r Christian in fact than any of the
Christian emperors who succeeded him. He governed his life by the Stoic
discipline, the most hardy, in its practical requirements, of ancient
systems, so rigorous in its ethic that Josephus is proud to claim an
affinity with it for the "straitest" of the Jewish sects, and so pure in
its spirit that St. Jerome ranks its best-known writer as a
Christian,--a philosophy which taught men to consider virtue as the only
good, vice as the only evil, all external things as indifferent. "His
life," says Gibbon, "was the noblest commentary on the precepts of Zeno.
He was severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just
and beneficent to all mankind. He regretted that Avidius Cassius, who
had excited a rebellion in Syria, had by a voluntary death deprived him
of the pleasure of converting an enemy into a friend. War he detested as
the disgrace and calamity of human nature; but when the necessity of a
just defence called upon him to take up arms, he readily exposed his
person to eight winter campaigns on the frozen banks of the Danube, the
severity of which was at last fatal to the weakness of his constitution.
His memory was revered by a grateful posterity, and above a century
after his death there were many who preserved the image of Marcus
Antoninus among their household gods."

The learned Casaubon, after placing him above Solomon, "as being lord
and master of more great kingdoms than Solomon was of towns," speaks of
him as a man "who, for goodness and wisdom, was had by all men during
his life in such honor and reputation as never man was either before him
or after him." "There hath ever been store enough of men," he says,
"that could speak well and give good instructions, but great want of
them that could or so much as endeavored to do as they spake or taught
others to do. Be it therefore spoken to the immortal praise and
commendation of Antoninus, that as he did write so he did live. Never
did writers so conspire to give all possible testimony of goodness,
uprightness, innocence, as they have done to commend this one. They
commend him, not as the best prince only, but absolutely as the best man
and best philosopher that ever lived."

Merivale, who concludes with the reign of M. Antoninus his "History of
the Romans under the Empire," adds his testimony to that of the cloud of
witnesses who have trumpeted the great _Imperator's_ praise. "Of all the
Caesars whose names are en