1. Fronto to Praecilius Pompeianus, 162, Haines ii, pp.88–91.
2. Fronto to Marcus, 162, Haines ii, pp.62–71.
3. Fronto to Marcus, 162, Haines ii, pp.34–7.
4. Fronto to Marcus, 161, 163, Haines i, pp.302–5; ii, pp.126–7; cf. Dio 71.35.
5. Fronto to Marcus, 162, Haines ii, pp.28–9.
6. Fronto to Marcus, 162, Haines ii, pp.8–9, 12–13.
7. Marcus to Fronto, Fronto to Marcus, 161–2, Haines i, pp.300–3; ii, pp.2–7, 18–19.
8. Fronto to Marcus, Haines ii, pp.118–21. Some claim, with not a shred of evidence, but on the strength of poetic licence, that the boy holding the white bread was Commodus.
9. Champlin, Fronto op. cit., p.71. For Matidia, see PIR2 M.368.
10. Fronto to Marcus, Marcus to Fronto, Fronto to Aufidius Victorinus, 162, Haines ii, pp.94–101.
11. Tacitus, Annals 4.5.
12. Tacitus, Annals 13.18.
13. Dio 79.14.
14. Suetonius, Augustus 25; Dio 55.26.
15. Tacitus, Annals 1.7; Dio 55.24; Herodian 3.13.4; L. Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army (1984), p.188.
16. Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army op. cit., p.114; cf. also L.L. Howe, The Pretorian Prefect from Commodus to Diocletian (1942); A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire (1964), pp.448–62, 586–92.
17. HA Hadrian 22.13; HA Antoninus 2.11.
18. HA Marcus 11.6; C.L. Lepelley (ed.), Rome et l’intégration de l’empire. 44 av. J.-C.–260 ap. J.-C. Approches régionales du Haut-Empire romain (Paris 1998).
19. Dio 53.12; Strabo 17.3.24.
20. Strabo 3.4.19; 17.3.25.
21. Dio 53.13.2–3; Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army op. cit., pp.348–52.
22. Dio 53.15.4.
23. Alföldy, KS p.218; W. Eck, ‘Empire, Senate and Magistracies’, CAH 11, p.225.
24. S.J. Keay, Roman Spain. Conquest and Assimilation (1991).
25. M. Todd, Roman Britain 55 BC–AD 400 (1997).
26. Lennox Manton, Roman North Africa (1988).
27. AE 1956, 123.
28. M. Sartre, D’Alexandre à Zénobie. Histoire du Levant antique (Paris 2001), p.606.
29. Digest 50.2.3.2; 48.18.1.27; 2.14.60; 1.18.14; 25.4.1.
30. ‘A large number of Praetorian prefects met sudden and violent deaths. It is one of the clearest signs of the relative stability of the imperial regime in the middle of the period that none is recorded as having done so between 97 and the reign of Commodus.’ (Millar, Emperor in the Roman World, p.126)
31. W. Eck, ‘The Growth of Administrative Posts’, CAH 11, pp.240–1.
32. J. Schwendemann, Der historische Wert der Vita Marci bei den scriptores Historiae Augustae (Heidelberg 1923), pp.28–51; W.W. Williams, ‘Individuality in the Imperial Constitution: Hadrian and the Antonines’, JRS 66 (1976), pp.67–83 (at pp.71–8).
33. H.G. Pflaum, Les carrières procuratoriennes équestres sous le Haut Empire romain (Paris 1950), iii, pp.1019–20.
34. Birley, ‘Marcus Aurelius’, CAH 11, p.159.
35. Eck, ‘Administrative Posts’, loc. cit. CAH 11, pp.242–4.
36. Suetonius, Claudius 24.1; Dio 53.15.5; H.G. Pflaum, Abrégé des procurateurs équestres (Paris 1974), p.63; Eck, ‘Administrative Posts’, p.259; Syme, RP v, p.687.
37. M. Hammond, ‘The Composition of the Senate, AD 68–235’, JRS 47 (1957), pp.74–81. The process accelerated under Septimius Severus (Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army, pp.404–8).
38. Eck, ‘Administrative Posts’, p.256.
39. Dio 55.4.1–2.
40. Eck, ‘Administrative Posts’, pp.263–5.
41. W. Eck, ‘Emperor, Senate and Magistracies’, CAH 11, p.227.
42. Eck, ‘Administrative Posts’, p.245.
43. AE 1954, 138; Champlin, Fronto op. cit., p.79.
44. During the reign of the Flavians there were usually six consuls a year. Trajan had six to eight, Hadrian eight, Antoninus Pius eight to ten. With Marcus the figure was ten and rising, and by 190 Commodus was appointing twenty-four a year (Talbert, Senate op. cit., p.21).
45. HA Marcus 11.8.
46. Pliny, Letters 9.5.
47. Marcus signs off: ‘Farewell, my Marsianus, dearest to me.’ (H.G. Pflaum, ‘Une lettre de promotion de l’empereur Marc Aurèle pour un procurateur ducenaire de Gaulle Narbonne’ Bonner Jahrbuch 171 (1971), pp.349–66); cf. AE 1960, 167; 1962, 183.
48. Eck, ‘Administrative Posts’, pp.259–60.
49. HA Marcus 6.6.
50. Dio 71.17.1; Talbert, Senate, p.366.
51. HA Marcus 10.7–9; HA Pertinax 2.9; Dio 71.33.2.
52. Talbert, Senate, pp.166–71. Technically, the right of veto derived from the tribunician power (potestas tribunica), which Augustus had cunningly included in the wide-ranging powers of an emperor (ibid., pp.170–1).
53. Digest 49.4.1.7.
54. As when the inhabitants of Miletus requested a special tournament of physical games (AE 1977, 801; AE, 1989, 683).
55. Talbert, Senate, pp.290–1.
56. Anthony Everitt, Augustus. The Life of Rome’s First Emperor (New York 2006); Pat Southern, Augustus (1998); Werner Eck, The Age of Augustus (Oxford 2003).
57. ‘We might almost come to believe that the primary role of the emperor was to listen to speeches in Greek’ is the waspish comment of Fergus Millar (The Emperor in the Roman World op. cit., p.6).
58. H. Halfmann, Die Senatoren aus dem Östlichen Teil des Imperium Romanum (Göttingen 1979).
59. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World, has a section (pp.110–22) that, with its nuances and differences, irresistibly recalls the Mafia distinction between ‘a friend of mine’ and ‘a friend of ours’.
60. Theodore Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin 1905), iv, pp.311–22. For Domitian’s amici, see the aside in Juvenal, Satires iv.37.
61. HA Marcus 1.16.
62. M. Royo, Domus Imperatoriae. Topographie, formation et imaginaire des palais impériaux du Palatin (Rome 1999).
63. Herodian 1.6.5.
64. Meds 8.4.
65. Dio 72.6.2; W. Williams, ‘Individuality and the Roman Constitution’, JRS 66 (1976), pp.78–82.
66. Digest 2.12.1.2.
67. HA Marcus 24.12.
68. Digest 49.1.1.2.
69. Digest 23.2.57, quoted in Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World op. cit., p.548.
70. Digest 37.14.17.
71. Digest 28.4.3.
72. Digest 36.1.23; 32.27.1.
73. Tacitus, Annals 3.17; 13.43; Digest 48.20.1.
74. HA Marcus 10.11–12; Haines i, pp.11–13; Digest 26.2.191; 47.191.1; 26.5.1.1; 2.15.8.
75. Richard Saller, ‘Family and Household’, CAH 11, p.859.
76. Digest 27.1.1.4.
77. Digest 26.5.14.
78. W. Williams, ‘Individuality in the Roman Constitutions’, loc. cit., p.80.
79. HA Marcus 9.7.
80. Digest 29.5; Tacitus, Annals 13.52; 14.142–5.
81. Cicero, Republic 3.25; Juvenal, Satires 6.480; Digest 47.10.15.42.
82. Digest 50.6.6.10–11.
83. Digest 11.4.1.1–2.
84. HA Marcus 9.7–9; Digest 40.16.2.4.
85. F. Schulz, ‘Roman registers of birth and birth certificates’, JRS 32 (1942), pp.78–91; JRS 33 (1943), pp.55–64.
86. AE 1971, 534; M. Christol, ‘Une correspondance impériale: testimonium et suffragatio’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger 66 (1988), pp.31–42.
87. W. Eck, ‘Provincial administration and finance’, CAH 11, pp.271–2.
88. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World op. cit., pp.482–3.
89. Digest 49.4.1.7.
90. Digest 28.3.6–9; 48.12.2.1.
91. Digest 17.2.52.10; 20.2.1; 20.3.2.
92. Horace, Satires 2.6.10.
93. HA Hadrian 18.6; Digest 49.14.3.10.
94. Digest 1.18.14.
95. Digest 40.15.1.3.
96. Digest 50.6.6.6.
97. HA Marcus 23.8. For the background to the decree abolishing ‘unisex’ bathing, see Garrett V. Fagan, Bathing in Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor 1999).
98. Meds 10.8.2.
99. For the games in general, see A. Cameron, Circus Factions (1976); Michael Grant, Gladiators (1971); E. Rawson, ‘Chariot Racing in the Roman Republic’, PBSR 49 (1981), pp.1–6; E. Rawson, ‘Theatrical Life in Republican Rome and Italy’, PBSR 53 (1985), pp.97–113.
100. HA Marcus 15.1; Dio 69.1.4; Meds. 6.46.
101. Suetonius, Augustus 44; Suetonius, Claudius 21; Tacitus, Annals 15.32; Dio 60.7.
102. Digest 40.19.17.
103. HA Marcus 11.4; 27.6; Dio 71.29.4.
104. CIL vi.31420; F.M. de Robertis, ‘Dispensa del munus venatorium in una costituzione imperiale de recente scoperta’, Historia 9 (1935), pp.248–60.
105. HA Marcus 24.1; 10.10; 11.10; 11.1; 12.5; Dio 71.6.1.
106. HA Marcus 10.1–9.
107. Dio 71.38.2; J.E. Allison & J.D. Cloud, ‘The Lex Julia Maiestatis’, Latomus 21 (1962), pp.711–31.
108. HA Marcus 11.1.
109. HA Marcus 11.10.
110. W. Williams, ‘Formal and historical aspects of two new documents of Marcus Aurelius’, ZPE 17 (1975), pp.37–78.
111. Herodian 1.2.3–4.
112. HA Marcus 8.1; 12.1; 22.3; Dio 72.33.2; Meds 1.6; 1.16; 6.21; 6.30.
113. HA Marcus 12.3.
114. HA Marcus 12.12.
115. Digest 4.2.13; 48.7.7.
116. P. Noyen, ‘Divus Marcus princeps prudentissimus et iuris religiosissimus’, Revue Internationale de Droit de l’Antiquité, 3rd series 1 (1954), pp.349–71.
117. See, for example, Pliny, Letters 9.5.3; 7.29; Tacitus, Annals 13.26–7.
118. For full details on this, see J.H. Oliver, Greek Constitutions op. cit.
119. HA Marcus 27.3; Dio 71.33.3.
120. HA Marcus 10.1–3; 10.7–9; 11.10.
121. Michael Grant, The Antonines op. cit., p.39.
122. For examples of the employment of men of merit rather than rank and family, see AE 1934, 155; AE 1956, 123–4; AE 1957, 121; AE 1958, 261.
123. Dio 71.19.1.
124. ILS 5841, 5864, 5868; T. Pekary, Untersuchungen zu den Römischen Reichstrassen (1968), pp.16–17.
125. HA Marcus 11.5; 23.8.
126. O.F. Robinson, Ancient Rome. City Planning and Administration (1992), p.22.
127. HA Marcus 11.7.
128. ILS 375; HA Marcus 11.3; Digest 27.1.26. For the many rescripts to provincial governors, see Digest 1.18.14; 2.14.60; 25.4.1; 48.18.1.27; 50.2.3.2.
129. AE 1937, 246; AE 1949, 27; AE 1952, 88; AE 1957, 264; AE 1960, 114, 200, 342. See also SEG 9 (1944), 170–2; SEG 13 (1956), 291; SEG 15 (1957), 231. For the literary peccadillo, see Haines i, pp.178–9. For confirmation of Marcus’s early popularity, see Ammianus Marcellinus 15.7.3; 16.1.4; 21.16.11; 22.5.5; 25.4.17; 30.9.1; 31.10.19.
130. Dio 73.8; HA Antoninus 13.4; Eutropius 8.8.3. See also L. Vogel, The Column of Antoninus Pius (Cambridge 1973).
131. D.R. Walker, The Metrology of the Roman Silver Coinage, Vol.2 From Nerva to Commodus (Oxford 1977), pp.55–60; cf. also Vol.3 (Oxford 1978), p.125; R. Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy (Cambridge, 1990), p.44.
132. Hopkins, ‘Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire’, loc. cit., pp.116–25.
133. P.A. Brunt, ‘Pay and Superannuation in the Roman Army’, PBSR 18 (1950), pp.50–61.
134. ILS 2288; B. Dobson, ‘The significance of the centurion and primipilari’, ANRW loc. cit., pp.392–430.
135. HA Marcus 7.9; Webster, The Roman Imperial Army op. cit., pp.264–8; Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army op. cit., p.171.
136. Dio 72.32.3.
137. PIR2 A.1512.
138. Fronto to Marcus, 165, Haines ii, pp.224–7.
139. Cymbeline, Act Four, Scene Two, Lines 258–62. Or, in a similar vein: ‘Be absolute for death; either death or life/Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life./If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing/That none but fools would keep; a breath thou art/Servile to all the skyey influences (Measure for Measure, Act Three, Scene One, Lines 5–9).
140. Fronto to Marcus, 165, Haines ii, pp.226–33.
141. Fronto to Lucius Verus; Verus to Fronto, 165, Haines ii, pp.233–6.
142. Marcus to Fronto, 165, Haines ii, pp.223–4.
143. Lucius Verus to Fronto, 166, Haines ii, pp.238–41.
144. Fronto to Verus, 166, Haines ii, pp.236–8.
145. Artemidorus 4.22 (in White (ed.), Dream Interpretation op. cit., p.195).
146. R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order (1967), pp.121–2.
147. Millar, The Emperor and the Roman World op. cit., p.203.
148. Meds 3.16; 4.28; 6.30; 12.27.
149. HA Marcus 12.7–11.
150. HA Verus 8.11.
151. HA Verus 9.8–11.
152. P. Kneissl, Die Siegestitulatur der Römischen Kaiser (Göttingen 1969), pp.200–2.
153. Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army op. cit., pp.136–7; Nicholas Purcell, ‘The City of Wonders’, CAH 11, p.411.
154. ILS 375.
155. C.H. Picard, ‘Le monument aux victimes de Carthage et l’expédition orientale de Lucius Verus’, Karthago 1 (1950), pp.65–94; M. Hammond, ‘Imperial Elements in the Formula of the Roman Emperors’, Mem. American Academy at Rome 25 (1957), pp.17–64.
156. HA Verus 7.9.
157. HA Marcus 12.7–8.
158. HA Marcus 12.9–12; Dio 71.29.4. On games expenditure, see ILS 5163, 9340. For the Roman fascination with lions, see Pliny, NH 8.17–21; Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.24–8; 3.22.6. For further thoughts on Romans and wild animals, see H. Scullard, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World (Ithaca, New York 1974). Some scholars are sceptical about the numbers of animals allegedly slaughtered at the games. Syme, RP ii, p.646, thinks the totals in the Historia Augusta are simply plucked from the air, as in the case of the 1,000 bears said to have been exhibited in one day by the emperor Gordian.
159. There is a considerable literature on the Silk Road. See David Christian & C. Benjamin (eds), Realms of the Silk Road: Ancient and Modern (Turnhout, Belgium 2000); Emmanuel Choiseul, Les Parthes et La Route de la Soie (Paris 2004); J. Thorley, ‘The Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire at its height, circa AD 90–130’, GR 18 (1971), pp.71–80. But see the contrarian, hyper-sceptical view of Warwick Ball: ‘The existence of the “Silk Road” is not based on a single shred of historical or material evidence . . . Both ancient Rome and China had only the haziest notions of each other’s existence and even less interest, and the little relationship that did exist between East and West was usually one-sided, with the stimulus coming mainly from the Chinese’ (Ball, Rome in the East op. cit., p.139).
