ness--its good genius, its
"Antonine"--whose fragile person might be foreseen speedily giving way
under the trials of military life, with a disaster like that of the
slaughter of the legions by Arminius. Prophecies of the world's
impending conflagration were easily credited: "the secular fire" would
descend from [179] heaven: superstitious fear had even demanded the
sacrifice of a human victim.

Marcus Aurelius, always philosophically considerate of the humours of
other people, exercising also that devout appreciation of every
religious claim which was one of his characteristic habits, had
invoked, in aid of the commonwealth, not only all native gods, but all
foreign deities as well, however strange.--"Help! Help! in the ocean
space!" A multitude of foreign priests had been welcomed to Rome, with
their various peculiar religious rites. The sacrifices made on this
occasion were remembered for centuries; and the starving poor, at
least, found some satisfaction in the flesh of those herds of "white
bulls," which came into the city, day after day, to yield the savour of
their blood to the gods.

In spite of all this, the legions had but followed their standards
despondently. But prestige, personal prestige, the name of "Emperor,"
still had its magic power over the nations. The mere approach of the
Roman army made an impression on the barbarians. Aurelius and his
colleague had scarcely reached Aquileia when a deputation arrived to
ask for peace. And now the two imperial "brothers" were returning home
at leisure; were waiting, indeed, at a villa outside the walls, till
the capital had made ready to receive them. But although Rome was thus
in genial reaction, with much relief, [180] and hopefulness against the
winter, facing itself industriously in damask of red and gold, those
two enemies were still unmistakably extant: the barbarian army of the
Danube was but over-awed for a season; and the plague, as we saw when
Marius was on his way to Rome, was not to depart till it had done a
large part in the formation of the melancholy picturesque of modern
Italy--till it had made, or prepared for the making of the Roman
Campagna. The old, unaffected, really pagan, peace or gaiety, of
Antoninus Pius--that genuine though unconscious humanist--was gone for
ever. And again and again, throughout this day of varied observation,
Marius had been reminded, above all else, that he was not merely in
"the most religious city of the wor