t of clay,
Without the will to lift their eyes, and see
Her godlike head crown'd with spiritual fire,
And touching other worlds."

This I suppose is the reason why, failing to drag down Marcus Aurelius
from his moral elevation, some have attempted to assail his reputation
because of the supposed vileness of Faustina and the actual depravity of
Commodus. Of Faustina I have spoken already. Respecting Commodus, I
think it sufficient to ask with Solomon: "Who knoweth whether his son
shall be a wise man or a fool?" Commodus was but nineteen when his
father died; for the first three years of his reign he ruled respectably
and acceptably. Marcus Aurelius had left no effort untried to have him
trained aright by the first teachers and the wisest men whom the age
produced; and Herodian distinctly tells us that he had lived virtuously
up to the time of his father's death. Setting aside natural affection
altogether, and even assuming (as I should conjecture from one or two
passages of his _Meditations_) that Marcus had misgivings about his son,
would it have been easy, would it have been even possible, to set aside
on general grounds a son who had attained to years of maturity? However
this may be, if there are any who think it worth while to censure Marcus
because, after all, Commodus turned out to be but "a warped slip of
wilderness," their censure is hardly sufficiently discriminating to
deserve the trouble of refutation.

"But Marcus Aurelius cruelly persecuted the Christians." Let us briefly
consider this charge. That persecutions took place in his reign is an
undeniable fact, and is sufficiently evidenced by the Apologies of
Justin Martyr, of Melito Bishop of Sardis, of Athenagoras, and of
Apollinarius, as well as by the Letter of the Church of Smyrna
describing the martyrdom of Polycarp, and that of the Churches of Lyons
and Vienne to their brethren in Asia Minor. It is fair, however, to
mention that there is some documentary evidence on the other side;
Lactantius clearly asserts that under the reigns of those excellent
princes who succeeded Domitian the Church suffered no violence from her
enemies, and "spread her hands towards the East and the West:"
Tertullian, writing but twenty years after the death of Marcus,
distinctly says (and Eusebius quotes the assertion), that there were
letters of the Emperor, in which he not only attributed his delivery
among the Quadi to the prayers of Christian soldiers in