160. Pliny, NH 37.67; 21.8; Ammianus Marcellinus 23.6; Tacitus, Annals 2.33.
161. Seneca, Declamation 1.
162. Ptolemy 1.11.4–8; 1.12.2–10; 6.16.1–8; 6.21.1; J. Thompson, History of Ancient Geography (Cambridge 1948), pp.177–81, 306–12; Aurel Stein, ‘On Ancient tracks past the Pamirs’, The Himalayan Journal 4 (1932), pp.1–24.
163. P.M. Fraser, Cities of Alexander the Great (Oxford 1996), pp.88–93; Michael Grant, A Guide to the Ancient World (1986), p.163.
164. N. Kramer, ‘Das stathmoi Parthikoi des Isidor von Charax. Beschreibung eines Handelsweges?’, Klio 85 (2003), pp.120–30.
165. Strabo 11.13.1; 16.1.16; 21.1.16; Tacitus, Annals 15.31; Curtius Rufus 5.8.1.
166. Wilfred H. Schoff, Periplus Maris Erythraei (1912), p.172.
167. Pliny, NH 6.52; Strabo 11.7; Schoff, Periplus op. cit., p.277.
168. Martin R. Charlesworth, ‘Roman trade with India: A Resurvey’, in Paul R. Coleman-Norton (ed.), Studies in Roman Economic and Social History in Honor of Allan Chester Johnson (Princeton 1951), pp.131–43; George Woodcock, The Greeks in India (1966), pp.140–1.
169. Lionel Casson, Mariners (1964) pp.9–11.
170. Pliny, NH 6.24–6; Ptolemy 7.4.1; Strabo 15.691.
171. Casson, Periplus op. cit., p.89.
172. E.H. Warmington, The Commerce Between the Roman Empire and India (Cambridge 1928), pp.57–64; Thani Nayagam (ed.), Tamil Culture and Civilization (1970), pp.145–50; Woodcock, The Greeks in India op. cit., p.145.
173. G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, ‘Some recent archaeological works on the Tanganyika coast’, Mars 58 (1958), pp.106–12; Freeman-Grenville, The Swahili Coast: 2nd to 19th Centuries: Islam, Christianity and Commerce in East Africa (1988), p.5.
174. Casson, Periplus op. cit., pp.283–91.
175. And hence the coins of Antoninus Pius found in southern India (see P.J. Turner, Roman Coins from India (1989)).
176. Pliny, NH 12.8.9; 12.26; 35.25.27; 37.9–42; Athenaeus 3.46; Strabo 16.4.6; 2.5.12; 17.1.3; 15.1.4. Cf. Casson, Periplus, pp.17, 21–2, 63, 65, 67, 77, 79, 101–2, 118–20, 122–4, 134–6, 181, 193–4; Schoff, Periplus, pp.120–8, 136–41, 213–16, 222–7, 263–8.
177. Pliny, NH 12.26; Strabo 15.1.13; Schoff, Periplus, pp.269–70; Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge 1954) i, pp.173–82.
178. Pliny, NH 35.28; H.A. Maraudian, The Trade and Cities of Armenia in Relation to Ancient World Trade (Lisbon 1965).
179. Pliny, NH 32.11; Schoff, Periplus, p.128.
180. Pliny, NH 9.54–8.
181. The Chinese sources can be found in John E. Hill (ed. & trans.), The Western Regions according to the Hou Hansu (2004), and Hill (ed.), The People of the West from the Weilue (2004). Cf. Also D.D. Leslie & K.H.J. Gardiner, The Roman Empire in Chinese Sources (1996).
182. Strabo 11.11.1; Pomponius Mela, De Situ Orbis 1.2; 3.7; Ptolemy 1.11.4–8; 1.12.2–10; 6.16.1–8; 6.21.1.
183. Raymond Grew, ‘The case for comparing histories’, AHR (1980), pp.763–8; Richard A. Olson, ‘Parthia, China and Rome: Perspectives along the Great Silk Route’, in M.A. Powell & R.H. Sack (eds), Studies in Honor of T.B. Jones (1979), pp.329–39; John Frederick Teggart, Rome and China: A Study of correlations in historical events (Berkeley 1969).
184. It used to be thought that China’s western expansion was in pursuit of trade (CAH 10 (1934), pp.880–1). This view has largely been abandoned (Casson, Periplus op. cit., pp.36–7). Some scholars are even more sceptical: ‘The whole story of Rome–China trade has been vastly exaggerated by the myth of the Silk Route’ (Ball, Rome in the East, p.138). See also Gary K. Young, Rome’s Eastern Trade (2001); H.H. Dubs, ‘A military contact between Chinese and Romans in 36 BC’, T’Oung Pao 36 (1940), pp.64–80.
185. The pioneering study of these inchoate contacts was Frederick Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (Leipzig 1885). More modern scholarship is contained in a plethora of works: E.G. Pulleybank, ‘The Roman Empire as known to Han China’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 119 (1999), pp.71–9; Manfred G. Raschke, ‘New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East’, ANRW 2.9.2 (1978), pp.604–1378; Christian Gizewski, ‘Römische und alte Chinesische Geschichte in Vergleich zur Möglichkeit eines gemeinsamen Altertumsbegriffes’, Klio 76 (1994), pp.271–302.
186. Schoff, Periplus op. cit., p.276; Thomson, A History of Ancient Geography op. cit., p.312.
187. H. Ferguson, ‘China and Rome’, ANRW 2 loc. cit., pp.581–603.
188. Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values. The Ancient and Classical World 600 BC–AD 650 (1978), pp.105–23.
189. E.H. Warmington, Commerce between the Roman Empire and India op. cit., pp.130–1, 262, 394; L. Boulnois, The Silk Road (1966), p.71; D.E. Graf, ‘The Roman East from the Chinese Perspective’, Annales Archéologiques Arabes Syriennes 42 (1996), pp.199–216.
190. ILS 8869; Webster, The Roman Imperial Army op. cit., p.83.
1. Augustine, City of God 18.18. For general discussions of Marcus as philosopher-king, see G.A. Stanton, ‘Marcus Aurelius. Emperor and Philosopher’, Historia 18 (1969), pp.570–87; Klein (ed.), Marc Aurel op. cit., pp.359–88; Peter Franz Mittag, ‘Kaiser oder Philosoph? Zur Münzprägung Marc Aurels’, Schweizerische Numismatische Rundschau 73 (1994), pp.61–75.
2. Renan, Marcus Aurelius op. cit., pp.23–4; cf. Hadot, Inner Citadel op. cit., pp.52–3.
3. Herodian 1.2.3.
4. Philostratus, VS 2.12; Philostratus, Dialogues ii.58.
5. Meds 7.35; 7.44–6; 10.23.
6. Some have interpreted Meds 6.11–12 in this way, but this is highly speculative. For a much purer example of this mystical Neoplatonism, see Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ 1.11.1.
7. Meds 7.66; Rutherford op. cit., p.216. Nonetheless, there are many references in the Meditations to Socrates personally (Meds 7.19; 7.26; 11.23; 11.25; 11.28; 11.39).
8. See Charles Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge 1979); Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers (1982); M. Dragona-Monachou, The Stoic Arguments for the Existence and Providence of the Gods (Athens 1976).
9. Meds. 3.3; 4.46; 6.42; 6.47; 8.3. See in general A.A. Long, Stoic Studies (Cambridge 1996), pp.35–57 (esp. pp.56–7).
10. Meds 5.36–7; 7.27.
11. Meds 4.46.4.
12. Meds 4.36; 5.10; 5.13; 6.57; 10.26.
13. Meds. 4.42; 4.23; 5.23.
14. Meds 3.3. The legend got a new lease of life when the third-century biographer Diogenes Laertius popularised it. Actually, in this passage Marcus can be accused of trying to be too clever by half, for he pairs Heraclitus with Democritus and confuses Democritus’s death with that of Pherecydes, thus destroying his argument twice over (Farquharson op. cit. ii, p.553).
15. Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion (1935), pp.113–19.
16. Luis Navia, Diogenes the Cynic. The War against the World (2005).
17. Keimpe Algra, Jonathan Barnes, Jaap Mansfield & Malcolm Schofield (eds), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge 1999), pp.625–6. ‘Big thieves are arresting a little one’ sounds like a gloss on Aesop’s remark: ‘We have petty thieves and appoint great ones to public office.’
18. Epictetus, Discourses 3.21.18–19.
19. Epictetus, Discourses 2.13.24.
20. Meds 8.3.
21. Epictetus, Discourses 3.23.29.
22. Galen, K.20, p.44. For Arrian, see R. Syme, ‘The career of Arrian’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 86 (1982), pp.171–211; S.L. Wheeler, Flavius Arrianus: A political and military biography (Duke, North Carolina 1977); P.A. Stadter, Arrian of Nicomedia (Chapel Hill, North Carolina 1980).
23. Sandbach, The Stoics op. cit., p.169.
24. Long, Epictetus op. cit., p.119.
25. Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.46; 1.1.7–13; 3.24.3.
26. Epictetus, Discourses 1.18.3; 1.28.9; 2.22.36; 4.1.47; 4.12.19.
27. Epictetus, Discourses 1.18.11.
28. Epictetus, Discourses 2.14.23–9.
29. Epictetus, Discourses 1.29.9–12.
30. Meds 4.23.
31. Meds 11.17. But, as the best modern scholar of the Stoics has remarked: ‘Such a thesis would be as repugnant as it is implausible’ (Long, Epictetus, p.154). See also Paul Veyne, Seneca: The Life of a Stoic (2003), p. 20: ‘Stoic philosophy had no content other than to forbid the emperor from tyrannising his subjects; it was devoid of any reformist program. Searching for originality in Marcus Aurelius’s politics would be just as futile.’ The Marcus view on politics was famously summed up by Alexander Pope: ‘For forms of government let fools contest,/Whate’er is best administered is best’ (An Essay on Man iii.303).
32. Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.31–6.
33. Epictetus, Discourses 2.5.26; Meds 6.44.6. See also Hadot, Inner Citadel op. cit., pp.211–14.
34. Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.31.
35. Epictetus, Discourses 1.13.4–5.
36. Epictetus, Discourses 1.18.5–9.
37. Epictetus, Discourses 1.18.11–16.
38. Meds 2.1; 4.3; 5.25.
39. Epictetus, Discourses 4.4.11–18. For further light on Epictetus, see William O. Stephens, Stoic Ethics: Epictetus and Happiness as Freedom (2007).
40. Rutherford op. cit., pp.225–55 (esp. pp.229, 232).
41. Ramsay MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1966), pp.70–94.
42. The alleged link is emphasised by Long, Stoic Studies (Cambridge 1996), p.276. But this seems in conflict with the passage where Epictetus explicitly attacks the value of the things Freud thought were the natural goals of the ‘normal’ male: wealth, power and beautiful women (Long, Epictetus, pp.137–9).
43. J.M. Rist, ‘Are you a Stoic? The case of Marcus Aurelius’, Jewish and Christian Self-Definition (1983), pp.23–45.
44. Rutherford op. cit., pp.240–1, 248. Some see Marcus as occupying a middle position between Seneca and Epictetus. Epictetus ‘does not flirt, as Seneca for instance does, with Plato’s other-worldly metaphysics and eschatology’ (Long, Epictetus, pp.166–7).
45. Hadot, Inner Citadel, p.103.
46. Epictetus, Discourses 2.14.25–6.
47. Rutherford, p.236; Hadot, Inner Citadel, p.128. Cosmology was a much more important part of Marcus’s work than that of all former Stoics. See J. Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford 1993), pp.161–75.
48. G.E. Moore, Hellenistic Philosophers (Princeton 1925), pp.94–171.
49. Galen K.5.17.
50. Long, Epictetus, p.18; Algra, Barnes, Mansfield & Schofield, Cambridge History op. cit., pp.770–80.
51. Long, Epictetus, p.161.
52. Hadot, Inner Citadel, p.70.
53. ibid, 98–115; Cambridge Companion to the Stoics op. cit., pp.37–43.
54. Meds 5.25; 6.58; 9.31; 11.13.4; 12.32.3.
55. Meds 3.16; 2.17; 12.3.
56. Meds 3.6.1; 3.9.2; 8.32.2; 9.1; 12.15; 12.33.
57. Meds 11.10.4.
58. Meds. 8.27.
59. Meds 9.40.
60. Meds 12.10.
61. Meds 12.24; 12.15.
62. T.H. Irwin, ‘Stoic Naturalism and its Critics’, Cambridge Companion to the Stoics op. cit., pp.345–64.
63. G.R. Stanton, ‘Marcus Aurelius, emperor and philosopher’, Historia 18 (1969), pp.570–87.
64. Hadot, Inner Citadel, p.122.
65. Meds 4.46.4; 6.42.1.
66. Meds 4.3.11; 4.36; 5.23; 8.6–7; 10.11; 12.11; cf. Rutherford, pp.86–8; Harold Skulsky, Metamorphosis. The Mind in Exile (Harvard 1981). For Marcus’s limited grasp of logic and metaphysics, see Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, p.37. As noted elsewhere, the Roman Stoics tended to be dismissive of these aspects of Stoicism (see Seneca, Letters 45.5; 49.5).
67. Meds 4.24; 4.29–30; 4.46; 5.9; 5.14; 5.27; 5.32; 6.1; 6.5; 6.22–3; 6.35; 7.9–11; 7.53–5; 8.40; 9.8–12; 9.42; 10.7; 10.12a; 10.31–3; 11.1; 11.9; 11.29; 12.31; 12.35.
68. Heraclitus, Fragments 1, 2.64, 118, in P. Wheelwright, Heraclitus (Princeton 1959), pp.19, 68, 102; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, pp.377–8; Sextus Empiricus, Against Logicians i, p.131; Diogenes Laertius 7.134, 136, 149.
69. Philo, On Creation 5.20; 10.36; 48.139; 51.146, in C.D. Yonge, The Works of Philo (Peabody, Massachusetts 1993), pp.4, 6, 20, 21; Philo, On Allegorical Interpretation 3.31.96; Philo, On the Cherubim 1.11.35; Philo, On Husbandry 12.45; Philo, Who is the heir of divine things 27.140; 38.188; 48.234, in Yonge, ibid., pp.61, 84, 178, 287, 292, 296.
70. Meds 2.14.1; 5.13; 10.27; 12.26; cf. also 6.37; 9.35; 11.1.3.
71. Lucretius, De rerum Natura 3.947; 3.1090.
72. There is an interesting variation on some of the implications of this notion in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
73. Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici 1.59.
74. Meds 7.29; 2.13; 3.10; 6.37; 7.68.3; 8.36; cf. also 7.8; 7.29; 2.14; 12.1–4; 12.26.2.
75. Meds 2.5.2; 11.34; 7.69.
76. Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 78.14. ‘A soul obsessed with the future is miserable indeed; it is unhappy even before any mishap’ (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 98.6).
77. Meds 6.7.
78. Victor Goldschmidt, Le système stoicien et l’idée de temps (Paris 1953), p.195.
79. Meds 11.34.
80. e.g. Meds 9.21.
81. For some typical discussions, see T.B. Mabbott, ‘Our Direct Experience of Time’, Mind 60 (1951), pp.153–67; Bernard Mayo, ‘Is there a sense of Duration?’, Mind 59 (1950), pp.71–8; Heather Fotheringham, ‘How Long is the Present?’, Stoa 1 (1999), pp.56–65.
