The Emperor of Rome could adopt or elect his successor.  It would have been wise for Aurelius to have selected one of the ablest of his generals, or one of the wisest of his senators, as Hadrian did, for so great and responsible a position, rather than a wicked, cruel, dissolute son.  But Commodus was the son of Faustina also,—­an intriguing and wicked woman, whose influence over her husband was unfortunately great; and, what is common in this world, the son was more like the mother than the father. (I think the wife of Eli the high-priest must have been a bad woman.) All his teachings and virtues were lost on such a reprobate.  She, as an unscrupulous and ambitious woman, had no idea of seeing her son supplanted in the imperial dignity; and, like Catherine de’Medici and Agrippina, probably she connived at and even encouraged the vices of her children, in order more easily to bear rule.  At any rate, the succession of Commodus to the throne was the greatest calamity that could have happened.  For five reigns the Empire had enjoyed peace and prosperity; for five reigns the tide of corruption had been stayed:  but the flood of corruption swept all barriers away with the accession of Commodus, and from that day the decline of the Empire was rapid and fatal.  Still, probably nothing could have long arrested ruin.  The Empire was doomed.

The other fact which obscured the glory of Marcus Aurelius as a sovereign was his persecution of the Christians,—­for which it is hard to account, when the beneficent character of the emperor is considered.  His reign was signalized for an imperial persecution, in which Justin at Rome, Polycarp at Smyrna, and Ponthinus at Lyons, suffered martyrdom.  It was not the first persecution.  Under Nero the Christians had been cruelly tortured, nor did the virtuous Trajan change the policy of the government.  Hadrian and Antoninus Pius permitted the laws to be enforced against the Christians, and Marcus Aurelius saw no reason to alter them.  But to the mind of the Stoic on the throne, says Arnold, the Christians were “philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, and morally abominable.”  They were regarded as statesmen looked upon the Jesuits in the reign of Louis XV., as we look upon the Mormons,—­as dangerous to free institutions.  Moreover, the Christians were everywhere misunderstood and misrepresented.  It was impossible for Marcus Aurelius to see the Christians except through a mist of prejudices.  “Christianity grew up in the Catacombs, not on the Palatine.”  In allowing the laws to take their course against a body of men who were regarded with distrust and aversion as enemies of the State, the Emperor was simply unfortunate.  So wise and good a man, perhaps, ought to have known the Christians better; but, not knowing them, he cannot be stigmatized as a cruel man.  How different the fortunes of the Church had Aurelius been the first Christian emperor instead of Constantine!  Or, had his wife Faustina known the Christians as well as Marcia the mistress of Commodus, perhaps the persecution might not have happened,—­and perhaps it might.  Earnest and sincere men have often proved intolerant when their peculiar doctrines have been assailed,—­like Athanasius and St. Bernard.  A Stoical philosopher was trained, like a doctor of the Jewish Sandhedrim, in a certain intellectual pride.