Download Meditations of Marcus Aurelius free PDF book Translated by John Jackson (1906 )





In the year A.D. 135 Emperor Hadrian adopted as his son and successor Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who bore also the names of Aurelius and of Annius Verus. Roman nobles of this time often boasted a long string of family appellations. As a rule, only two of these were employed, but the same individual might use a different pair at different times, or the son, for distinction s sake, might use one pair, while his father had used another.Partly for this reason, partly because his pedigree is not given, we do not know exactly who Commodus was. But he would seem to have been related on the one side to the Aurelian house, which drew its origin from Nimes in Southern Gaul, on the other to that of Annius Verus, which came, like Trajan and Hadrian, from Spain. Most probably he was related to Hadrian. Certainly, he cannot have been selected on the ground of his personal merits. Commodus was a handsome and gentlemanly debauchee, who had never distinguished himself in any way whatever; and was moreover, at the time of his adoption, in the last stage of consumption. But Hadrian was strongly attached to him.Gibbon and others have spoken of adoption as an excellent method for ensuring the succession of a competent Emperor. But the truth is that in almost every case it was a family arrangement, occasioned by there-markable childlessness of the Roman princes, and neither better nor worse than the rule of primogeniture, which would certainly have been always followed, if circumstances had made it possible.Commodus died on New Year s Day, 1 38, and Hadrian, whose own end was approaching, was compelled to make new and speedy arrangements. He would naturally have selected the son of Commodus, but the younger Lucius Verus was a mere child of seven years. Failing him, he would have taken Marcus Annius Verus, but Marcus again was but sixteen. Accordingly, he adopted as his son Titus Aurelius Antoninus, a dignified, excellent man, whose crowning merit was that his wife was Galeria Faustina, the paternal aunt of Marcus. Anto minus had been the father of two sons, but both appear to have died before his adoption into the imperial family. He submitted cheerfully to Hadrian s condition that he should in his turn adopt the younger Lucius Verus and Marcus. Thus the succession might seem to be firmly established in the Spanish line. In July of the same year Hadrian died, Antoninus became Emperor and Marcus crown-prince.