82. William James, The Principles of Psychology (1902) i, p.609.
83. Gerald Myers, ‘James on Time Perception’, Philosophy of Science 38 (1971), pp.353–60; C.D. Broad, Scientific Thought (New York 1923); Henri Bergson, La Pensée et Le Mouvant (Paris 1934), pp.168–9. The following quasi-oracular proposition from the early Wittgenstein seems to lend comfort to Marcus and the Stoics: ‘If we understand by “eternity” not an infinite temporal duration but a lack of temporality, then he who lives within the present lives eternally’ (Tractatus 6.4311).
84. For Epicurus and Democritus, see Eugene O’Connor, The Essential Epicurus (New York 1993); Benjamin Farrington, Science and Politics in the Ancient World (New York 1965); G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven & M. Schofield (eds), The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge 1983).
85. Galen K.19.306–8.
86. Galen K.2.28–29.
87. Meds 9.39.2.
88. Meds 4.27; 6.10; 6.44; 7.75; 8.18; 9.28; 9.39; 10.6–7.
89. Meds. 2.3; 4.3; 4.27; 6.10.1; 8.17; 9.28; 9.39; 10.6; 11.18; 12.44.4. The idea that whichever is right, Providence or atoms, does not affect the rule of reason is already in Seneca (Letters to Lucilius 16.4).
90. Epictetus, Discourses 2.28.24–6; 3.12.15.
91. Epictetus, Discourses 4.26.
92. Meds 5.16.
93. Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.42–6. Epictetus passed on to Marcus the preoccupation with what the emperor thought and did and how difficult it was for him to avoid tyranny. See C.G. Starr, ‘Epictetus and the the Tyrant’, Classical Philology 44 (1949), pp.20–9.
94. Epictetus, Discourses 1.28.12–13. On this A.A. Long comments: ‘Paris’s lust for Helen, Helen’s compliance, and Menelaus’s desire for revenge were all instances of misjudging the value of what their representations or thoughts presented to them’ (Long, Epictetus, p.254). Cf. also Long, Stoic Studies op. cit., pp.73–83.
95. Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.17–19.
96. C.J. Gill, ‘Did Chrysippus understand Medea?’ Phronesis 28 (1983), pp.136–49. Seneca wrote a tragedy on the subject.
97. Epictetus, Discourses 1.28.6–8; 2.17.19; 4.13.14.
98. The original story is found in Appollonius Rhodius and Apollodorus.
99. Meds. 4.7; 5.2; 5.19; 6.52; 7.2; 7.14; 7.16; 8.40; 8.47; 9.13; 9.15; 11.11; 11.16; 12.22; 12.25.
100. Meds 8.29; 8.47.
101. Meds 9.13.
102. Meds 4.39.
103. Meds 4.3.10; 5.19; 6.52; 9.15.
104. Epictetus, Discourses 1.28.10.
105. Long, Stoic Studies op. cit., pp.265–71. This is a generous interpretation, and I prefer the iconoclasm of R.D. Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean (1910).
106. Meds 12.18.
107. Meds 3.11.3; 12.18; 6.13; 6.57; 10.35.
1. Meds 6.4; Chrysippus is mentioned by name at ibid. 6.42; 7.19.
2. Meds
3. Meds 5.17.
4. Meds 6.43.
5. Meds 6.51.
6. Meds 6.57.
7. Meds
8. Meds 8.22a.
9. Meds 9.41.
10. Meds 11.33.
11. Meds 12.9.
12. Meds 12.6.
13. G.J. Szemler, The Priests of the Roman Republic. A study of the interactions between priesthoods and magistracies (Brussels 1972).
14. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World op. cit., pp.355–61; Françoise van Haeperen, Le collège pontifical, 3ème s.a.C–4ème s.p.C. (Brussels 2002), pp.186–8, 197–201.
15. Van Haeperen, Le collège op. cit., pp.47–77.
16. Athaneus 1.26; Purcell, ‘Rome and Italy’, CAH 11, p.426.
17. See C. Koch, Religio (Nuremberg 1960).
18. Farquharson i, p.422.
19. Meds 4.34; 11.18; 4.23; 8.27; 11.8; 5.7–8; 6.43.
20. RIC iii.235.28; 248.1070.
21. Cornelius Motschmann, Die Religionspolitik Marc Aurels (Stuttgart 2002), pp.58–68; G.W. Bowerstock, Julian the Apostate (1997),
22. P. Petit, La paix romaine (Paris 1982), p.194.
23. Renan, Marcus Aurelius op. cit, p.9.
24. Motschmann, Die Religionspolitik op. cit., p.81; J.E. Lendon, Empire of Honour. The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford 1997), pp.72, 160; cf. I. Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford 2002).
25. F.H. Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics (Philadelphia 1954), p.208; The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy op. cit., pp.597–9. For a contrary view, see Rutherford op. cit., pp.58, 180, 211, 217–18, 219, 229, 261 and especially the volumes by Peter Brown, Religion and Society in the Age of St Augustine (1972), pp.74–81; The Making of Late Antiquity (1978), pp.4–11 and Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (1982), pp.103–52. Cf. also A.D. Nock, Essays on the Religion of the Ancient World (Oxford 1972), pp.440–56.
26. Lucian, Alexander passim. P. Mummius Sisenna Rutilianus, proconsul in Asia 160–1, was his father-in-law, having married Alexander’s daughter at the age of sixty. He died aged seventy, possibly in 171. He survived Alexander, whose death was slow and lingering, long enough for him to be able to arbitrate in the dispute over the leadership of his own cult (Lucian, Alexander 34, 35, 59–60). For the date of Rutilianus’s death, see Alföldy, KS, pp.215, 330.
27. L. Robert, ‘Le serpent Glycon d’Abonouteichos à Athènes et Artémis d’Éphèse à Rome’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1981), pp.513–30.
28. The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy op. cit., pp.795–6; cf. J. Fontenrose, Didyma: Apollo’s Oracle, Cult and Companions (Berkeley 1988).
29. Lucian, Alexander op. cit.; L. Robert, À travers l’Asie Mineure (Paris 1980), pp.393–421.
30. C.R. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (1986), pp.133–48.
31. Athenagoras, Apology 26; J. Eckhel, Doctrina Nummorum Veterum (Vienna 1792) ii, pp.383–4; cf. also William Godwin, Lives of the Necromancers (1834, reissued 2004); Renan, Marcus Aurelius op. cit., p.25.
32. Lucian, Alexander 58; B.V. Head, Historia Nummorum (1911), p.550.
33. Epictetus, Discourses 2.17.25.
34. Epictetus, Discourses 1.24.1–2.
35. Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.100–1.
36. Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.103–4; 1.16.15–21.
37. Epictetus, Discourses 3.5.10. This is very like the ‘testament of acceptance’ in Father Mapple’s sermon in Melville’s Moby Dick, Chapter Nine: ‘O Father – chiefly known to me by Thy rod – mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine own. Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?’
38. Epictetus, Discourses 2.18.12–13.
39. Epictetus, Discourses 1.16.20–1. For further pantheistic thoughts, see ibid. 2.14.25–7.
40. Epictetus, Discourses 3.26.28.
41. Meds 4.26; 4.34; 5.8; 5.12; 10.5.
42. Meds 5.27. Epictetus also seems to lean towards the ‘guardian angel’ version of transcendence (Discourses 1.14.11–14), except that in his version it could also be construed as an alter ego or ‘superego’, to use the Freudian term, which takes us back to square one of the conundrum. Cf. also Long, Epictetus pp.163–4; Farquharson i, pp.291–2.
44. Meds 5.27.
45. Rutherford, pp.228–9.
46. Long, Epictetus, p.178; cf. also Alistair MacIntyre, ‘Pantheism’, in P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York 1967) v, pp.31–5.
47. Meds 6.44; 9.40; 7.9; 8.54; 9.1.
48. Meds 1.17.1; 9.27.
49. ‘Of all the Stoics Marcus is the one whose theology comes closest to a strict pantheism’ (Long, Epictetus, p.178).
50. Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.12; cf. Farquharson i., p.290.
51. Long, Epictetus, p.146. ‘But when God is conceived pantheistically as physically present in all things, it is hard to understand what property he could have that would constitute the paradigm of a virtuous human character’ (ibid., p.170).
52. Meds 4.23; 5.7.
53. Meds 7.70.
54. Meds 12.2; 12.28. ‘People ask “Have you ever seen the gods you worship? How can you be sure that they exist?” I answer . . . “I’ve never seen my soul either . . . That’s how I know the gods exist”’ (Meds 12.28). This reminds one of the way C.G. Jung would make the statement, ‘I don’t just believe God exists, I know’, apparently giving comfort to orthodox Christians, but really meaning that he knew the ‘God image’, the God archetype or the ‘god within’ existed (see Frank McLynn, Jung. A Biography, p.526).
55. Rutherford, p.219.
56. Specifically The Tempest, Act Two, Scene One, and Tennyson, ‘Crossing the Bar’ (Farquharson ii, p.529).
57. Farquharson i, pp.392–3.
58. Meds 2.1.3; 4.3.6; 12.8.
59. Meds 7.73–4; 11.4.
60. Meds 7.22.1–2; 9.9; 11.1.4.
61. Meds 5.6.
62. Meds 11.18.
63. Meds 3.4.3; 2.17.
64. Meds 6.47; 2.1; 7.22; 11.9.2.
65. Epictetus, Discourses 1.18.3; 1.28–9; 2.22.36; 4.1.47; Meds 9.9; 9.11.
66. Meds 2.2; 7.3; 12.19.
67. Meds 3.14.
68. Meds 5.9.3–5; 6.7; 8.26; 10.33; 12.29.3. Cf. Father Mapple’s sermon in Chapter Nine of Melville’s Moby Dick: ‘Delight is to him – a far, far upward and inward delight – who against the proud gods and commodores of this world ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base, treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight – topgallant delight – is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord but the Lord his God and is only a patriot to Heaven.’
69. Meds 2.1; 4.3; 12.8.
70. Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.17.
71. For a discussion of these points, see Elizabeth Azmis, ‘The Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius’, ANRW 2.36.3 (Berlin 1989), pp.2228–52; T.H. Irwin, ‘Stoic Naturalism and its Critics’, The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics op. cit., pp.345–64; J.M. Rist, ‘Seneca and Stoic Orthodoxy’, ANRW 2.36.3 (1989), pp.1993–2012; Mark P.O. Morford, The Roman Philosophers (2000).
72. Epictetus, Discourses 3.22.
73. Meds 2.1.
74. Meds 4.3; 4.34; 7.63; 11.18.4–5; 11.18.10; 12.8; 12.12; 12.22; 12.26.
75. Epictetus, Discourses 2.8.11–14. For evil as ‘error’ in Epictetus, see also ibid. 1.28.4–9; 2.22.36.
76. Plato, Protagoras 345d; Gorgias 509e; Timaeus 86d. Plato’s view was endorsed by his most brilliant student. See Aristotle, Ethics 7.3.1145b; 21–7.
77. Meds. 2.13; 5.28.3; 6.27.3; 6.50.1;7.26; 8.59; 9.11; 9.42; 10.4.
78. Meds 3.2. Marcus seems to have derived this notion from Aristotle (Parts of Animals 644.6.31). One is reminded of Robert Louis Stevenson’s striking aphorism: ‘The mark of beauty’s in the touch that’s wrong.’
79. Meds. 6.15.2.
80. Meds 6.36a.
81. Meds 8.55.
82. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.35.86; 2.66–167.
83. Meds 12.32; cf. Epictetus, Discourses 1.12.26.
84. Meds 6.41.
85. J.S. Mill, ‘Nature’ in Three Essays on Religion op. cit., pp.35–8.
86. Epictetus, Discourses 1.29.62; 1.9.33; 1.24.1–2; 3.25.3–4; 4.7.17.
87. Epictetus, Discourses 1.4.20.
88. Meds 5.30; 9.1.1. But, as so often with Marcus, there is a conflict between two very different notions, this time of justice. 1) Everything that happens is just (Meds 4.10). 2) Injustice exists: ‘Evil men often live in pleasure, and obtain the means to do so, while the good encounter only misery and that which causes misery’ (Meds 9.1).
89. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book Five, Chapter Four ‘Rebellion’.
90. Meds 7.41.
91. Meds 8.50.
92. Meds 12.5.
93. Meds 8.34.
94. Or, as Hume puts it: ‘If the evil in the world is from the intention of the Deity, then he is not benevolent. If the evil in the world is contrary to his intention, then he is not omnipotent. But it is either in accordance with his intention or contrary to it. Therefore either the Deity is not benevolent or he is not omnipotent’ (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part Ten).
95. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), p.199.
96. Malory, Morte d’Arthur, Book Fourteen, Chapter Six.
97. Thomas Browne, Religio Medici 1.6.
98. Seneca, Natural Question 6; Letters 53.
99. Quoted in Veyne, Seneca op. cit., p.41.
100. A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925), p.56.
101. Meds 7.1; 8.40; 9.1; 9.42; 10.7.
102. Wallace I. Matson, The Existence of God (Ithaca, New York 1965), pp.142–3.
103. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962); cf. A. de Waelheus, La philosophie de Martin Heidegger (1942).
104. McLynn, Jung op. cit., p.476.
105. L. Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism (2005), p.338.
106. Meds 4.3; 4.5; 11.18; 9.3; 9.28; 9.32. Cf. Montaigne Essays i: ‘Your death is part of the order of the universe. It is a part of the life of the world.’ Or, to take a modern example: ‘There is no cure for birth and death but to enjoy the interval’ (George Santayana, ‘War Shrines’, Soliloquies in England (1922)). But though the Meditations are often compared to Eastern philosophy, Marcus does not allow himself the usual oriental consolation of reincarnation. See, for example, the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter Two: ‘For certain is death for the born and certain is birth for the dead. Therefore over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve.’
107. Meds 4.26.4; 10.5. Cf. Ahab’s remarks in Moby Dick: ‘The whole act’s immutably decreed.’Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled’ (Chapter 131) and: ‘By, heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.’ (Chapter 133)
108. Meds 8.2; 2.14.
109. Meds 7.49.
110. Meds 12.23; 4.48.4.
111. Meds 2.2. This idea of a ‘soul carrying a corpse’ can be found in Epictetus (Discourses 2.19.27; 3.10.15; 3.22.41; 4.7.31). The idea that we die daily through decay is a key notion in Freud’s famous Todestrieb or death-drive.
112. Meds 2.6; 5.31; 10.15; 12.1–2. Or, to use the argument adduced by Sophocles in Electra: ‘Death is not the worst; rather in vain to wish for death, and not to compass it.’
113. Cicero, De Senectute passim; Juvenal, Satires. 10.188–288.
114. Meds 4.50.
115. Meds 3.2; 10.36.
116. Lucian, Charon Sees Life.
117. St Augustine, Confessions 4.10–11.
118. Meds 2.12; 4.50. This calls to mind Montaigne’s remark in the Essay on Death when he says: ‘Death’s sad array, not death itself, alarms me.’
119. Meds 6.28; 6.48; 6.56; 7.29; 7.56; 8.21; 8.58; 9.1; 10.29.
120. The same theme appears in Lucian, Icarousenippus (4 and Charon passim pp.17–24).
121. Meds 4.47.
122. Meds 9.3.
123. Meds 9.21.
124. Meds 7.23; 4.48; 5.4.
125. Rutherford, pp.244–6.
126. Epictetus, Discourses 2.1.17–19.
127. Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.106.
128. Lampedusa, The Leopard (the final words of Chapter Six).
129. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (last pages).
130. Meds 4.33. This probably influenced the similar list by François Villon in his La ballade des seigneurs du temps jadis.
131. Meds 4.32; 8.5.
132. Meds 3.3; 6.24; 8.3; 6.47.
133. Meds. 4.19; 6.18. This is probably the earliest version of ‘What has posterity ever done for me?’, which is usually attributed either to the essayist Joseph Addison or to Sir Boyle Roche (1743–1807).
134. The point is hammered home again and again (Meds 4.3.7–8; 4.21; 7.21; 7.29.6; 8.11; 8.21; 9.37; 9.25; 11.18.6; 12.18; 12.21).
