Of Antoninus there is no history, for he had almost no faults and committed no crimes. His ancestors had come from Nimes two generations before, and his family was one of the wealthiest in Rome. Reaching the throne at fifty-one, he gave the Empire the most equitable, and not the least efficient, government it would ever have.
He was the most fortunate man that ever wore a crown. We are told that he was tall and handsome, healthy and serene, gentle and resolute, modest and omnipotent, eloquent and a despiser of rhetoric, popular and immune to flattery. If we are to believe his adopted son Marcus we should have to reject him as “that faultless monster whom the world ne’er knew.” The Senate called him Pius as a model of the milder Roman virtues, and Optimus Princeps as the best of princes. He had no enemies and hundreds of friends. But he was not unacquainted with grief. His elder daughter died as he was setting out as proconsul to Asia; his younger daughter proved a dubious wife to Aurelius; and scandal accused his own wife of being as faithless as she was beautiful. Antoninus bore these rumors silently; and after Faustina’s death he established in her name and honor a fund for the support and education of girls and raised to her memory one of the loveliest temples in the Forum. He did not marry again, lest he mar the happiness and inheritance of his children, but contented himself with a concubine.
He was not a man of intellect in the narrower sense of that term. He had no learning and looked with an aristocrat’s indulgence upon men of letters, philosophy, or art; nevertheless, he helped such men richly and invited them often to his home. He preferred religion to philosophy, worshiped the old gods with apparent sincerity, and gave his adopted sons an example of piety that Marcus never forgot. “Do everything as a disciple of Antoninus,” Marcus bade himself; “remember his constancy in every reasonable act, his evenness in all things, his piety, and the serenity of his countenance, and his disregard of empty fame … with how little he was satisfied; how laborious and patient, how religious without superstition.”34 Yet he was tolerant of non-Roman creeds, moderated Hadrian’s measures against the Jews, and continued his predecessor’s lenience toward the Christians. He was no killjoy; he loved a jest and made many a good one; he played, fished, and hunted with his friends, and from his behavior none could have guessed that he was emperor. He preferred the quiet of his villa at Lanuvium to the luxury of his official palace and nearly always spent the evenings in the intimacy of his family. When he inherited the throne he put aside all thought of that careless ease to which he had looked forward as the consolation of old age. Perceiving that his wife anticipated increased splendor he reproved her: “Do you not understand that we have now lost what we had before?”35 He knew that he had succeeded to the cares of the world.
He began his reign by pouring his immense personal fortune into the imperial treasury. He canceled arrears of taxes, made gifts of money to the citizens, paid for many festival games, and relieved scarcities of wine, oil, and wheat by buying these and distributing them free. He carried on, but with moderation, the building program of Hadrian in Italy and the provinces. Yet he managed the national finances so ably that at his death the combined treasuries of the state had 2,700,000,000 sesterces. He gave a public accounting of all his receipts and expenditures. He behaved toward the Senate as merely one of it and never took important measures without consulting its leaders. He devoted himself to the chores of administration as well as to problems of policy; “he cared for all men and all things as his own.”36 He continued Hadrian’s liberalization of the law, equalized the penalties of adultery for men and women, deprived ruthless masters of their slaves, restricted the torture of slaves in trials, and decreed severe punishment for any owner who killed a slave. He encouraged education with state funds, provided for the education of poor children, and extended to recognized teachers and philosophers many privileges of the Senatorial class.
He ruled the provinces as well as he could without traveling. In all his long reign he was never absent for a day from Rome or its environs. He was content to appoint to provincial governorships men of tried competence and honor. He was anxious to keep the Empire safe without war; “he was continually quoting the saying of Scipio, that he would rather save a single citizen than slay a thousand foes.”37 He had to wage some minor wars in order to suppress revolts in Dacia, Achaea, and Egypt, but he left these tasks to subordinates and was satisfied with Hadrian’s cautious frontiers. Some tribes in Germany interpreted his mildness as weakness and perhaps were encouraged by it to prepare those invasions which rocked the Empire after his death; this is the one flaw in his statesmanship. For the rest the provinces were happy under him and accepted the Empire as the only alternative to chaos and strife. They showered him with petitions, which he almost always granted; and they could rely upon him to repair the ravages of any public calamity. Provincial authors—Strabo, Philo, Plutarch, Appian, Epictetus, Aelius Aristides—sang the praises of the pax Romana; and Appian assures us that he had seen at Rome the envoys of foreign states vainly asking admission for their countries to the boons of the Roman yoke.38 Never had monarchy left men so free, or so respected the rights of its subjects.39 “The world’s ideal seemed to have been attained. Wisdom reigned, and for twenty-three years the world was governed by a father.”40
It only remained for Antoninus to crown a good life with a peaceful death. In his seventy-fourth year he fell sick of a stomach disturbance and was seized with a high fever. He called Marcus Aurelius to his bedside and committed to him the care of the state. He instructed his servants to transfer to Marcus’ room the golden statue of Fortuna that had for many years stood in the bedchamber of the Prince. To the officer of the day he gave as watchword aequanimitas; soon afterward he turned as if to sleep, and died (161). All classes and cities vied with one another in honoring his memory.