] The Scythian imbroglio, which needed his attention,
caused him to give his son a wife, Crispina, sooner than he actually
wished. The Quintilii could not end the war, although there were two of
them and they possessed prudence, courage, and considerable experience.
Consequently the rulers themselves were forced to take the field.
[Sidenote: A.D. 178 (a.u. 931)] Marcus also asked the senate for money
from the public treasury, not because it had not been placed in the
sovereign's authority, but because Marcus was wont to declare that this
and everything else belonged to the senate and the people. "We," said he
(speaking to the senate), "are so far from having anything of our own that
we even live in a house of yours." He set out, therefore, after these
remarks, and after hurling the bloody spear, that lay in the temple of
Bellona, into hostile territory. (I heard this from men who accompanied
him). [Sidenote: A.D. 179] Paternus was given a large detachment and sent
to the scene of fighting. The barbarians held out the entire day, but were
all cut down by the Romans. And Marcus was for the tenth time saluted as
imperator.

[Sidenote: A.D. 180 (a.u. 933)] Had he lived longer, he
would have subdued the whole region: as it was, he passed away on the
seventeenth of March, not from the effects of the sickness that he had at
the time, but by the connivance of his physicians, as I have heard on good
evidence, who wanted to do a favor to Commodus.

[Sidenote:--34--] When at the point of death he commended his son to the
protection of the soldiers (for he did not wish his death to appear to be
his fault); and to the military tribunes, who asked him for the watchword,
he said: "Go to the rising sun: I am already setting." After he was dead
he obtained many marks of honor and was set up in gold within the
senate-house itself.

So this was the manner of Marcus's demise, [who besides all other virtues
was so godfearing that even on the dies nefasti he sacrificed at home; and
he ruled better than any that had ever been in power. To be sure, he could
not display many feats of physical prowess; yet in his own person he made
a very strong body out of a very weak one.] Most of his life he passed in
the service of beneficence, and therefore he erected on the Capitol a
temple to that goddess and called her by a most peculiar name, which had
never before been current. [Footnote: What this name was no one knows.
Sylburgius conjectured that i