135. The ‘vanity’ quote is at Ecclesiastes 34. As for the other, like any successful offspring, it has a hundred parents. The first clear usage is by Abraham Lincoln in an address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, on 30 September 1859: ‘It is said that an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which would be true and appropriate in all time and situations. They presented him with the words “And this too shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!’ (R.P. Basler (ed.), Collected Works of Lincoln (New Brunswick, New Jersey 1953) iii, pp.481–2).
136. Meds 7.3.
137. Meds 7.40.
138. Meds 10.34.
139. One of the elements in Marcus’s horrified fascination with death is the process of physical decomposition and decay, which links with his loathing of the body. This motif is perhaps the only one where the influence of Roman Stoics, as opposed to the Greek Epictetus, can be discerned. See Lucretius, De rerum Natura 3.881; Seneca, Letters 14.6.24; 14.120.18.
140. For studies placing Marcus’s reflections on death in a wider context, see J. McManners, Death and the Enlightenment (Oxford 1981); Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (1969); E.M. Cioran, The Temptation to Exist (Chicago 1998).
141. Seneca, Letter 77; Veyne, Seneca, p.85.
142. Epictetus, Discourses 2.15.4–12; 1.25.20; 2.1.19; 3.8.6; 3.13.14; 3.23.24; 3.24.101–2. As the foremost modern authority on Epictetus has remarked: ‘By attaching the conditional justifiability of suicide to Socrates’s famous statement, Epictetus contrives to remain loyal to both camps . . . Epictetus shows none of Seneca’s fascination with suicide, nor does he treat it, like Seneca, as the supreme test of a Stoic’s freedom’ (Long, Epictetus, p.204).
143. Meds 7.33; 10.3; 10.22; 10.32. This line is endorsed by Sir Thomas Browne, who so often follows Marcus closely (Religio Medici i.44). See also M. Seidler, ‘Kant and the Stoics on Suicide’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1983), pp.429–53.
144. Meds 3.1; 5.29.
145. Meds 5.29; 8.47.
146. Meds 9.2; 10.8.1–2; 10.22; 10.32.
147. For a discussion, see Rutherford, pp.248–50.
148. Meds 4.14; 4.21; 5.33; 6.4; 7.34; 8.25; 8.28.
149. Rutherford, p.255.
150. Meds 10.1; 10.36.
151. Meds 12.5.2.
152. Meds 10.7.
153. Meds 3.3.2.
154. Meds 7.27.
155. Meds 5.31.2.
156. Meds 12.36.
157. Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.21; 3.24.31–4; 3.24.36.
158. Meds 5.8; 5.16.
159. Meds 4.3.5; 5.8; 7.9; 4.2.7; 6.10; 7.7.5; 9.28; 9.39; 10.6–7.
160. Meds 6.44.
161. Meds 9.29; HA Marcus 27.7.
162. Meds 4.23.
163. Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ 4.3.15. Others liken it to Milton’s Sonnet 7.4.24; cf. also Henri Bordeaux, La Peur de Vivre. All the quasi-mystical passages of the Meditations where Marcus seems to advocate a Neoplatonic withdrawal into the self link easily with Thomas à Kempis (see, for example, Meds 6.11, as compared with Imitation of Christ 1.11.1).
164. Meds 10.21.
165. Meds 12.24; cf. Milton, Paradise Lost 4.677; Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici i.33: ‘Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen.’
166. Dio 53.6–7. See Karen Armstrong, Buddha (New York 2001); J. Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics (Leiden 1998); Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (1975); S. Lebell, Epictetus. The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness (San Francisco 1995), p.xi. See also the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, esp. stanzas 59–64, for a sensibility very like Marcus’s.
167. H.D.M. Parker, History of the Roman World AD 138–337 (1935), p.16.
168. The Oxford Classical Dictionary (2003), p.152.
169. Michael Grant, The Antonines op. cit.
170. Hadot, The Inner Citadel op. cit.
171. Renan, Marcus Aurelius
172. The familiar phrase de gustibus non disputandum (est) was formerly attributed to Cicero, but it nowhere appears in his oeuvre and appears to be one of those ‘invention of tradition’ Latin tags, though the essential thought behind it often appears in the classical authors. The only genuine phrase featuring ‘taste’ that is clearly attributable to a Latin author is the famous description of Petronius by Tacitus as elegantiae arbiter (Annals 16.18).
173. Meds 7.27.
174. Meds 9.27.3; 9.11.2.
175. And, as Cassius Dio pointed out, Marcus’s personality in this regard was formed before he ever took up Stoicism (Dio 71.35.2).
176. Dio 62.34.2–3.
177. To use Renan’s words: ‘As St Louis did not suffer a moment’s uneasiness in his faith by reason of clerical disorders, Marcus Aurelius never felt disgusted with philosophy, whatever the vices of philosophers’ (Renan, Marcus Aurelius, pp.18–19).
1. Meds 7.22.1–2; 11.1.4; 9.9.
2. Philippians 3.14; 1 Timothy 6.12; 2 Timothy 4.7; cf. Rutherford, pp.232–3.
3. Hebrews 5.7; Mark 14.36; Mark 15.34; 1 Corinthians 6.16; 15.26.
4. Long, Epictetus, p.144.
5. W.R. Halliday, The Pagan Background of Early Christianity (Liverpool 1925); M. Spannent, Le Stoïcisme des Pàres de l’Église (Paris 1957).
6. The writings of G.A. Wells are the locus classicus. See The Jesus Legend (1996). More nuanced views are available in Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorised Version. Truth and Fiction in the Bible (1991), and Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford 2002).
7. Michael Grant, Saint Paul (2000), is a good introduction.
8. Tacitus, Annals 15.44; cf. H. Fuchs, ‘Tacitus über die Christen’, Vigiliae Christianae 4 (1950); Charles Saumagne, ‘Tacite et Saint Paule’, Revue Historique 232 (1964), pp.67–110.
9. Pliny, NH 10.96.
10. Suetonius, Nero 38; Dio 62.16.18; Tacitus, Annals 15.38–44.
11. Gerhard Baudy, Die Brande Roms. Ein Apokalyptisches Motiv in der antiken Historiographie (1991). A recent biography of Nero suggests: a) it was unlikely Nero started the fire; b) it may not have been the orthodox Christians who started it, but the hardline Jewish followers of Peter (who had clashed violently with Paul at the Jerusalem council), who still practised circumcision (Richard Holland, Nero. The man behind the Myth (2000), pp.163, 175); cf. also Charles Saumagne, ‘Les incendaires de Rome et les lois pénales des romains’, Revue historique 227 (1962), pp.337–60.
12. Edward Champlin, Nero (Harvard 2003), pp.178–209.
13. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200; I. Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud (1935).
14. L.W. Barnard, ‘Clement of Rome and the panic of Domitian’, New Testament Studies 10 (1964), pp.251–60; Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorised Version op. cit., p.433; Barnard, Justin (1967).
15. Pliny, Letters 10.96.
16. ibid., 10.97.
17. Tertullian, Apologeticum 2.6.
18. Timothy Barnes, ‘Legislation against the Christians’, JRS 58 (1968), pp.32–50; JRS 57 (1967); Paul Keresztes, ‘The Imperial Roman Government and the Christian Church. I. From Nero to the Severi. II. From Gallienus to the Great Persecution’, ANRW 2 (1980), pp.247–315; 375–86.
19. G. de Ste Croix, ‘Why were the early Christians persecuted?’, 26 (1963), pp.6–38 (esp. pp.11–12).
20. Keresztes, loc. cit., p.285. See also Rudolf Freudenberger, Das Verhalten der Römischen Behörden gegen die Christen im 2. Jahrhundert (Munich 1967).
21. Pliny, Letters 10.34.
22. Tertullian, Apol. 39.14–21.
23. Tertullian, Apol 7.3; cf. Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans saw them (Yale 1986), pp.31–47.
24. Tacitus, Histories 5.5; 5.13; Suetonius, Nero 16.
25. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (1986), op. cit.; R.M. Ogilvie, The Romans and Their Gods (New York 1969).
26. L.F. Janssen, ‘“Superstitio” and the Persecution of the Christians’, Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979), pp.131–59; J.J. Walsh, ‘On Christian Atheism’, Vigiliae Christianae 45 (1991), pp.196–211; Stephen Benko, ‘Pagan criticism of Christianity during the first two centuries AD’, ANRW 2.32.2 (Berlin 1980), pp.1055–118; William R. Schoedel, ‘Christian “Atheism” and the Peace of the Roman Empire’, Church History 42 (1973), pp.310–11.
27. Ste Croix, ‘Why were the early Christians persecuted?’, loc. cit., p.18; A.N. Sherwin-White, ‘Why were the early Christians persecuted – an Amendement’, PP 27 (1964), pp.23–7; Ste Croix, ‘A Rejoinder’, PP 27 (1964), pp.28–33.
28. Dio 52.36.1–2.
29. Wilken, The Christians op. cit., p.62.
30. Cicero, De legibus 2.25.26; Apuleius, Apol. 65.
31. Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven 1981), pp.2, 40.
32. Keresztes in ANRW 2 loc. cit., p.284; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, op. cit., p.428.
33. Tacitus, Histories 5.5; 5.13; Juvenal, Satire 14.
34. W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (1965), p.334; Frend, ‘The Persecutions: Some links between Judaism and the Early Church’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 9 (1958), pp.141–58.
35. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.8.11.
36. J. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’empire Romain (Paris 1914), i, pp.213–14.
37. Philo, Legatio ad Gaium 157, 317.
38. Tacitus, Histories 5.1; Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), ii.16.74.
39. Cicero, De Natura Deorum 1.3–4; 2.8; Plutarch, On Superstition.
40. Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity op. cit., p.39.
41. That the Christians were vulnerable to such charges is clear from a reading of the New Testament. See Mark 15.2; 12.26; Luke 23.2; John 19.12; Revelation 14.8; 16.19; 17.18. Even Tertullian acknowledged the force of the claims (Apol. 10.1; 10.2.28.1; 10.2.28.2–35.
42. Ste Croix, ‘Why were the Christians?’ loc. cit., p.24; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p.434.
43. See René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978).
44. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p.425.
45. Tertullian, Apol. 40.1–2; D. Stockton, ‘Christianos ad leones’, in B. Levick (ed.), The Ancient Historian and His Materials (Farnborough 1975), pp.199–212.
46. R.J. Hoffmann, Celsus on the True Doctrine (Oxford 1987), pp.75, 102, 57.53, 54, 108, 75, 91, 71, 124. On Jesus: pp.59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 116.
47. M.P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion (Munich 1950) ii., pp.465–85; A.M. Tupet, ‘Rites magiques dans l’antiquité romaine’, ANRW 2.16 (1986), pp.2591–675; F.H. Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics (Philadelphia 1954).
48. J. Tontain, Les cultes païens dans l’empire romain (Paris 1920) ii, pp.179–206.
49. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p.304.
50. J.G. Griffiths, Apuleius of Medauros. The Isis Book (Leiden 1975); P. Walsh, The Roman Novel (1970), pp.186–9.
51. Acts 9.36–9; 16.14–15; Romans 15.1; 16.1; 1 Corinthians 9.5; 16.15; 2 Timothy 4.19–21.
52. J.E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion. The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman (1997).
53. Warwick Ball, Rome in the East op. cit., p.433.
54. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, pp.308–11, 323.
55. Artemidorus 1.78–80; 4.65; 5.62–8; 5.87, 95.
56. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, pp.351–74.
57. 1 Corinthians 11.6–10; 14.34–5; 1 Timothy 2.12; 5.11–13.
58. This is a huge subject and we have not even scratched the surface. See Brent D. Shaw, ‘The Passion of Perpetua’, in Robin Osborne (ed.), Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society (2004), pp.286–325; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York 1988); Sawyer, Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries (1996); M. MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion (Cambridge 1996); Mary Lefkowitz, ‘Motivations for St Perpetua’s Martyrdom’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (1976), pp.417–21; Andrzej Wypustek, ‘Magic, Montanism, Perpetua and the Severan Persecution’, Vigiliae Christianae 51 (1997), pp.276–97.
59. Origen, Contra Celsum 2.55; 3.44. It was notable that if a married woman converted to Christianity, the husband would denounce both her and her converters to the authorities (Justin, Second Apology 3–4; Tertullian, Apol. 8.4).
60. Tertullian, Ad Scap. 5.2; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, pp.317–21.
61. ibid, pp.295–9; Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981), pp.234–6; K.R. Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire (Oxford 1987); Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (1994); R.H. Barrow, Slavery in the Roman Empire (1968).
62. Friedrich Engels, Die Neue Zeit (1894–5), pp.4–13, 36–43; Karl Kautsky, Der Ursprung des Christentums (1908).
63. R.Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A sociologist reconsiders history (Princeton 1996); R.A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge 1990); R. MacMullen, Christianising the Roman Empire (Yale 1984).
64. Ste Croix, ‘Why were the Christians?’ loc. cit., p.17.
65. Tertullian, De Fuga in Persecutione 5.12–14; 13.5.
66. S.J. Harrison, Apuleius. A Latin Sophist (Oxford 2000).
67. Eusebius, HE 4.9; Justin, Apology 1.68; E. Bickermann, ‘Trajan, Hadrian and the Christians’, Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 96 (1968), pp.290–315; Gerhard Krodel, ‘Persecution and Toleration of Christianity until Hadrian’, in S. Benka & J.J. O’Rourke (eds), The Catacombs and the Colosseum (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania 1971) pp.255–67; L.W. Barnard, Justin Martyr. His Life and Thought (Cambridge 1967), pp.173–4; cf. also Marta Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire (Oklahoma 1987); Stephen Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians (Indiana 1984).
68. Eusebius, HE 4.13.
69. Origen, Contra Celsum 5.25–7; 5.33–5. For Celsus in general, see Gerard Watson, ‘Celsus and the philosophical opposition to Christianity’, Irish Theological Quarterly 58 (1992), pp.165–79; Michael Frede, ‘Celsus’ attack on the Christians’, in Jonathan Barnes & Miriam Griffin (eds), Philosophia Togata, Vol.2 Plato and Aristotle at Rome (Oxford 1997), pp.218–40.
70. Origen, Contra Celsum 21.4.
71. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 10.
72. Julian the Apostate later used the same argument (Julian, Contra Galileos 306a; 356c).
73. Origen, Contra Celsum 7.58; 6.15.
74. Cicero, Laws 2.10.27; Plato, Phil. 16c.
75. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.14.
76. Justin, Apology 1.30–54.
77. Origen, Contra Celsum 8.68.
78. ibid., 8.73–5.
79. Epictetus, Discourses 4.7.6.
80. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.9; 3.17; 4.10.
81. ibid., 3.55.
82. ibid., 8.55.
83. ibid., 7.62.
84. ibid., 8.14.
85. Matthew 6.24.
86. Origen, Contra Celsum 8.2; 7.68.
87. ibid., 1.28.
88. ibid., 1.32.
89. Mark 1.23, 34; 3.11; 4.35; 6.35; 2.8.
90. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.6; 6.40.
91. ibid., 7.18.
92. ibid., 2.4; 2.8; 2.11.
93. ibid., 7.53.
94. ibid., 8.14–15.
95. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its legacy (2004); Richard E. Rubenstein, When Jesus became God: The Epic Fight over Christ’s Divinity in the Last Days of Rome (2003). Since the Greek for ‘identity’ is homoousia and for ‘likeness’ homoiousia, it has been well said that the entire bitter battle at the Council was fought over the single letter ‘i’.
96. Origen, Contra Celsum 6.34.
97. ibid., 2.55.
98. ibid., 5.14.
99. One is reminded of Einstein’s famous saying that God does not play dice with the universe.
100. Origen, Contra Celsum 4.2–3.
101. ibid., 4.7–8. This was a point that particularly appealed to Julian the Apostate. Why, asks Julian, should God have manifested himself only in Judaea? And if Jesus is the God of us all, why did he neglect everyone but Judaeans? (Julian, Contra Galilaeos 141e; 106d).
