later historians dispute the terminology, though Cassius Dio writing in the third century would not, characterizing the period afterwards as when "our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust", but the reign of the five emperors undoubtedly represents Rome at its greatest geographical extent and prosperity.
The five were very different. Nerva (96-98) was an elderly senator elevated after the assassination of Domitian. As part of the deal surrounding his ascension he adopted Trajan as his son and successor.
After Nerva's brief reign, Trajan (born 56, reigned 98-117) became the first foreign born emperor (his Italian family had emigrated to Spain more than a century earlier). A warrior by temperament, Trajan destroyed and annexed the Dacian Kingdom, ancient enemies of Rome and located north of the Danube in modern day Romania. And then, dreaming of Alexander the Great, Trajan launched his greatest expedition in 114, annexing Armenia and attacking the Parthian Empire. Moving down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers he stormed the Parthian winter capital of Ctesiphon (near modern Baghdad) and then became the only Roman Emperor to stand on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Prevented from fulfilling his aspirations by continuing Parthian raids into Mesopotamia from their homeland base on the Iranian plateau and the need to quell major Jewish revolts in Egypt and Cyrenaica (modern Libya), Trajan returned to Antioch in 116. Falling ill, he died the next year, his recent conquests left in chaos.
According to Trajan's wife, the deceased emperor had named Hadrian as his successor and who was to vouchsafe her? Hadrian (born 76, reigned 117-38) was of a much different temperament than his predecessor. His was a reign of consolidation, not expansion. The emperor was highly intelligent, a man of culture, arrogant, and petty. Abandoning Trajan's middle east conquests, Hadrian returned to Rome. After stabilizing the political situation in the capital, he embarked on three lengthy tours of the empire, eight years in all, inspecting fortifications and legions on the frontiers. His most famous action in that respect was ordering the construction of what we now call Hadrian's Wall in the north of Britain. Reportedly he personally designed the wall; Hadrian took pride in his self-described architectural skills, also directing the rebuilding and design of the Pantheon in Rome and his astonishing villa in Tivoli.
(Map of Hadrian's travels)
Hadrian also took time to be a sightseer, most notably in Egypt and Greece, particularly Athens, where he spent three winters. It was Hadrian's love of Hellenic culture and his dislike of the Jewish (in the ancient world these were seen very much as opposites by both Hellenes and Jews) that sparked the greatest crisis of his regime. In 132 he ordered the construction of a Greek Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a site that had laid abandoned since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. The proposed defilement of the site triggered a massive Jewish revolt, led by Bar Kochba, which took three years and a third of Rome's entire army to subdue. In the aftermath, Hadrian banned Jews from Judea, placed a garrison on the site along with his temple, and renamed both the city (Aelia Capitolina) and the province (from Judea to Syria Palaestina). It's why while I enjoy reading about Hadrian I am not an admirer.
Like Trajan and Nerva, Hadrian was childless. As his health declined after 135 the matter of his planned succession became more important. His initial appointed successor died in 137 and he next turned to an older (born in 86) and highly regarded Roman senator, who became known as the Emperor Antoninus Pius, after Hadrian's death the following year. To ensure longer-term stability, as a condition of Hadrian's appointment, Pius, also childless, was required to adopt the sons of two prominent Roman families, the 17 year old Marcus Aurelius and 8 year old Lucius Verus.
Twenty three years later, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus were to succeed Antoninus as co-emperors, with Marcus as the senior partner. Lucius died in 169 but Marcus soldiered on until 180. And soldiering is much of what they did. Lucius spent much of his reign in the east, fighting the Parthians, while Marcus was fully occupied taking on the barbarians who flooded across the Danube, posing the greatest threat to Italy in almost three centuries. Marcus spent his last years on the Danube, far from Rome, overseeing his legions and writing Meditations, musings based on the Stoic philosophy he followed. Unlike the prior four emperors, Marcus had a son (Commodus) to whom he unfortunately trusted the empire upon his death (for more on his death and Stocism read At Vindobona).
The reign of Antonius Pius was unlike that of the other four.
Unlike Nerva's two years governing the Principate, the twenty three years of Antoninus was the longest reign between Tiberius (14-37) and Constantine the Great (306-337).
Unlike Trajan he sought no expansion of the empire and did not embark upon wars of conquest.
Unlike Trajan (Trajan's Forum & Market) and Hadrian (Pantheon) he initiated no monumental construction projects in Rome.
Unlike Trajan and Hadrian, Antoninus never faced any violent revolts by the populace.
Unlike the wandering Hadrian, Antoninus never left Italy during his entire reign, preferring to spend his time outside of Rome at his nearby villas.
Unlike Marcus Aurelius he was not forced into desperate wars to protect the empire, and not faced with a financial crisis which reduced Marcus to auctioning furniture from the Imperial Palace to pay for those wars.
Unlike Marcus he faced no open revolts within his army.
And unlike Marcus he did not have to deal with the Antonine Pandemic which swept across the Roman world beginning in 165, a pandemic thought to be smallpox and which killed a significant portion of the empire's population.
His reign was tranquil and the most peaceful of any during the entire history of the Empire (31 BC - 476 AD). His only military adventure was early in his rule, an advance in Britain from Hadrian's Wall to a line between present day Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, where an earthen wall was constructed and garrisoned for the next twenty years. Whether this was provoked by raids from Scottish tribes, or just an effort to garner prestige for the new regime remains unknown.
Within the empire he spent funds on roads and aqueducts but his greatest contribution was probably in the area of legal reforms. He enacted measurements making the freeing of slaves easier, punished killing of slaves by masters, requiring forcible sale of slaves if they were consistently mistreated and limiting the use of torture when obtaining testimony by slaves. He endorsed the principle that accused persons are not to be treated as guilty before trial and required that records of interrogations be kept to be available in the event of appeals of verdicts. Doesn't sound like much by modern standards but not bad for the second century.
His whole life had been quiet so his ruling style was not a surprise. Son of a Senatorial family from Nemausus (Nimes) in Gaul, and raised at Lanuvium in the Alban Hills outside Rome, he rose to prominence becoming counsel under Hadrian in 120, later one of four proconsuls for Italia, and finally taking the prestigious role of proconsul for Asia (today the western part of Turkey, adjacent to the Aegean, and one of the richest Roman provinces.
(Modern Lanuvium, 20 miles from Rome)
In 141, Antoninus' wife of thirty years, Faustina, died. By all accounts he was devoted to her and after her death had the Temple of Antoninus & Faustina built in the Roman Forum. The temple still stands today due to its conversion to a Christian church after the end of the empire - a similar conversion saved the Pantheon. At some point after his wife's death he began living with Galena Lysistrata, one of Faustina's freedwomen (former slave), and their relationship lasted until his death.
(Temple of Antoninus & Faustina today)
Amidst the usual tumult of war, conspiracy, murder, and unrest that surrounds most Roman emperors, Antoninus Pius stands out because nothing stands out about his rule other than its lack of exciting events.
And now, it's time to say goodnight to Antoninus, with equanimity.
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