eace, was the distinguishing
characteristic of both princes. But the situation of the latter opened
a much larger field for the exercise of those virtues. Numa could
only prevent a few neighboring villages from plundering each other's
harvests. Antoninus diffused order and tranquillity over the greatest
part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of
furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more
than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
In private life, he was an amiable, as well as a good man. The native
simplicity of his virtue was a stranger to vanity or affectation.
He enjoyed with moderation the conveniences of his fortune, and the
innocent pleasures of society; [44] and the benevolence of his soul
displayed itself in a cheerful serenity of temper.

[Footnote 44: He was fond of the theatre, and not insensible to the
charms of the fair sex. Marcus Antoninus, i. 16. Hist. August. p. 20,
21. Julian in Caesar.]

The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of severer and more
laborious kind. [45] It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned
conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration.
At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid system of the Stoics,
which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his
reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all
things external as things indifferent. [46] His meditations, composed in
the tumult of the camp, are still extant; and he even condescended to
give lessons of philosophy, in a more public manner than was perhaps
consistent with the modesty of sage, or the dignity of an emperor. [47]
But his life was the noblest commentary on the precepts of Zeno. He was
severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just
and beneficent to all mankind. He regretted that Avidius Cassius, who
excited a rebellion in Syria, had disappointed him, by a voluntary
death, [471] of the pleasure of converting an enemy into a friend;; and he
justified the sincerity of that sentiment, by moderating the zeal of the
senate against the adherents of the traitor. [48] War he detested, as the
disgrace and calamity of human nature; [481] but when the necessity of
a just defence called upon him to take up arms, he readily exposed his
person to eight winter campaigns, on the frozen banks of the Danube, the
severity of which was at last fatal to the weaknes