102. Origen, Contra Celsum 4.10.
103. ibid., 4.2.
104. ibid., 4.14.
105. J. Bidez, Vie de Porphyre (Ghent 1913); P. Hadot, Plotin, Porphyre – études néoplatoniciennes (Paris 1999).
106. T.D. Barnes, ‘Porphyry and the Christians’, Journal of Theological Studies 24 (1973), pp.424–42.
107. Mark 6.3.
108. W. den Boer, ‘A Pagan Historian and His Enemies: Porphyry against the Christians’, Classical Philology 69 (1974), pp.198–208.
109. W. den Boer (ed.), Romanitas et Christianitas (Amsterdam 1973).
110. R.J. Hoffmann (ed. & trans.), Porphyry against the Christians (Guildford 1994); Wilken, The Christians as the Romans saw them op. cit., pp.126–63 (esp. p.161); for the claims of Christian evangelists that irked Porphyry, see Mark 16.18 and Matthew 17.20.
111. Richard Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (Oxford 1949), pp.44–5.
112. Galen K.3.237–41.
113. Galen K.3.238–40.
114. Galen K.3.364, 471, 904.
115. Walzer, Galen op. cit., pp.26–7, 83–90; Galen K.4.649; 5.86.13; 8.637–98; 19.339.
116. Matthew 19.26; Luke 1.37.
117. Walzer, Galen op. cit., pp.28, 31.
118. ibid., pp.61–3.
119. ibid., pp.65, 79–80.
120. Apuleius, Metamorphosis 9.14.
121. Lucian, Peregrinus 11–16.
122. Augustus de Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes (New York 1872) p.377.
1. On the imminence of the parousia, see Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 31; L.W. Barnard, Justin Martyr. His Life and Thought (Cambridge 1967). For his demonology, see Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil’s Biblical Roots (2005); cf. also Alan E. Bernstein, The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds (Cornell 1993).
2. J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (1964), pp.101–92.
3. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 31.
4. Justin, 2 Apology 13; Barnard, Justin op. cit., pp.89–90.
5. Grant, The Antonines op. cit., p.120.
6. Justin, 1 Apology 17. For Justin’s Apology, see also Anthony J. Guerra, ‘The Conversion of Marcus Aurelius and Justin Martyr. The Purpose, Genre and Content of the First Apology’, Second Century 9 (1992), pp.171–9; Gary Bisbee, ‘The Acts of Justin, Martyr’, Second Century 3 (1983), pp.129–57.
7. Barnard, Justin op. cit., p.53.
8. Respectively 1 Apology 31, 33, 14 (also Dialogue with Trypho 78), 47, 49.
9. Justin, 1 Apology 2, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 25, 27, 29, 39, 45, 49, 51, 57, 67; Justin 2 Apology 47. The charges of cannibalism and incest were habitually brought against the Christians. See Eusebius, HE 5.1; Tertullian, Apol. 9.8; Minucius Felix, Octavius 9.5–6; Origen, Contra Celsum 6.27; cf. also Stephen Benko, Pagan Rome and Early Christianity op. cit., p.68; Andrew McGowan, ‘Eating People. Accusations of Cannibalism against Christians in the Second Century’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994), pp.413–42; Champlin, Fronto op. cit., pp.65–6. Some of the Gnostic sects may have been guilty of these practices. Clement claimed that the Gnostic sect of Carpocraticus practised free love and orgies, while there was another sect called the Phibionites who indulged in ritual sexual intercourse, the eating of foetuses and the drinking of menstrual blood. It may not always have been easy for the Romans to distinguish these sects from the Christians proper (Wilken, The Christians as the Romans saw them op. cit., pp.19–20).
10. Justin, 1 Apology 6, 7, 9, 10.
11. Justin, 2 Apology 13; cf. C. Andresen, Logos und Nomos (Berlin 1955). On Socrates, see Justin, 1 Apology 46; 2 Apology 10.
12. Justin, 1 Apology 2; cf. Peter Brown, ‘Late Antiquity’, in P. Veyne, A History of Private Life, Vol. 1 From Pagan Rome to Byzantium (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1992), pp.235–311 (at p.243).
13. Justin, 1 Apology 14.
14. Justin, 2 Apology 10.
15. Jerome, De viris illustribus 53; Eusebius, HE 2.4; Claude Briand-Ponsard, L’Afrique Romaine (Paris 2006), p.261.
16. Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge 1996).
17. Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum 1.1.2; cf. also T.D. Barnes, Tertullian (Oxford 1985), pp.100–1, 137–40.
18. Tertullian, Apol. 1.
19. ‘certum, quia impossibile est’ (Tertullian, De Carne Christi 5.4). This is usually bowdlerised into the form credo quia absurdum.
20. Barnes, Tertullian op. cit., pp.94–5.
21. Justin, 1 Apology 55.
22. Tertullian, De Carne Christi 9; Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 88; Clement of Alexandria, Paedogogus 3.1.3; Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 4.33.12; Origen, Contra Celsum 6.75.
23. Barnes, Tertullian, pp.107–12.
24. Tertullian, Apol. 13, 17, 39.
25. Tertullian, Apol. 21.
26. Tertullian, Apol. 7.1–2; 9.2–3; Artemidorus i.70 (White (ed.), Dream Interpretation op. cit., p.53).
27. Porphyry claimed that human sacrifice still went on in Carthage (De Abstinentia 2.27). In the late second century Sextus Empiricus said men were still sacrificed to Chronos (Hypotheses 3.208, 221). Officially, of course, the Roman state had set its face against human sacrifice and, under Claudius, had fought a brutal campaign to suppress this favourite practice of the Druids in Britain.
28. Tertullian, Apol. 35.9.
29. Tertullian, Apol. 30.4; 32.1; 39.2. It is a moot point whether Tertullian was more contemptuous of the Jews or the Greeks. ‘For Tertullian . . . Judaism was an unchanging, fossilised faith, not to be taken seriously or deserving proper attention’ (Barnes, Tertullian, p.92).
30. F. Cumont, Lux perpetua (Paris 1949), pp.55–108; J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, ‘Religion’, CAH 11, pp.1006–7.
31. Barnes, Tertullian, pp.132–4.
32. Tertullian, Apol. 42.1–2.
33. Tertullian, Apol. 43.1.
34. Tertullian, Apol. 44.1.
35. Tertullian, Apol. 23.4.
36. Tertullian, Apol. 37.6.
37. Barnes, Tertullian, 99, 134–5.
38. ibid., p.136.
39. Eusebius, HE 4.17.
40. H. Musurillo (ed.), The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford 1972), pp.40–1.
41. Quoted in Ste Croix, ‘Why were the Christians?’ loc. cit., p.21.
42. Eusebius. HE 4.15.48.
43. Musurillo, Acts op. cit., pp.22–5.
44. ibid. pp.26–7.
45. ibid., pp.28–9, 34–5.
46. Tertullian, Ad Scap. 4.2.
47. Justin, 2 Apology 3.
48. Eusebius, HE 4.16.7–8; P. Keresztes, ‘The “so-called” Second Apology of Justin’, Latomus 14 (1965), pp.858–69.
49. G.W. Bowerstock, Martyrdom in Rome (Cambridge 1995), p.72; cf. Arthur Droge & J. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Ancient Jews, Christians, Greeks and Romans (San Francisco 1992).
50. Meds 1.7; PIR2, pp.243, 535.
51. Musurillo, Acts op. cit., pp.42–61.
52. There is a massive and long-running controversy about the exact date of Polycarp’s martyrdom, with some opting for a date in the years 156–9. But the best scholarship places his death firmly in Marcus Aurelius’s reign. Although both Eusebius and Jerome (De viris illustribus 17) tell us categorically that Polycarp was martyred under Marcus, modern scholars claim to know better. Vast amounts have been written about the disputed dates (155–6, 157–8 or 166–7). It is way beyond our remit to pursue this controversy – we are far enough away from Marcus Aurelius as it is – but for a few pointers, see: J.D. Barnes, ‘A Note on Polycarp’, JTS 18 (1967), pp.433–7; Barnes, ‘The Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum’, JTS 19 (1968), pp.510–14; W. Telfer, ‘The date of the martyrdom of Polycarp’, JTS 3 (1952), pp.79–85; A. Strobel, Ursprung und Geschichte des frühchristlichen Osterkalenders (1977), pp.245–50; P. Keresztes, ‘Was Marcus Aurelius a Persecutor?’ Harvard Theological Review 61 (1968), pp.321–43 (at pp.325–6).
53. Eusebius, HE 14.1–46; Musurillo, Acts op. cit., pp.8–19; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5.33.4; 3.3.4.
54. Leonard L. Thompson, ‘The Martyrdom of Polycarp: Death in the Roman Games’, The Journal of Religion 82 (2002), pp.27–52.
55. Musurillo, Acts, pp.14–15.
56. PIR2, p.559; Tertullian, Apol. 2.
57. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution op. cit., pp.1–21.
58. Musurillo, Acts, pp.66–7.
59. Eusebius, HE 5.1.
60. Musurillo, Acts, pp.68–75.
61. Eusebius, HE 5.1.42–52. For more on the horrors of the arena, see Carlin Barton, ‘The Scandal of the Arena’, Representations 27 (1989), pp.1–36; Donald Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (1998).
62. Musurillo, Acts, pp.78–81.
63. Eusebius, HE 5.1.56; 5.1.60–3. There is a huge literature on the Lyons persecutions. See the collectaneous volume Les martyres de Lyon (Paris 1978); M. Reginold, ‘The Martyrdom of Prominent Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne’, in Franklyn Balasundaram (ed.), Martyrs in the History of Christianity (Delhi 1997); C. Bruno (ed.), The Book of Christian Martyrs (1990). See also Robert McQueen Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (1997); Eric Francis Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge 2001). P. Keresztes, ‘The Massacre at Lugdunum in 177 AD’, Historia 16 (1967), pp.75–86, is a convincing refutation of the bizarre idea in J. Colin, L’empire des Antonins et les martyrs gaulois de 177 (Bonn 1964), that the persecution took place in Asia Minor. See also Keresztes, ‘Das Christenmassaker von Lugdunum im Jahre 177’, in Klein, Marc Aurel op. cit., pp.261–78.
64. Eusebius, HE 5.1.47; Tertullian, Ad Scap. 4.3–4; cf. Ramsay MacMullen, ‘Judicial savagery in the Roman Empire’, Chiron 16 (1986), pp.147–66.
65. Quoted in Ste Croix, ‘Why were the Christians?’ loc. cit., p.10.
66. Musurillo, Acts, pp.86–9.
67. H. Karpp, ‘Die Zahl der Scilitanischen Märtyrer’, Vigiliae Christianae 15 (1961), pp.165–73.
68. Barnes, Tertullian op. cit., pp.60–3.
69. Justin, 1 Apology 57.
70. Tertullian, De Anima 55.4–5. As the martyrs put it: ‘Today we are in heaven’ (Musurillo, Acts, p.89). On the psychology of martyrdom more generally, see W. Ameling (ed.), Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten (Stuttgart 2002).
71. Fergus Millar, ‘Condemnation to hard labour in the Roman Empire, from the Julio-Claudians to Constantine’, PBSR 52 (1984), pp.124–47; cf. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians op. cit., p.434.
72. H.W. Attridge, ‘Philosophical Critique of Religion’, ANRW 2.6 (1978), pp.45–78; J.P. Brown, ‘The sacrificial cult and its critics in Greek and Hebrew’, Journal of Semitic Studies 24 (1979), pp.159–74, and 25 (1980), pp.1–21; E. Ferguson, ‘Spiritual Sacrifice in Early Christianity and Its Environment’, ANRW 2.23 (1980), pp.1151–89; R.C. Hanson, ‘The Christian attitude to pagan religions up to the time of Constantine the Great’, ANRW 2.23 (1980), pp.910–73 (esp. pp.913–18).
73. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution op. cit., pp.268–314. See also Frend, ‘The Failure of the Persecutions in the Roman Empire’, PP 18 (1959), pp.10–27. For Antioch as the urban fount, spreading Christianity from East to West, see G. Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria (Princeton 1961), pp.272–316.
74. Wilken, The Christians op. cit. p.31; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians op. cit., p.269.
75. Ste Croix, ‘Why were the Christians?’ loc. cit., pp.28–9.
76. Eusebius, HE 6.1.1; 6.6.
77. K. Rudolph, Gnosis (Edinburgh 1985). And hence the kernel of truth behind Peter de Vries’s brilliant quip: ‘It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us’ (Mackerel Plaza, Chapter One).
78. Eusebius, HE 5.16.3–4; W. Tabbernee, ‘Early Montanism and Voluntary Martyrdom’, Colloqium 17 (1985), pp.33–44; Frederick Klawaiter, ‘The role of martyrdom and persecution in developing the priestly authority of women in early Christianity. A Case Study of Montanism,’ Second Century 49 (1980), pp.251–61; Daniel Boyarin, ‘Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), pp.577–627.
79. Eusebius, HE 5.16.12–23; 5.18.3.
80. Eusebius, HE 4.14.10–15; cf. also Herbert Brook Workman, Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford 1988); E.A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1997); Paul Keresztes, ‘War Marc Aurel ein Christenverfolger?’ in Klein, Marc Aurel op. cit., pp.279–303.
81. Orosius 7.15, 4; Origen, Contra Celsum 8.69; Eusebius, HE 4.23.2; 4.26.3; cf. also R.W. Burgess, ‘The date of the persecution of Christians in the army’, JTS 47 (1996), pp.157–8.
82. Eusebius, HE 4.3; Keresztes, ‘Was Marcus Aurelius a Persecutor?’ loc. cit., p.334.
83. Eusebius, HE 4.26.1.
84. Eusebius, HE 26.1–10; 5–6, 7–9; Jerome, Chronicle (ed. Helm), p.206.
85. Leslie Barnard, Athenagoras: A study in second century Christian Apologetic (Paris 1972); cf. W.R. Schoedel, Athenagoras. Legatio and De Resurrectione (1972); Millar, Emperor in the Roman World op. cit., p.565.
86. L.W. Barnard, ‘The Embassy of Athenagoras’, Vigiliae Christianae 21 (1967), pp.88–92; T.D. Barnes, ‘The Embassy of Athenagoras’, JTS 26 (1975), pp.111–15.
87. Eusebius, HE 4.26.1; 4.27.1; Tertullian, Apol. 39.1–2.
88. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians op. cit., p.450; Barnes, Tertullian op. cit., p.149. ‘Until the third century at any rate it is better not to think of persecutions primarily in terms of emperors’ (Ste Croix, ‘Why were the Christians?’ loc. cit., p.15). ‘The emperor’s words in a letter (or any other form of pronouncement) could not of themselves determine what was done in a province’ (Millar, Emperor in the Roman World, p.559).
89. Eusebius, HE 5.21.1; Keresztes, ‘Was Marcus Aurelius a Persecutor?’ loc. cit. Timothy Barnes in Tertullian (pp.149–56) makes a spirited attempt to claim that there was nothing special about the level of persecution under Marcus, and that it continued at the same level under Commodus (‘The thirteen years of Commodus’s rule have a higher frequency of well-attested instances of persecution’). Unfortunately his argument seems to me both disingenuous and poorly constructed. Disingenuous, in that he includes the Scillitan martyrs as one of Commodus’s persecutions. Though these executions (July 180) took place in the first months of Commodus’s reign, they were obviously the result of inquiries set in train during the previous reign. As Garzetti remarks: ‘The martyrdom of nine Numidian Christians, beheaded on 17 July 180, though it occurred under Commodus, is also to be ascribed to the enduring hostility of Marcus’s reign’ (Garzetti, From Tiberius to the Antonines, p.526, and see also ibid., p.546). Barnes does not cite any further evidence of the alleged four instances of persecution in thirteen years (which he contrasts with five in nineteen years under Marcus). Commodus’s persecutions are evidently so ‘well attested’ that they need no further documentation. Poorly constructed, in that Barnes dismisses all contrary evidence as ‘circumstantial’ and says that Marcus’s collusion with Fronto to damn Justin is ‘pure fantasy’. No evidence whatever is produced for the author’s ipse dixit. He relies heavily on hunch theory, evinced by the recurring phrase ‘need not’. It is perhaps not insignificant that Barnes is the biographer of Tertullian, for it was Tertullian who made the absurd attempt to deny the obvious, of which he was perfectly well aware, and claim Marcus as a protector of Christians (Tertullian, Apol. 5.6).
