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Antoninus Pius - Roman Emperor:
138-161 A.D.
Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus (19 September
86 – 7 March 161), generally known in English as Antoninus Pius
was
Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was
the fourth of the
Five Good Emperors and a member of the
Aurelii. He did not possess the
sobriquet "Pius"
until after his accession to the throne. Almost certainly, he earned the
name "Pius" because he compelled the
Senate to deify his adoptive father
Hadrian; the
Historia Augusta, however, suggests
that he may have earned the name by saving senators sentenced to death
by Hadrian in his later years.
Early
life
Childhood
and family
He was the son and only child of
Titus Aurelius Fulvus,
consul in 89 whose family came from
Nemausus (modern
Nîmes) and was born near
Lanuvium and his mother was Arria
Fadilla. Antoninus’ father and paternal grandfather died when he was
young and he was raised by
Gnaeus Arrius Antoninus, his maternal
grandfather, a man of integrity and culture and a friend of
Pliny the Younger. His mother married
to Publius Julius Lupus (a man of consular rank),
Suffect Consul in 98, and bore him a
daughter called Julia Fadilla.
Marriage
and children
As a private citizen between 110 and 115, he married Annia Galeria
Faustina the Elder. They had a very
happy marriage. She was the daughter of consul
Marcus Annius Verus and
Rupilia Faustina (a half-sister to
Roman Empress
Vibia Sabina). Faustina was a beautiful
woman, renowned for her wisdom. She spent her whole life caring for the
poor and assisting the most disadvantaged Romans.
Faustina bore Antoninus four children, two sons and two daughters.
They were:
- Marcus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus (died before 138); his
sepulchral inscription has been found at the Mausoleum of Hadrian in
Rome.
- Marcus Galerius Aurelius Antoninus (died before 138); his
sepulchral inscription has been found at the Mausoleum of Hadrian in
Rome. His name appears on a Greek Imperial coin.
- Aurelia Fadilla (died in 135); she married Lucius Lamia
Silvanus, consul 145. She appeared to have no children with her
husband and her sepulchral inscription has been found in
Italy.
- Annia Galeria Faustina Minor or
Faustina the Younger (between
125-130-175), a future Roman Empress, married her maternal cousin,
future Roman Emperor
Marcus Aurelius.
When Faustina died in 141, he was in complete mourning and did the
following in memory of his wife:
- Deified her as a goddess.
- Had a temple built in the Roman Forum in her name, with
priestesses in the temple.
- Had various coins with her portrait struck in her honor. These
coins were scripted ‘DIVAE FAUSTINA’ and were elaborately decorated.
- He created a charity which he founded and called it Puellae
Faustinianae or Girls of Faustina, which assisted
orphaned girls.
- Created a new alimenta (see
Grain supply to the city of Rome).
Favour
with Hadrian
Having filled with more than usual success the offices of
quaestor and
praetor, he obtained the consulship in
120; he was next appointed by the Emperor
Hadrian as one of the four
proconsuls to administer
Italia, then greatly increased his
reputation by his conduct as
proconsul of
Asia. He acquired much favor with the
Emperor Hadrian, who adopted him as his son and successor on 25
February, 138, after the death of his first adopted son
Lucius Aelius, on the condition that
Antoninus would in turn adopt Marcus Annius Verus, the son of his wife's
brother, and Lucius, son of Aelius Verus, who afterwards became the
emperors
Marcus Aurelius and
Lucius Verus (colleague of Marcus
Aurelius).
Emperor
On his accession, Antoninus' name became "Imperator Caesar Titus
Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pontifex Maximus". One of his first
acts as Emperor was to persuade the
Senate to grant divine honours to
Hadrian, which they had at first refused; his efforts to persuade the
Senate to grant these honours is the most likely reason given for his
title of Pius (dutiful in affection; compare
pietas). Two other reasons for this
title are that he would support his aged father-in-law with his hand at
Senate meetings, and that he had saved those men that Hadrian, during
his period of ill-health, had condemned to death. He built temples,
theaters, and mausoleums, promoted the arts and sciences, and bestowed
honours and financial rewards upon the teachers of
rhetoric and
philosophy.
