position,
rather than a wicked, cruel, dissolute son. But Commodus was the son of
Faustina also,--an intriguing and wicked woman, whose influence over her
husband was unfortunately great; and, what is common in this world, the
son was more like the mother than the father. (I think the wife of Eli
the high-priest must have been a bad woman.) All his teachings and
virtues were lost on such a reprobate. She, as an unscrupulous and
ambitious woman, had no idea of seeing her son supplanted in the
imperial dignity; and, like Catherine de'Medici and Agrippina, probably
she connived at and even encouraged the vices of her children, in order
more easily to bear rule. At any rate, the succession of Commodus to the
throne was the greatest calamity that could have happened. For five
reigns the Empire had enjoyed peace and prosperity; for five reigns the
tide of corruption had been stayed: but the flood of corruption swept
all barriers away with the accession of Commodus, and from that day the
decline of the Empire was rapid and fatal. Still, probably nothing could
have long arrested ruin. The Empire was doomed.

The other fact which obscured the glory of Marcus Aurelius as a
sovereign was his persecution of the Christians,--for which it is hard
to account, when the beneficent character of the emperor is considered.
His reign was signalized for an imperial persecution, in which Justin at
Rome, Polycarp at Smyrna, and Ponthinus at Lyons, suffered martyrdom. It
was not the first persecution. Under Nero the Christians had been
cruelly tortured, nor did the virtuous Trajan change the policy of the
government. Hadrian and Antoninus Pius permitted the laws to be enforced
against the Christians, and Marcus Aurelius saw no reason to alter them.
But to the mind of the Stoic on the throne, says Arnold, the Christians
were "philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, and morally
abominable." They were regarded as statesmen looked upon the Jesuits in
the reign of Louis XV., as we look upon the Mormons,--as dangerous to
free institutions. Moreover, the Christians were everywhere
misunderstood and misrepresented. It was impossible for Marcus Aurelius
to see the Christians except through a mist of prejudices. "Christianity
grew up in the Catacombs, not on the Palatine." In allowing the laws to
take their course against a body of men who were regarded with distrust
and aversion as enemies of the State, the Emperor was simply
unfortunate.