90. For these points, see Motschmann, Die Religionspolitik op. cit., pp.81, 272–3, and Ste Croix, ‘Why were the Christians?’ loc. cit., p.10. For emperor worship, see I. Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford 2002); J.E. Lendon, Empire of Honour. The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford 1977), pp.160–72.
91. Ste Croix, loc. cit., p.14; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians op. cit., p.424.
92. Tertullian, Apol. 40.1.
93. T.D. Barnes, ‘Legislation against the Christians’, JRS 58 (1968) loc. cit., p.39, claims that this is the explanation for the Lyons persecution.
94. Eusebius, HE 4.26.5.
95. Eusebius, HE 4.12.13; 4.26.10; G.W. Bowerstock, ‘The Proconsulate of Albus’, Harvard Studies 72 (1967), pp.289–300.
96. Eusebius, HE 5.1.44–52.
97. Garzetti, From Tiberius op. cit., p.524.
98. See, for example, Duchesne, Histoire ancienne de l’Église (Paris 1906), p.210.
99. On the competing religions and their status in Christian eyes, see M. Beard, J. North & S. Price (eds), The Religions of Rome (Cambridge 1998); S. Price, The Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge 1999).
100. Justin, 1 Apology 59; 2 Apology 10.8.
101. Tertullian, Apol. 46.4.
102. Tertullian, Apol. 23.4–5.
103. For example, Justin 1 Apology 43; 2 Apology 7.
104. Meds 6.54; Origen, Contra Celsum 4.23.
105. James Rives, ‘The Piety of a Persecutor’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1996), pp.1–25.
106. Eusebius, HE 8.1; G. Geffken, The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism (Amsterdam 1978).
107. See M. Beard & J. North (eds), Pagan Priests (1990).
108. H. Lewy, Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy. Mysticsm, Magic and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire (Paris 1978), pp.259–359; A.J. Festugière, La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, 4 vols (Paris 1954), esp. Vol. 2; J.M. Dillon, The Middle Platonists (1977); R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (Yale 1981), pp.67–8, 86–94; M.P. Nilsson, Geschichte der Griechischen Religion (Munich 1950) ii, pp.546–62; F. Dunand & P. Leveque, Les syncrétismes dans les religions de l’antiquité (Leiden 1975).
109. For further pointers on this, see C. King, ‘The organisation of Roman religious belief’, Classical Antiquity 22 (2003), pp.275–312; Jason P. Davies, Rome’s Religious History. Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus on their Gods (Cambridge 2004); H.F. Mueller, Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus (2002).
110. R. MacMullen, Christianising the Roman Empire, AD 100–400 (Yale 1984), pp.16–42.
111. Keresztes, ‘Was Marcus Aurelius a Persecutor?’ loc. cit., p.329.
112. Digest 48.19.30.
113. Keresztes, ‘The Massacre at Lugdunum’ loc. cit., pp.75–86.
114. Meds 11.3.
115. P. Brunt, in ‘Marcus Aurelius and the Christians’ in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History (Brussels 1979), pp.483–520, argues that it is a clear case of doctoring and that the words ‘like the Christians’ are a later addition. Some even think it a reference to the events at Lyons related by Eusebius in HE. 5.1 et seq. (see the discussion in Farquharson ii, pp.859–60). But Brunt’s view has been comprehensively and meticulously refuted by A.R. Birley (Marcus Aurelius, pp.264–5) in a masterpiece of close textual analysis – quite the finest example of this sort of thing I have ever seen.
116. Possibly Meds 1.6; 7.68; 8.48; 8.51; but, most tellingly, 3.16. But this is unlikely (see Farquharson ii, p.587).
117. Keresztes, ‘Was Marcus Aurelius a Persecutor?’ loc. cit., p.329.
118. M.L. Astarita, Avidio Cassio (Rome 1983), pp.123–5.
1. Meds 4.3.
2. Epictetus, Discourses 1.25.15. According to Epictetus, peace means ‘no wars any more, no battles, no large-scale brigandage; we can travel by land at any hour, we can sail from sunrise to sunset’ (Epictetus, Discourses 2.22.22).
3. ‘Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt’ (Horace, Epistles 1.11.27).
4. Heraclitus, fragment 80 in H.A. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th ed. 1952).
5. The possible motives for German migration are exhaustively discussed in Burns, Rome and the Barbarians (2003), pp.42–87.
6. T. Carney, A Biography of C. Marius (Chicago 1970), pp.30–8; cf. also Richard J. Evans, Gaius Marius. A Political Biography (Pretoria 1994).
7. Plutarch, Marius 11.2–3.
8. Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar op. cit., pp.224–32.
9. ibid., pp.272–5.
10. ‘Julius Caesar’s “Germans” were a political invention, a device to account for his own “Gallic” wars which took him as far as the Rhine.’ C.R. Whitaker, ‘Frontiers’, CAH 11, p.313; cf. also G. Walser, Caesar und die Germanen. Studien zur politischen Tendenz Römischer Feldzugsberichte (Wiesbaden 1956), p.21.
11. Caesar, De Bello Gallico 1.50–3; H. Schutz, The Prehistory of Gemanic Europe (1983), pp.338–43.
12. W. Jobst, Provinzhauptstadt Carnuntum (Vienna 1983), pp.31,37,44.
13. Tacitus, Annals 2.44.3; 2.62.3; Strabo 7.1.3; Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History 2.108.2.
14. E. Hornemann, Römische Geschichte (Stuttgart 1982), p.141.
15. Dio 66.18.2–4; Tacitus, Annals 2.44; 2.62–3.
16. Velleius Paterculus, Compendium op. cit. 2.118.2; Tacitus, Annals 2.10.3; 1.58.1–5; 1.55.2–3; Dio 66.19.3; Florus 2.30.33; Strabo 7.1.4.
17. Dio 56.19–22. Cf. Peter S. Wells, The Battle that Stopped Rome (2003); Adrian Murdoch, Rome’s Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest (2006).
18. Suetonius, Augustus 23.
19. Burns, Rome and the Barbarians op. cit., p.209; Fitzinger, D. Planck & B. Cämmerer (eds), Die Römer in Baden-Württemberg (Stuttgart 1976), p.26.
20. Tacitus, Annals 2.16–21; E.A. Thompson, The Early Germans (Oxford 1965), pp.72–108.
21. Strabo 7.4.1; Tacitus, Annals 1.58.2.
22. Tacitus, Annals 1.59–60; 2.17.18; 2.21.2; 2.44.3; 2.45.4; 2.62.2; 2.88.1; Dio 67.5.1.
23. Tacitus, Annals 2.88.1–3; 11.16.1.
24. Tacitus, Annals 11.16; 12.28–30; 13.56; Tacitus, Germania 29, 42; H. Schönberger, ‘The Roman Frontier in Germany: An archaeological survey’, JRS 59 (1969), pp.144–97 (esp. pp.158–61); Schönberger, ‘Recent research on the limes in Germania Superior and Raetia’, in Limeskongress 12 (1980), pp.54–62.
25. Thompson, The Early Germans op. cit., pp.87–8.
26. Suetonius, Nero 19.2.
27. Tacitus, Histories 2.81–2; CAH (1936) 10, p.558.
28. Dio 67.3.7.
29. ILS 9200; CAH 10 (1936), pp.168–78; Garzetti, From Tiberius op. cit., pp.290, 482.
30. Suetonius, Domitian 6.1; Dio 67.7.3–4.
31. Tacitus, Annals 1.3; cf. C. Wells, The German Policy of Augustus (Oxford 1972).
32. H. Schönberger, ‘Die Römischen Truppenlager der frühen und mittleren Kaizerzeit zwischen Nordsee und Inn’, Bericht der Römische-Germanischen Kommission des Deutschen archäologischen Instituts 66 (1985), pp.321–497.
33. Tacitus, Histories 1.55.5.
34. B.W. Jones, The Emperor Domitian (1992), pp.144–50.
35. Tacitus, Germania 37; C. Ruger, ‘Roman Germany’, CAH 11, pp.501–3.
36. J. Sasel, ‘Trajan’s canal at the Iron Gate’, JRS 63 (1973), pp.80–5; J. Mitova-Dzhonova, ‘Stationen und Stützpunkte der Römischen Krieg und Handelsflotte am Unterdonaulimes’, Limeskongress 13 (1986), pp.504–9.
37. S. Dušanić, ‘Aspects of Roman Mining in Noricum, Pannonia, Dalmatia and Moesia Superior’, ANRS 2.11.6 (1977), pp.52–94; S. Mrozek, ‘Die Goldbergwerke im Römischen Dazien’, ANRW 2.11.6 (1977), pp.95–109; M. Werner, ‘The Moesian limes and the imperial mining district’, Limeskongress 13 (1986), pp.561–4; cf. G. Alföldy, Noricum (1974).
38. Malcolm Todd, The Northern Barbarians 100 BC–300 AD (1975), p.19.
39. Strabo 7.1.3.
40. Tacitus, Germania 16; Thomson, Early Germans op. cit., pp.6–7.
41. Caesar, De Bello Gallico 6.22.1; 6.29.1; cf. M.I. Finley, Slavery in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge 1960), pp.191–203.
42. Tacitus, Germania 12; 21.
43. Tacitus, Germania 8; 17–18.
44. Tacitus, Germania 37.
45. Caesar, De Bello Gallico 6.18.2; Tacitus, Germania 11; 13–15; 23–4.
46. Dio 53.26.4; R.E.M. Wheeler, Rome beyond the imperial frontiers (1954), pp.11–13.
47. Thompson, Early Germans op. cit., pp.21–4.
48. ibid., pp.87–9; Ursula-Barbara Dittrich, ‘Die Wirtschaftsstruktur der Quaden, Markomannen und Sarmaten im mitteleren Donauraum und ihre Handelsbeziehungen mit Rom’, in Münstersche Beiträge zur Antiken Handelsgeschichte 6 (1987), pp.9–19.
49. Tacitus, Annals 1.59.6–8.
50. Strabo 7.1.3.
51. Tacitus, Germania 42.2. As Thompson rightly comments: ‘It is scarcely a coincidence that the Germanic autocrat made his appearance in exactly that part of the Germanic world where Roman influence was most intense, where the private ownership of property was most highly developed, and where a colony of Roman traders was continuously engaged in commerce and lending money to the native population’ (Early Germans op. cit., p.69).
52. Tacitus, Annals 12.29.2; Pliny, Letters 2.7.2; Dio 67.5.2.
53. Suetonius, Tiberius 37; Tacitus, Annals 2.63.5; Velleius Paterculus, Compendium op. cit., 2.129.3.
54. Tacitus, Annals 12.29.1; 2.63.7; HA Hadrian 12.7; Ammianus Marcellinus 29.4.7; Dio 66.18.2–4; Tacitus, Germania 43.2.
55. ‘Without a popular power base and with only symbolic support from Rome, these rulers found themselves in a state of paralytic tension, at the mercy of both parties, suspicious of all and trusted by none’ (Herbert Schutz, The Romans in Central Europe (1985), p.35).
56. Thompson, Early Germans op. cit., pp.72–108.
57. Syme, ‘Domitian, the last years’, RP iv, pp.252–77; cf. also Syme, Tacitus (1958), pp.30–44.
58. Dio 68.8–13; I.A. Richmond, ‘Trajan’s Army on Trajan’s Column’, PBSR 13 (1935), pp.1–40.
59. Dio 68.14.3; Mrozek, ‘Die Golbergwerke im Römischen Dazien op. cit., pp.95–109; D. Benea & R. Petrovszky, ‘Werkstätten zur Metallverarbeitung in Tibiscum im 2. und 3. Jh. n. Chr.’, Germania 65 (1987), pp.226–39. For the ‘financial disaster’ thesis, see Miriam Griffin, ‘Trajan’, CAH 11, p.114.
60. F. Lepper & S. Frere, Trajan’s Column (Gloucester 1988); J.E. Packer, The Forum of Trajan in Rome; A Study of the Monuments (Berkeley 1997).
61. L. Rossi, Trajan’s Column and the Dacian Wars (1971); J. Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps. A Life and Times (1997).
62. Josephus, Jewish Wars 6.420; Joannes Laurentius Lydus, Mag. 2.2.8; Chronicon Pascale 1.474; Lydus (ed. R. Wunsch, 1903), De magistratibus republicae Romanae.
63. C.C. Petrolescu, ‘L’organisation de la Dacie sous Trajan et Hadrian’, Dacia 29 (1985), pp.43–55; N. Gudea, ‘Der Limes Dakiens und die Verteidigung der obermoesischen Donaulinie von Trajan bis Aurelian’, ANRW 2.6 (1997), pp.849–87; B. Catanacia, Evolution of the system of defensive works in Dacia (1981), pp.11–20; C. Daicoviciu, ‘Dakien und Röm in der Prinzipatzeit’, ANRW 11.6 (1977), pp.889–918.
64. A. Mocsy & D. Gabler, ‘Alte und neue Probleme am Limes von Pannonien’, Limeskongress 13 (1986), pp.369–76; D. Gabler (ed.), The Roman Fort at Acs-Vaspuszta (Hungary) on the Danubian Limes (Oxford 1989); K. Genser, Der österreichische Donaulimes in der Römerzeit: Ein Forschungsbericht (Vienna 1986); Z. Visy, Der pannonische Limes in Ungarn (Budapest 1988); V. Popović (ed.), Sirmium. Archaeological Excavations in Syrmian Pannonia (Belgrade n.d.), pp.5–90.
65. H. & H. Polenz (eds), Das römische Budapest: Neue Ausgrabungen und Funde in Aquincum (Munster 1986); K. Poczy et al., ‘Das Legionslager von Aquincum: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen 1973–83’, Limeskongress 13 (1986), pp.398–408; A. Neumann, Vindobona; die römische Vergangenheit Wiens (Vienna 1980); H. Stiglitz et al., ‘Carnuntum’, ANRW 2.6 (1977), pp.583–730; W. Jobst, Provinzhauptstadt Carnuntum (Vienna 1983); M. Kandler, ‘Die Legio I Adiutrix und Carnuntum’, Limeskongress 15 (1991), pp.237–41.
66. M. Werner, ‘The Moesian limes and the imperial mining districts’, Limeskongress 13 (1986), pp.561–4; A.G. Poulter (ed.), Ancient Bulgaria, 2 vols (Nottingham 1983), pp.74–118; A.G. Poulter, ‘The lower Moesian limes and the Dacian wars of Trajan’, Limeskongress 13 (1986), pp.519–28.
67. I. Mikl-Curk, ‘Natives, Romans and newcomers in the Eastern Alps during the second century. The role of the army in ethnic interaction’, Limeskongress 15 (1991), pp.248–51; J. Wilkes, ‘The Danube Provinces’, CAH 11, p.591.
68. Tacitus, Germania 42.
69. A. Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia. A History of the Middle Danube Provinces of the Roman Empire (1974), pp.102–3.
70. HA Hadrian 6.6–8.
71. J. Wilkes, ‘The Danube Provinces’, CAH 11, p.583.
72. L.F. Pitts, ‘Rome and the German “Kings” on the Middle Danube’, JRS 79 (1989), pp.54–6; Klein, Marc Aurel op. cit., pp.389–99.