In marked contrast to his predecessors
Trajan and
Hadrian, Antoninus was not a military
man. One modern scholar has written "It is almost certain not only that
at no time in his life did he ever see, let alone command, a Roman army,
but that, throughout the twenty-three years of his reign, he never went
within five hundred miles of a legion".[2]
His reign was the most peaceful in the entire history of the
Principate; while there were several
military disturbances throughout the Empire in his time, in
Mauretania,
Iudaea, and amongst the
Brigantes in
Britannia, none of them are considered
serious. The unrest in Britannia is believed to have led to the
construction of the
Antonine Wall from the
Firth of Forth to the
Firth of Clyde, although it was soon
abandoned. He was virtually unique among emperors in that he dealt with
these crises without leaving Italy once during his reign, but instead
dealt with provincial matters of war and peace through their governors
or through imperial letters to the cities such as Ephesus (of which some
were publicly displayed). This style of government was highly praised by
his contemporaries and by later generations.
Of the public transactions of this period we have scant information,
but, to judge by what we possess, those twenty-two years were not
remarkably eventful in comparison to those before and after his; the
surviving evidence is not complete enough to determine whether we should
interpret, with older scholars, that he wisely curtailed the activities
of the Roman Empire to a careful minimum, or perhaps that he was
uninterested in events away from Rome and
Italy and his inaction contributed to
the pressing troubles that faced not only Marcus Aurelius but also the
emperors of the third century. German historian Ernst Kornemann has had
it in his Römische Geschichte [2 vols., ed. by H. Bengtson, Stuttgart
1954] that the reign of Antoninus comprised "a succession of grossly
wasted opportunities," given the upheavals that were to come. There is
more to this argument, given that the Parthians in the East were
themselves soon to make no small amount of mischief after Antoninus'
passing. Kornemann's brief is that Antoninus might have waged preventive
wars to head off these outsiders.
Scholars place Antoninus Pius as the leading candidate for fulfilling
the role as a friend of Rabbi
Judah the Prince. According to the
Talmud (Avodah Zarah 10a-b), Rabbi
Judah was very wealthy and greatly revered in Rome. He had a close
friendship with "Antoninus", possibly Antoninus Pius,[3]
who would consult Rabbi Judah on various worldly and spiritual matters.
After the longest reign since Augustus (surpassing
Tiberius by a couple of months),
Antoninus died of fever at
Lorium in
Etruria, about twelve miles (19 km)
from Rome, on 7 March 161, giving the keynote to his life in the last
word that he uttered when the
tribune of the night-watch came to ask
the password—"aequanimitas" (equanimity). His body was placed in
Hadrian's mausoleum, a
column was dedicated to him on the
Campus Martius, and the
temple he had built in the Forum in 141
to his deified wife Faustina was rededicated to the deified Faustina and
the deified Antoninus.
Historiography
The only account of his life handed down to us is that of the
Augustan History, an unreliable and
mostly fabricated work. Antoninus is unique among Roman emperors in that
he has no other biographies. Historians have therefore turned to public
records for what details we know.
In
later scholarship
Antoninus in many ways was the ideal of the landed gentleman praised
not only by ancient Romans, but also by later scholars of classical
history, such as
Edward Gibbon or the author of the
article on Antoninus Pius in the ninth edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannicaca
A few months afterwards, on Hadrian's
death, he was enthusiastically welcomed to the throne by the
Roman people, who, for once, were not disappointed in their
anticipation of a happy reign. For Antoninus came to his new
office with simple tastes, kindly disposition, extensive
experience, a well-trained intelligence and the sincerest desire
for the welfare of his subjects. Instead of plundering to
support his prodigality, he emptied his private treasury to
assist distressed provinces and cities, and everywhere exercised
rigid economy (hence the nickname κυμινοπριστης "cummin-splitter").
Instead of exaggerating into treason whatever was susceptible of
unfavorable interpretation, he spurned the very conspiracies
that were formed against him into opportunities for
demonstrating his clemency. Instead of stirring up persecution
against the Christians, he extended to them the strong hand of
his protection throughout the empire. Rather than give occasion
to that oppression which he regarded as inseparable from an
emperor's progress through his dominions, he was content to
spend all the years of his reign in Rome, or its neighbourhood.
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