all decency, and showed himself to be a weak and worthless
personage, as unfit for war as he was for all the nobler duties of
peace, and capable of nothing but enormous gluttony and disgraceful
self-indulence. Two things only can be said in his favour; the one,
that, though depraved, he was wholly free from cruelty; and the other,
that he had the good sense to submit himself entirely to his brother,
and to treat him with the gratitude and deference which were his due.

Marcus had a large family by Faustina, and in the first year of his
reign his wife bore twins, of whom the one who survived became the
wicked and detested Emperor Commodus. As though the birth of such a
child were in itself an omen of ruin, a storm of calamity began at once
to burst over the long tranquil State. An inundation of the Tiber flung
down houses and streets over a great part of Rome, swept away multitudes
of cattle, spoiled the harvests, devastated the fields, and caused a
distress which ended in wide-spread famine. Men's minds were terrified
by earthquakes, by the burning of cities, and by plagues or noxious
insects. To these miseries, which the Emperors did their best to
alleviate, was added the horrors of wars and rumours of wars. The
Partians, under their king Vologeses, defeated and all but destroyed a
Roman army, and devastated with impunity the Roman province of Syria.
The wild tribes of the Catti burst over Germany with fire and sword; and
the news from Britain was full of insurrection and tumult. Such were the
elements of trouble and discord which overshadowed the reign of Marcus
Aurelius from its very beginning down to its weary close.

As the Partian war was the most important of the three, Verus was sent
to quell it, and but for the ability of his generals--the greatest of
whom was Avidius Cassius--would have ruined irretrievably the fortunes
of the Empire. These generals, however, vindicated the majesty of the
Roman name, and Verus returned in triumph, bringing back with him from
the East the seeds of a terrible pestilence which devastated the whole
Empire and by which, on the outbreak of fresh wars, Verus himself was
carried off at Aquileia.

Worthless as he was, Marcus, who in his lifetime had so often pardoned
and concealed his faults, paid him the highest honours of sepulcre, and
interred his ashes in the mausoleum of Hadrian. There were not wanting
some who charged him with the guilt of fratricide, asserting that the
death o