73. Pitts, ‘Rome and the German “Kings”’ loc. cit., pp.54–6; V.A. Maxfield & M.J. Dobson, Roman Frontier Studies (Exeter 1991), pp.432–4; Klein, Marc Aurel, pp.389–99; R. Noll, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte der Markomannenkriege’, Archaeologica Austriaca 14 (1954), pp.43–67; P. Kos, Monetary Circulation in the Southeastern Alpine region c.300 BC–AD 1000 (Ljubljana 1986), pp.81–91.
74. HA Antoninus 5.4; Appian, Praef. 7.25–8; H. Mattingly & R.G. Carson, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, 6 vols (1962), iv. 124; H. Mattingly & E.A. Sydenham, RIC (1930), iii.620; J. Wilkes, ‘The Roman Frontier in Noricum’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 2 (1989), pp.347–52; G. Alföldy, Noricum (1974), p.145; E. Swoboda, ‘Rex Quadis Datum’, Carnuntum Jahrbuch 11 (1956), pp.5–12; D. Planck, ‘Neue Forschungen zum Obergermanischen und Ratischen Limes’, ANRW 2.5 (1976), pp.404–20; W. Wagner, Die Dislokation der römischen Auxiliarformationen in den Provinzen. Noricum, Pannonien, Moesien und Dakien von Augustus bis Gallienus (Berlin 1938), pp.95–193.
75. Aelius Aristides, Oration 26.70; A.R. Birley, ‘Die Aussen- und Grenzpolitik unter der Regierung Marc Aurels’, in Klein, Marc Aurel op. cit., pp.82–3.
76. Birley, Fasti Romani Britanniae op. cit., p.123; Birley, Marcus Aurelius op. cit., pp.113–14.
77. G. Alföldy, Römische Heeresgeschichte. Beiträge 1962–1985 (Amsterdam 1987), pp.394–410; G. Ulbert & T. Fischer, Der Limes in Bayern (Munich 1983), p.24; Birley, Marcus Aurelius op. cit., p.277.
78. HA Antoninus 12.8.
79. Gerhard Dobesch, ‘Aus der Vor und Nachgeschichte der Markomannenkriege’, in Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosohie-Historische Klasse 131 (1994), pp.67–125; S. Frere, Britannia: A History of Roman Britain (1987), pp.133–41; D. Breeze & B. Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall (1976), pp.105–24.
80. I. Mikl-Curk, ‘Les guerres contre les Marcomannes du 2e siècle et les trouvailles céramiques de la zone entre Pannonie et Italie’, Revue archéologique de l’Est et du Centre-Est 28 (1987), pp.241–6; P. Oliva, ‘Marcomannia provincia?’, Studii Classice 24 (1986), pp.15–29; W. Eck, ‘Provincial Administration and Finance’, CAH 11, p.286. On the self-interest of the legions, see J. Wilkes, ‘The Danube Provinces’, CAH 11, p.584.
81. HA Marcus 12.13.
82. Dio 72.11.3; AE 1934, 155; AE 1957, 121; M.M. Roxan, Roman Military Diplomas, 2 vols (1985), ii, pp.125–6; W. Eck, Die Statthalter der germanischen Provinzen vom 1–3 Jahrhundert (1985), pp.67–8. Some say the Chatti’s raid was further north, in Lower Germany, possibly when Legio 1 Minervia was transferred thence to the Parthian front, but the archaeological evidence does not support this idea (Zwikker, Studien zur Marcussaule (Amsterdam 1941), p.53; H. Schönberger, ‘Die Römischen Truppenlager’, loc. cit., p.405).
83. CIL iii, 3744, 3748, 7616, 12514, 13757, 10615, 10632, 10638, 10653. See also J. Sasel, Opera Selecta (Ljubljana 1992), pp.227–30.
84. C.C. Petrolescu, ‘L’organisation de la Dacie sous Trajan et Hadrian’, Dacia 29 (1985), pp.45–55.
85. C.C. Petrolescu, ‘Die reorganisation Dakiens unter Marcus Aurelius’, Germania 65 (1987), pp.123–34.
86. K. Dietz, ‘Zur Verwaltungs geschichte Obergermaniens und Rätiens unter Mark Aurel’, Chiron 19 (1989), pp.407–48.
87. Alföldy, KS, p.222.
88. HA Marcus 21.7.
89. B. Overbeck, ‘Raetien zur Prinzipatzeit’, ANRW 11.5.2 (1976), pp.658–89; T. Fischer, ‘Neues zum Römischen Regensburg’, Limeskongress 13 (1986), pp.146–51; H. Vetters, ‘Lauriacum’, ANRW 11.6 (1977), pp.355–79; K. Kneifel, Lauriacum: Führer durch die Abteilung Römerzeit (Ems 1984); C.R. Whitaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire (Baltimore 1994), p.20; Mark Hassall, ‘The Army’, CAH 11, p.323.
90. Dio 55.24.2–4; Suetonius, Nero 19; J.C. Mann, ‘The Raising of New Legions during the Principate’, Hermes 91 (1963), pp.483–9.
91. For details of these tactics, see Alföldy, KS, pp.86, 99, 174, 184, 227, 232–37, 245, 325, 329–32. ‘The Marcomanni, for example, were too amorphous for Roman commanders to try to deploy them against others even after their long involvement with Rome’ (Burns, Rome and the Barbarians op. cit., pp.173–4).
92. Here I must acknowledge the brilliant and invaluable work by William George Kerr, ‘A Chronological Study of the Marcomannic Wars of Marcus Aurelius’, PhD thesis, Princeton (1995), on which I have drawn heavily – hereinafter Kerr, ‘Chronology’.
93. AE 1956, 123; G. Winkler, ‘Legio II Italica: Geschichte und Denkmaler’, Jahrbuch der Oberösterreichischen Musealvereines 116 (1971), pp.85–138.
94. J. Sasel, Opera Selecta op. cit., pp.388–93.
95. Eutropius 8.8.3.
96. D.R. Walker, The Metrology of the Roman Silver Coinage, Vol. 2 From Nero to Commodus (Oxford 1977) ii, pp.55–60.
97. HA Marcus 7.9.
98. Szaivert, Die Münzprägung op. cit., p.200; Mattingly & Carson, Coins of the Roman Empire op. cit., iv.433, 435, 439, 445, 447, 589, 598.
99. HA Marcus 8.4.5; 11.3; Kerr, ‘Chronology’ loc. cit., pp.13–14.
100. Philostratus, VS 2.1.9; Dio 71.1–2.
101. For Marcus’s bellicose intentions towards Germany, interrupted by factors like famine, plague, Parthia and financial stringency, there are extended discussions in A. Mocsy, ‘Das Gerücht von neuen Donauprovinzen unter Marcus Aurelius’, Acta classica universitatis scientairum Debreceniensis 7 (1971), pp.63–9; Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia op. cit., pp.183–5; Kerr, ‘Chronology’ loc. cit., pp.12–27. Debate about whether Marcus’s intentions were offensive or defensive recalls the similar debate about Trajan’s invasion of Dacia (Miriam Griffin, ‘Trajan’, CAH 11, p.112).
102. Dio 71.12.1; 71.13.1; 72.1; Alföldy, KS, pp.371–2. These tribes are identified by Tacitus in Germania 40. See also G. Schindler-Horstkotte, Der ‘Markomannenkrieg’ Mark Aurels und die Kaiserliche Reichsprägung (Cologne 1985); G. Langmann, ‘Die Markomannenkriege 166/167 bis 180’, in Militarhistorische Schriftenreihe 43 (Vienna 1981).
103. G. Walser, Die römischen Strasse und Meilensteiner in Raetien (1983), p.22; M. Ichikawa, ‘The Marcomannic Wars: A reconstruction of their nature’, in T. Yuge & M. Doi (eds), Forms of Control and Subordination in Antiquity (Tokyo 1988), pp.253–5.
104. For the career of Macrinius Avitus Catonius Vindex, see H. Devijver, Prosopographia Militiarum Equestrium Quae fuerunt ab Augusto ad Gallienum (Leuven 1987), pp.550–1. Burns, Rome and the Barbarians op. cit., p.236, unaccountably ties himself in knots over Vindex’s identity. He is, however, correct that the Vindex who defeated the Germans was not Macrinius Vindex the praetorian prefect, who died in 171 (see Boissevain, Cassii Dionis Cocceiani historiarum Romanarum que supersunt (Berlin 1901) iii, p.251.
105. HA Marcus 8.7; H.J. Kellner, ‘Raetien’, in Klein, Marc Aurel op. cit., pp.243–4; B. Overbeck, ‘Raetien zur Prinzipatzeit’, ANRW 2.5 (1976), pp.677–8; Schönberger, ‘Die Römischen Truppenlager’ loc. cit., p.403.
106. Dio 71.13.1.
107. CIL iii.921–60.
108. Ammianus Marcellinus 29.6.1; HA Marcus 22.1. The Historia Augusta, so far as it goes, is generally considered a good source for the German wars. See T. Burns, ‘The Barbarians and the Scriptores Historiae Augustae’, Studies in Latin Literature and History, Latomus 164 (Brussels 1979) i, pp.521–40. Some scholars think the Marcomanni devolved the task of seizing the gold mines of Dacia to a tribe known as the Victuali (see Ammianus Marcellinus 17.12.19; Kerr, ‘Chronology’ loc. cit., p.105).
109. Todd, Northern Barbarians op. cit., p.36.
110. G. Alföldy, Noricum op. cit., pp.152–7.
111. Herodian 8.4.5; Pliny, NH 3.18.127; Strabo 4.208; Alföldy, Noricum, pp.153–4; J. Fitz, ‘Der Markomannische-Quadische Angriff gegen Aquileai und Opitergium’, Historia 15 (1966), pp.336–64. For the wealth of Aquileia, see especially A.J. Parker & J.A. Painter, ‘A computer-based index of ancient shipwrecks’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 8 (1979), pp.69–70.
112. Fitz, ‘Der Markomannische-Quadische Angriff’ loc. cit., pp.348–51; Kerr, ‘Chronology’ loc. cit., p.105.
113. P. Cos, Monetary Circulation in the Southeastern Alpine region c.300 BC–AD 1000 (1986), pp.86–91; C.H. Dodd, ‘Chronology of the Danubian Wars of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius’, 2 Numismatic Chronicle, 4th series (1913), pp.162–276 (at pp.166–71); R. Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy (Cambridge 1990), pp.73–6.
114. There is a substantial body of thought that maintains that the raid on Aquileia took place three years later, in 170. However, my reasons for opting for 167 as the most likely date are fourfold: 1) Marcus went with Lucius Verus to Aquileia as a preliminary to his German campaign (in late 168). This makes no geographical, military or logistical sense in terms of a Danube campaign. It is fairly evident that he went there to restore morale, implying that the raid had already happened. 2) In 170 the Quadi and Marcomanni would have been checked by the praetentura, not in place in 167, yet the classical sources speak of a walkover victory. 3) Scholars have been led to opt for 170 by Lucian’s testimony regarding Alexander of Abonoteichos. But this can easily be read as poetic licence or ‘expedient exaggeration’ on Lucian’s part, designed to fasten the blame for the Aquileia debacle on Alexander. It is unlikely that Alexander was still alive by this date and, anyway, it would be unwise to rely on Lucian for exact chronology. 4) The sources do not speak of the emperor as being at the front during the disaster at Aquileia, which they would surely have done if it had in fact occurred in 170 rather than 167. The panic in Rome in the years 167–8 makes no sense if the German tribes were still on the other side of the Danube. Among the many scholars opting for 167 as the true date for Aquileia are A. Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia op. cit., p.187; Sasel, Opera Selecta op. cit., pp.388–9, 394–5; Kerr, ‘Chronology’, pp.57–8; Klaus Rosen, ‘Der Einfall der Markomannen und Quaden in Italien 167’, in Barbara and Piergiuseppe Scardigli (eds), Germani in Italia (Rome 1994), pp.87–104.
115. P. Oliva, ‘Zur Bedeutung der Markomannenkriege’, Altertum 16 (1960), pp.53–61; H.W. Böhme, ‘Archäologische Zeugnisse zur Geschichte der Markomannenkriege 166–180 n. Chr., Jahrbuch des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 22 (1975), pp.153–216 (esp. pp.212–13); Zwikker, Studien zur Markussaule op. cit., p.37; H.J. Kellner, Die Römer in Bayern (Munich 1978), pp.71–3.
116. For the mfecane controversy, see Carolyn Hamilton (ed.), The Mfecane Aftermath (Witwatersrand 1995); Norman Etherington, The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa, 1815–1854 (2001).
117. R. Syme, Emperors and Biography (Oxford 1971), p.182. See also Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths (Los Angeles 1988); Peter Heather, The Goths (Oxford 1996); A. Bell-Fialkoff, The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe (2000).
118. There are circumstantial mentions of the Alans in the sources in connection with the Marcomannic wars (e.g. HA Marcus 22.1), but no more than at any other time and with other emperors (e.g. HA Antoninus 5.5; Dio 69.15.1). Some have even tried to bring the Vandals into the act (again anachronistically), identifying them with the Asdingi or Astringes (Zwikker op. cit., p.17). For the circumstantial evidence on this, see HA Marcus 22.1; 17.3; Dio 71.12.1; Ammianus Marcellinus 17.12.19; L. Schmidt, Geschichte der Vandalen (Munich 1942); E. Schwarz, Germanische Stammeskunde (Heidelberg 1956).
119. HA Marcus 22.1; Ammianus Marcellinus 31.5.13. Among modern advocates of a conspiracy one might mention Zwikker, Studien op. cit., pp.77–87; Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia op. cit., pp.185–6; Kerr, ‘Chronology’.
120. The modern idiom would be ‘good cop, bad cop’.
121. Böhme, ‘Archäologische Zeugnisse’ loc. cit., pp.213–15.
122. As mentioned in Tacitus, Annals 11.18. For the Chatti, Chauci and Hermunduri, see also Tacitus, Germania 29–31, 36–7. For the sucking into the vortex of the Rhine, see Schönberger, ‘Die Römischen Truppenlager’ loc. cit., pp.402–3. For the role of the Rhine tribes in the war, see HA Marcus 22.1; HA Julianus 1.7–8. On the Rhine-Weser tribes in general, see G. Mildenberger, Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der Germanen (Stuttgart 1972); Todd, Northern Barbarians op. cit., pp.39–76. Dio distinguishes three types of Germanic tribe: the Celtic or western ones living along the Rhine; the Suebi of the Elbe-Danube lands; and the Dacians and others around the mouth of the Danube (Dio 51.22.6; 53.12.6; 55.1.2; 56.23.4; see also Zwikker op. cit., pp.155–7).
123. The Historia Augusta’s famous list of tribes is at HA Marcus 22.2. For the Naristae, see Dio 71.12.1; H. Bengston, ‘Neue zur Geschichte der Naristen’, Historia 8 (1959), pp.213–21; also Klein, Marc Aurel op. cit., pp.248–51. For the Buri, see Todd, Northern Barbarians op. cit., pp.62, 70–1.
124. Dio 71.20.1; HA Marcus 24.5–6. For the Marcomanni, see Böhme, ‘Archäologische Zeugnisse’ loc. cit., pp.184–6; Todd, Northern Barbarians, pp.73–4.
125. Tacitus, Germania 42.
126. For the Quadi, see Strabo 7.1.3; Caesar, De Bello Gallico 4.1.3.
127. Rémy, Antonin le Pieux, p.244.
128. Tacitus, Germania 43; M. Stahl, ‘Zwischen Abgrenzung und Integration: Die Verträge der Kaiser Mark Aurel und Commodus mit den Völkern jenseits der Donau’, Chiron 19 (1989), pp.289–317; Gerhard Wirth, ‘Rome and its Germanic Partners in the Fourth Century’, in Walter Pohl, Kingdoms of the Empire: The integrations of barbarians in late antiquity (Leiden 1997), pp.13–56.
129. Velleius Paterculus, Compendium op. cit., 2.109; J. Eadie, ‘Civitates and Clients: Roman frontier policies in Pannonia and Mauretania Tingitana’, in D. Miller & J. Steffen, The Frontier: Comparative Studies (Norman, Oklahoma 1977), pp.57–80.
