The learned Casaubon, after placing him above Solomon, “as being lord and master of more great kingdoms than Solomon was of towns,” speaks of him as a man “who, for goodness and wisdom, was had by all men during his life in such honor and reputation as never man was either before him or after him.”  “There hath ever been store enough of men,” he says, “that could speak well and give good instructions, but great want of them that could or so much as endeavored to do as they spake or taught others to do.  Be it therefore spoken to the immortal praise and commendation of Antoninus, that as he did write so he did live.  Never did writers so conspire to give all possible testimony of goodness, uprightness, innocence, as they have done to commend this one.  They commend him, not as the best prince only, but absolutely as the best man and best philosopher that ever lived.”

Merivale, who concludes with the reign of M. Antoninus his “History of the Romans under the Empire,” adds his testimony to that of the cloud of witnesses who have trumpeted the great Imperator’s praise.  “Of all the Caesars whose names are enshrined in the page of history, or whose features are preserved to us in the repositories of art, one alone seems still to haunt the Eternal City in the place and the posture most familiar to him in life.  In the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which crowns the platform of the Campidoglio, Imperial Rome lives again....  In this figure we behold an emperor, of all the line the noblest and the dearest, such as he actually appeared; we realize in one august exemplar the character and image of the rulers of the world.  We stand here face to face with a representative of the Scipios and Caesars, the heroes of Tacitus and Livy.  Our other Romans are effigies of the closet and the museum; this alone is a man of the streets, the forum, and the capitol.  Such special prominence is well reserved, amid the wreck of ages, for him whom historians combine to honor as the worthiest of the Roman people.”

Mr. Long, in his biographical introduction, examines at length the evidence for Marcus’s alleged persecution of the Christians.  Lardner, and other writers in the Christian ecclesiastical interest, assuming the fact, denounce it as a blot on the Emperor’s fame.  The translator devotes more space to the consideration of this matter than, perhaps, in the judgment of the historical critic at this day, it will seem to deserve.  That Christians, in the time of M. Antoninus, in Asia Minor and in Gaul, suffered torture and death on account of their faith, admits of no reasonable doubt.  That Marcus authorized these persecutions, in any sense implying the responsibility of an original decision, does not appear.  The imperial power, it must be remembered, was not absolute, but constitutionally defined.  The Augusti, for the most part, were but the executors of existing laws.  The punishment of Christians, who refused to sacrifice, and persisted in contravening the religion