Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius (born at Rome 121 AD) was forty when he succeeded Antoninus. He ruled with his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, until his death in 169. And then shared the throne with his son, Commodus, from 177 AD. He was the last of what was known as the Five Good Emperors. He has been called "The Philosopher" and was a practitioner of Stoicism.

"No man has ever carried further than Marcus Aurelius the desire of moral perfection, and he accounted, like other Stoics, the service of humanity indispensable to the attainment of such perfection. The idea which runs through all his Meditations—a collection of thoughts jotted down in the leisure moments of a busy life...His view of life is austere and even sad. “The things which are much valued in life are empty and rotten and trifling”. But he cultivated a cheerful temper. His teacher Maximus, he tells us, had taught him cheerfulness in all circumstances as well as in illness. The precepts on which he is always dwelling are to love all men as brothers, to forgive injuries, and to sacrifice even thing to duty. Few men have more nearly approached in practice their own ideal." THE PRINCIPATE OF MARCUS AURELIUS  (161-180 AD), Sect. I., Marcus and Verus. The two Augusti. History of the Roman Empire 27 BC to 180 AD By J.B. Bury (1861 - 1927).

Marcus Aurelius' own Meditations offer a personal view of what he claimed was his inner life. Yet, he used his position of power over the Pax Romana to conquer the Parthian Empire in the East kiling thousands. As the Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus directed his general Avidius Cassius to sack the Parthian capital Ctesiphon in 164 AD but later killed him as competition to his power. He also fought the German Marcomanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians with vigor during the Marcomannic Wars but most significant is that he went out of his way to allow if not increase the persecution of early Christians during his reign.

Marcus Aurelius was a politician and needed the support of the Senate and the people and believed in concepts of power and control over the people. While he may have imagined himself a servant king the power of the office of Benefactor through taxation and tribute made him a ruler who exercised authority one over the other. Power corrupts and highminded philosophies help us justify that corruption.

In his youth through adoption, he was close to Emperor Hadrian. Hadrian and the Christians is a publication that must excite curiosity about this emperor whose reign is widely considered to be one of peace, prosperity, and religious tolerance.

Hadrian like Trajan had a policy toward the Christians that they should not be sought or hunted. But they continued to persecute them through prosecution for specific offenses. One of the common indictments was their consistent refusal to swear oaths. Hadrian laid down the regulation for the judges of the courts that accusers of Christians had to bear the burden of proof for their denunciations or be punished for calumnia.

Quintus Licinius Silvanus Granianus, had enquired of Hadrian how to handle legal cases where some inhabitants were accusing their neighbors of being Christians through "informers or mere clamor". Gaius Minicius Fundanus was the recipient of that imperial edict from Hadrian about conducting trials of Christians which stated that merely being a Christian was not enough for action against them to be taken, they must also have committed some illegal act.

• "This order of Hadrian was attached by the Christian apologist Justin Martyr to the end of his First Apology, 155 AD. The Sanctuary of the Three Gauls had been established by Augustus in the late 1st century BC at Lugdunum (Lyons, France). The persecution in Lyons started as an unofficial movement to ostracize Christians from public markets, but eventually Christians were arrested, tried in the forum, and subsequently imprisoned and even condemned to various punishments: fed to the beasts, torture, and the poor living conditions of imprisonment. Accusations of atheism, incest, and even cannibalism were used to justify the Christian Conflict.

Christian historian Eusebius, posts a rather odd letter in his Ecclesiastical History, describing the events around Marcus Aurelius:

• "The greatness of the tribulation in this region, and the fury of the heathen against the saints, and the sufferings of the blessed witnesses, we cannot recount accurately, nor indeed could they possibly be recorded. For with all his might the adversary [Satan] fell upon us, giving us a foretaste of his unbridled activity at his future coming. He endeavored in every manner to practice and exercise his servants against the servants of God, not only shutting us out from houses and baths and markets, but forbidding any of us to be seen in any place whatever. But the grace of God led the conflict against him, and delivered the weak, and set them as firm pillars, able through patience to endure all the wrath of the Evil One."

"And they joined battle with him, undergoing all kinds of shame and injury; and regarding their great sufferings as little, they hastened to Christ, manifesting truly that ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us afterward.’ Romans 8:18 7. First of all, they endured nobly the injuries heaped upon them by the populace; clamors and blows and draggings and robberies and stonings and imprisonments, and all things which an infuriated mob delight in inflicting on enemies and adversaries. Then, being taken to the forum by the chiliarch [garrison commander?] and the authorities of the city, they were examined in the presence of the whole multitude, and having confessed, they were imprisoned until the arrival of the governor."

Marcus Aurelius

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