ans, Hun-impelled, thundering on the
doors of Pannonia; and for the next eleven years Aurelius was
busy fighting them. Then Avidius Cassius revolted in Asia;--but
was soon assassinated. Then the Christians emerged from their
obscurity, preachers of what seemed anti-national doctrine; and
the wise and noble emperor found himself obliged to deal with
them harshly. He _was_ wise and noble,--there is no impugning
that; and he _did_ deal with them harshly: we may regret it;
as he must have regretted it then.

So the reign marks a definite turning-point: that at which the
empire began to go down. In it the three main causes of the ruin
of the ancient world appeared: the first of the pestilences that
depopulated it; the first incursion of the barbarians that broke
it down from without; the new religion that, with its loyalty
primarily to a church, an _imperium in imperior,_ undermined
Roman patriotism from within. Nero's persecution of the
Christians had been on a different footing: a madman's lust to
be cruel, the sensuality that finds satisfaction in watching
torture: there was neither statecraft nor religion in it; but
here the Roman state saw itself threatened. It was threatened;
but it is a pity Aurelius could find no other way.

In himself he was the culmination of all the good that had been
Roman: a Stoic, and the finest fruit of Stoicism,--which was the
finest fruit of philosophy unillumined (as I think) by the
spiritual light of mysticism. He practised all the virtues; but
(perhaps) we do not find in him that knowledge of the Inner Laws
and Worlds which alone can make practise of the virtues a saving
energy in the life of nations, and the imspiration of great ages
and awakener of the hidden god in the creative imagination of
man. The burden of his _Meditations_ is self-mastery: a
reasoning of himself out of the power of the small and great
annoyances of life;--this is to stand on the defensive; but
the spiritual World-Conqueror must march out, and flash his
conquering armies over all the continents of thought. An
underlying sadness is to be felt in Aurelius's writings. He
lived greatly and nobly for a world he could not save... that
could not be saved, so far as he knew. He died in 180; and
another Nero, without Nero's artistic instincts, came to the
throne in his son Commodus; pralaya, military rule, disruption,
had definitely set in.

Now anciently a manvantara had begun in Western Asia somew