MARCO AURELIO (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus), ROMAN EMPEROR. — Emperor and philosopher, born in Rome on 26 March 121, died at Vindobona on 17
March 180. Of a noble Spanish family, having been orphaned of his father, he was adopted and welcomed into the home of his grandfather, Marcus Annius Verus. He had various teachers (Ricordi, I, 1); the Stoics (Diognetus, Rusticus) had a particular influence on him, urging him toward a rigid austerity (ibid., I, 6). The Emperor Hadrian adopted him in 136. In 138 Hadrian designated Antoninus Pius, M. A.’s uncle, as his successor, obliging him to adopt his nephew and L. Commodus; he then assumed the name of M. A. Verus. From 139 to 161 he pursued the cursus honorum, living at court under the effective and honest guidance of Antoninus. With Cornelius Fronto he devoted himself for a long time to rhetorical studies, until the stern Stoic Rusticus and the reading of Epictetus completely won him over. On 7 March 161, at his death, Antoninus Pius indicated that he was designating him as sole successor. He associated L. Commodus with himself, who, however, took no interest in government. An immense task therefore fell upon M. A. The Empire was undergoing severe trials: barbarian attacks, rebellions, pestilences, floods, famines, and financial difficulties. In 162 the barbarians of the north went into action; from 161 to 166 the Parthians engaged substantial military forces, which on their return brought the plague, causing devastation throughout the Empire. In 166 the barbarians besieged Aquileia. The two Emperors conducted the campaign from 166 to 169, the year in which Commodus died. M. A., having returned to Rome, auctioned the furnishings of the Imperial Palace, enlisted slaves and fugitives, and set out again in 170 for the arduous war that lasted until 175 and is commemorated by the monumental column. To this war belongs the episode of the restorative rain, which pagan writers attributed to Jupiter Pluvius, whereas Christian writers handed it down as a true miracle, due to the prayers of the Christian soldiers of the legio fulminata (v.). Meanwhile the lieutenant Avidius Cassius proclaimed himself emperor in the East; M. A. went there: he arrived after the rebellion had been suppressed by the killing of Cassius, pardoned the guilty, and began a journey to reorganize the eastern provinces. Having returned to Rome, he conferred the tribunician power upon his only surviving son, Commodus. In 178 the war summoned him back to the north; the plague, which was decimating the army, struck him, and he died of it, designating Commodus as his successor. His ashes were brought to Rome amid universal mourning.
During the nineteen highly turbulent years of his reign, he undertook major reforms within the State and works for the public good, including charitable institutions, among them the puellae Faustiniianae (named after Faustina, the Emperor’s wife), for the assistance of needy adolescents. His entire legislation was moreover inspired by a sincere Stoic humanitarianism toward the weak and slaves. There remains, an incongruous and indelible blemish, the persecution of the Christians, which his attachment to the traditional religion and his Stoic rationalism prevented him from understanding. Recalling them expressly (Ricordi, XI, 3), he mistook their serene and unshakable firmness for theatrical exhibitionism; perhaps alluding to them indirectly (ibid., III 16), he considered them atheists and immoral. He did not, however, substantially alter the legal provisions concerning them. Among the most illustrious victims, the celebrated martyrs of Lyons should be remembered (v.). There were also those condemned to the mines of Sardinia and Corinth (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., IV, 23, 10). The apologies of Justin (150), Melito of Sardis (172), and Athenagoras (177), presented to the Emperor himself, did not succeed in changing his mind. The radical doctrinal antithesis between Stoicism and Christianity, despite the external consonance of certain ethical norms, precluded any understanding and proved bloodily fatal to Christians under the philosopher-Emperor.
The Ricordi (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτὸν «Discourses with oneself») apparently date from the final years of M. A. Despite the wars and affairs of state, he found the means and time to withdraw into philosophical reflection. They are occasional notes, which M. A. fashioned in an intensely personal form, clothing the Stoic theories he professed in profound humanity, desolate sadness, and a vivid religious sentiment. Life, with its anxieties and tragedies, poses formidable problems that demand an inevitable solution, to be sought in knowledge of the essence of things—that is, in metaphysics. Reason frees one from superficial vanities by revealing reality, composed of cause and matter in necessary and rational evolution. Within the harmony of the whole, individual dissonances disappear. The present world, and every individual within it, are an aspect and a moment of the universal and eternal order. The universe is animated by a λόγος-πνεῦμα that pervades and vivifies it; this λόγος is divine, it is God. Doubts and hesitations concerning the gods are frequent, in alternative hypotheses between a spiritualistic and rational conception and an atomistic mechanism. «The works of the gods are full of providence» (Ricordi, II, 3). Divinity pervades and vivifies the world in an intrinsic union and dwells particularly in man, whose reason is a living part of the universal λόγος. The morality of M. A. is essentially and profoundly rational; by insisting on the privileged position of the mind, it leads to the enhancement and exaltation of a markedly inward morality, which demands commitment, seriousness, and steadfastness. M. A., a Roman and an emperor, emphasizes and develops the social aspects of Stoicism. What has value in man is the spirit, participation in the divine logos: the soul is mortal in its distinct individuality. The happiness of the sage lies in the continual and vigilant mastery of himself.
The exaltation of the spirit in Mar Aurelius’s Stoicism (as in Stoicism generally) is in reality only apparent, since in its profound essence the spirit is reduced there to matter. Nor was the supreme ideal of the sage attained, as M. A. himself confesses in a series of questions left unanswered (Ricordi, XI, 1). The metaphysics accepted uncritically was ultimately in contradiction with the ethics professed, and the frequent accents of pessimistic inspiration confirm this inner dissension. In M. A. there is a further voice in the dramatic torment of classical man, suspended between the logos ardently sought and invoked and the pathos lived and suffered.