130. H. Böhme, ‘Archäologische Zeugnisse’ loc. cit., pp.153–217.
131. Tacitus, Germania 45.1–9; 46.1–6.
132. Dio 72.11.1–5, 11–15; Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia op. cit., pp.186–7. One can see analogies with the desperate, clamorous and ultimately successful attempts by ‘incubus’ nations like Romania and Bulgaria (interestingly also Danubian nations) to get inside the EU today.
133. Burns, Rome and the Barbarians op. cit., pp.230–1.
134. W.V. Harris, ‘Trade’, CAH 11, p.738.
135. HA Marcus 14.1; Arrian Praef 7.25–8.
136. Dio 71.12.1; Zosimus, Historia Nova 1.68.3; G. Vitucci, L’Imperatore Probo (Rome 1952), p.41; G. Kerler, Die Aussenpolitik in der Historia Augusta (Bonn 1970), p.243.
137. Burns, Rome and the Barbarians, p.236.
138. Wirth, ‘Rome and its Germanic Partners’ loc. cit., p.28.
139. C. Ruger, ‘Roman Germany’, CAH 11, pp.506–7.
140. F. Hampl, ‘Kaiser Marc Aurel and die Völker jenseits der Donaugrenze: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung’ Festschrift für R. Heuberger (Innsbruck 1960), pp.33–40; D. Van Berchem, ‘Les Marcomans au service de l’empire’, Carnuntina (1955), pp.12–16.
141. Wirth, ‘Rome and its Germanic Partners’ loc. cit.; Harris, ‘Trade’ loc. cit.; Wilkes, ‘Danube Provinces’ loc. cit.; Brent D. Shaw, ‘Rebels and Outsiders’, CAH 11, pp.378–9.
142. Eutropius 8.12.
143. Livy 7.22; 7.27.1; 22.10.9.
144. HA Marcus 12.13.1–6; Zwikker, Studien zur Markussaule op. cit., p.63. For the necromancers and magicians used by Marcus, see HA Heliogabulus 9.1.
145. HA Verus 8.3; Ammianus Marcellinus 23.6.4.
146. Pausanias 8.43.6.
1. HA Marcus 17.4–5; 21.6; 21.9; Eutropius 8.13; 13.2; Zonaras 12.1; Dio 71.32.2.
2. CIL iii.14507.
3. HA Marcus 21.7; C.P. Jones, ‘The levy at Thespiae under Marcus Aurelius’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 12 (1971), pp.45–65; Zwikker, Studien op. cit., pp.105–6; Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia op. cit., pp.154, 196.
4. Michael Fulford, ‘Britain’, CAH 11, p.566.
5. HA Marcus 17.7.
6. HA Marcus 14.5; Zwikker op. cit., p.66; HA Marcus 13.6.
7. ILS 8977; Sasel, Opera Selecta op. cit., pp.388–94.
8. Syme, RP v, p.695.
9. Herodian 2.11.8; 8.11; Ammianus Marcellinus 31.11.3; 21.12.21; Sasel, Opera Selecta, p.390; Christie, ‘The Alps as a Frontier (AD 168–774)’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 4 (1991), pp.413–25.
10. For Fronto, see Alföldy, KS, pp.223, 235, 246; PIR2, p.203; A.R. Birley, ‘The Status of Moesia Superior under Marcus Aurelius’, Acta Antiqua Philippolitana Studia Historica et Philologica (Sofia 1963), pp.109–19; Birley, Marcus Aurelius op. cit., p.157; Zwikker, Studien, p.92.
11. Kerr, ‘Chronology’, p.110.
12. For Valerius Maximianus, see G. Alföldy, Römische Heeresgeschichte. Beiträge 1962–1985 (Amsterdam 1987), pp.326–7; H. Devijver, Prosopographia Militiarum Equestrium op. cit., pp.820–1.
13. HA Pertinax 4.9–10; HA Julianus 8.3.
14. Fragmenta Vaticana No.195; S. Riccobono, G. Baviera et al., Fontes Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani, 3 vols (1943) ii, p.503.
15. HA Marcus 2.14.
16. Dio 71.3.2; Ammianus Marcellinus 29.6.1; Lucian, Alexander 48. That the trip to Aquileia made no strategic sense and was purely for psychological effect, see Kerr, ‘Chronology’, pp.70,109.
17. HA Marcus 14.5.
18. HA Verus 9.7–10.
19. Galen K.14.7–8; 649–50; 19.18; HA Verus 9.8.
20. HA Marcus 14.7–8; Galen K.14.650; 19.18; PIR 2, p.140.
21. Aurelius Victor 16.8.
22. HA Marcus 15.5–6.
23. HA Verus 9.1; 10.11.
24. HA Verus 10.1–4.
25. Philostratus VS 2.560; Dio 71.3.1.
26. HA Verus 10.3–4.
27. HA Marcus 20.3–4.
28. HA Marcus 15.6.
29. HA Marcus 20.1–4; 16.3.
30. HA Marcus 15.
31. HA Marcus 15.1–2; HA Verus 9.3; 9.5–6.
32. HA Marcus 15.3–4; 20.1.7; 20.6–7; HA Pertinax 2.4; Dio 71.3.2.
33. Pflaum, ‘Les gendres de Marc Aurèle’ loc. cit.
34. Meds 9.2.4.
35. Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia op. cit., pp.99, 188.
36. Dio 71.11. It must be pointed out that, unless the Germans had invaded in 167 (not the later date of 170 insisted on by some historians), such an offer makes no sense. The Germans could not be offering to return captives that it was impossible for them to have in the first place.
37. HA Marcus 23.5.
38. HA Marcus 22.5.
39. Aurelius Victor 16.9–10. Rutherford (p.235) is adamant that this never happened.
40. HA Avidius Cassius 3.6.
41. Meds 10.36.
42. Galen K.9.6–7; HA Marcus 21.5; Zwikker, Studien op. cit., pp.108–9.
43. Dio 71.11.1; Eutropius 8.13.1. Such an offer would of course have been impossible if the Marcomanni and Quadi had not staged their raid on Aquileia until 170, as some historians would have it.
44. Dio 71.11.2.
45. André Chastagnol, Histoire Auguste (Paris 1994), pp.249–75.
46. HA Pertinax 1.1–4; A.R. Birley, The African Emperor. Septimius Severus (1988), pp.63–7.
47. Dio 73.3.1; HA Marcus 8.6; HA Pertinax 1.6; Alföldy, Römische Heeresgeschichte op. cit., pp.326–48.
48. Birley, The Fasti of Roman Britain op. cit., pp.126–7; E. Birley, Roman Britain and the Roman Army (Kendal 1953), p.142; E. Birley, ‘Promotions and Transfers in the Roman Army. The centurionate’, Carnuntum Jahrbuch (1964), pp.21–33.
49. AE 1956, 124; HA Pertinax 2.2–3.
50. Alföldy, Römische Heeresgeschichte op. cit., p.328.
51. Vivian Nutton, ‘The Chronology of Galen’s Early Career’, CQ 23 (1973), pp.158–71.
52. D.E. Eichholz, ‘Galen and his environment’, GR 20 (1951), pp.60–71.
53. Galen K.5.112; 10.609; 16.223.
54. For Hippocrates’s influence on Galen and Galen’s hypertrophied enthusiasm for his great Greek predecessor, see K.14.684; K.18.13; W.D. Smith, The Hippocratic Tradition (1979), pp.60–196; G.E.R. Lloyd, ‘Galen on Hellenism and Hippocrateans’, in J. Kollesch & D. Nickel (eds), Galen und das Hellenistische Erbe (Stuttgart 1993), pp.125–44.
55. Galen K.12.60. Some idea of his range can be gathered from the following secondary works: G. Strohmaier, ‘Galen’s Commentary on Airs, Waters and Planes’, in Hollersch & Nickel op. cit., pp.157–64; P. Manulli & M. Vegetti, Le opere psicologiche di Galeno (Naples 1988); O. Temkin, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosopher (1973); G.E.R. Lloyd, Greek Science after Aristotle (1973), pp.136–53; R.J. Hutchinson (ed.), Galen on Antecedent Causes (Cambridge 1998); Robert Blair Edlow, Galen on Language and Ambiguity (Leiden 1977).
56. V. Nutton, ‘Galen and Egypt’, in Kollesch & Nickel op. cit., pp.11–32.
57. A range of titles makes clear Galen’s importance in the history of Greek philosophy: M. Frede, ‘On Galen’s epistemology’, in V. Nutton (ed.), Galen. Problems and Prospects (1981), pp.279–98; J. Barnes, ‘Galen in Logic and Therapy’, in F. Kudlien & R.J. Durling (eds), Galen’s Method of Healing (Leiden 1991), pp.50–102; R.J. Hankinson, ‘Galen’s philosophical eclecticism’, ANRW 2.36 (1992), pp.3484–522; P.L. Donini, ‘Galeno e la filosofia’, ANRW 2.36 (1992), pp.3484–504; John Spangler Kieffer, Galen’s Instituto Logica (Baltimore 1964); S. Gero, ‘Galen on the Christians: A reappraisal of Arabic evidence’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 56 (1990), pp.371–411. Galen’s basic philosophical stance was eclectic. His father had deliberately chosen teachers from the different philosophical schools (K.5.41–3). He used to say that people opted for the four great philosophical schools not after a period of profound study, but because their father or teacher was, say, a Platonist or their city was a centre of Platonism (K.19.50.4–13; K.2.82.24). He scathingly remarked that he knew nothing of the immortality of the soul or the eternity of the world, as there was no scientific evidence either way (K.19.255). Galen’s eclecticism resulted in an olio that was Aristotelian in its methodology, but Platonic in its ethical approach – Plato was his father’s favourite philosopher (K.5.17; 6.755; 8.587; 10.609; 19.59). Although Galen claimed to believe in God’s providence, which might have aligned him with the Stoics (K.19.241–52), he overwhelmingly preferred Platonism and Aristotelianism to Stoicism and Epicureanism. But he was adamant that truth, not adherence to any one school, should be the aim of the true philosopher (K.5.97; 19.22). The Stoic he most admired was Posidonius, who was great enough of spirit to use Aristotelian insights. Alongside him, most of Stoicism and Epicureanism could be regarded as uncritical dogmatism (K.4.819–20; 19.227). He quoted Posidonius approvingly to the effect that it would be better to abandon Stoicism completely rather than the truth (K.19.262). Given Galen’s attitude, the discussions with Marcus at Aquileia must have been lively. Galen also had little time for the notion of God and said that ‘divine revelation’, as opposed to logic and science, was so worthless that not even a book written by the Muses themselves would have any greater value than one written by the uneducated, if it relied simply on revelation.
58. Vivian Nutton, From Democedes to Harvey. Studies in the History of Medicine (1988), pp.158–71.
59. ibid.
60. ‘His precipitate departure for Pergamum in AD 166, perhaps to avoid the outbreak of plague in Rome, probably saved his life in more ways than one’ (Ralph Jackson, Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire (1988), p.61). Galen K.14.649–50.
61. Galen K.14.663. See also Nutton, Galen on Prognosis op. cit., pp.210–11.
62. Galen K.10.909–16; 14.663.
63. Galen K.5.40.15.
64. Galen K.5.18.
65. Galen K.19.18–19. Also in Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (1907–), 5.8.1; 118.20–120. As one Galen scholar has remarked: ‘The dream in question was certainly ben trovato’ (R.J. Hankinson, Galen on Antecedent Causes (Cambridge 1998), p.172).
66. He later effected a ‘miraculous’ cure on Commodus. This is hardly something for which history can commend him (Dio 71.32.1; Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5.8.1; 130.11–132; Galen K.661–4; Nutton, Galen on Prognosis op. cit., p.224.
67. Galen K.832–5.
68. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5.8.1; 126.16–130. Galen K.14.201; 14.216; 12.750; 13.179; 13.973 Cf. also Jonathan Barnes, ‘Galen, Christians and Logic’, in T.P. Wiseman (ed.), Classics in Progress. Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford 2000), pp.399–417 (at p.399).
69. Galen K.14 (p.661).
70. For his medical achievements, see David T. Furley & J.S. Wilkie, Galen on Respiration and the Arteries (Princeton 1984); Vivian Nutton, The Unknown Galen (2002); Peter Brain, Galen on Bloodletting (Cambridge 1986); M. Frede, Galen. Three Treatises on the Nature of Science (Indianapolis 1985); R.J. Hankinson, ‘Galen’s anatomical procedures’, ANRW 2.37 (1994), pp.1834–55; Hankinson (ed.), Galen on the Therapeutic Method (Oxford 1991); Mark Grant, Galen on Food and Diet (2000); Margaret Tallmadge, Galen on the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (Ithaca 1968); L.H. Toledo-Pereyra, ‘Galen’s contribution to surgery’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Science 28 (1973), pp.357–75; F. Kudlien & R.J. Durling, Galen’s Method of Healing (Leiden 1991); V. Nutton, ‘The Patient’s Choice: A new treatise by Galen’, CQ 40 (1990), pp.236–57.
71. V. Nutton, From Democedes to Harvey op. cit., pp.3–16.
72. Galen K.11.314–15; 12.786; 13.1036; 14.182.
73. For Caesar’s numbers, see Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar (2006) op. cit., p.491. For Trajan, see N. Gostar, ‘L’armée romaine dans les guerres daces de Trajan, 101–102, 105–106’, Dacia 23 (1979), pp.115–22; K. Strobel, Untersuchungen zu den Dakerkriegen Trajans. Studien zur Geschichte des mittleren und unteren Donauraumes in der hohen Kaizerzeit (Bonn 1984), pp.153–4. For Septimius Severus at Lyons, see Dio 76.6.1.
74. Adrian Goldsworthy, Roman Warfare (2000), p.127; Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (2003), pp.136, 209; M.C. Bishop, Lorica Segmentata, Vol. 1 A Handbook of Articulated Roman Plate Armour (2002).
75. Some general pointers are available in Anne Kolb, Transport und Nachrichtentransfer im Römischen Reich (Berlin 2000). One might possibly be able to extrapolate from the problems encountered by Duke William of Normandy’s army in 1066, though this was only about 14,000 strong (see Frank McLynn, 1066 (1998) pp.192–3). But Marcus’s army was ten times this size.
76. Tacitus, Germania 5; T.C. Champion, Prehistoric Europe (1984), p.323.
77. Maroboduus was said to have had 70,000 foot and 4,000 horse (Velleius Paterculus, Compendium op cit., 2.109.2). A modern estimate agrees that this would be roughly the correct figure for the Marcomanni (Goldsworthy, Complete Roman Army op. cit., p.45).
78. Dio 72.11–12.
79. Tacitus, Germania 4.
80. Tacitus, Germania 18–20, 25.3; 26.1; 27.1; Brent D. Shaw, ‘Rebels and Outsiders’, CAH 11, pp.378–9.
81. E. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Army (Baltimore 1976), pp.45–6.
82. Dio 56.22.2; Ammianus Marcellinus 17.6.1; 29.6.12; Tacitus, Annals 12.45.4.
83. Tacitus, Germania 6; Annals 2.14.4; 2.45.4; Histories 2.22; 4.17; 5.17; Plutarch, Marius 25.7; Ammianus Marcellinus 17.12.2; Dio 38.35.4; Caesar, De Bello Gallico 1.46.1. Cf. also Todd, Northern Barbarians op. cit., pp.163–70, 172–4; Thompson, Early Germans op. cit., pp.9, 111; Goldsworthy, Complete Roman Army op. cit., pp.48–50.
84. Tacitus, Germania 6; Annals 2.14; Caesar, De Bello Gallico 1.52.3.
85. Goldsworthy, Complete Roman Army, p.74.
86. Tacitus, Germania 14.31.
87. Tacitus, Annals 2.21.1; Thompson, Early Germans op. cit., p.63.
88. Thompson, Early Germans, p.115.
89. Tacitus, Germania 7; 30.2–4.
90. Tacitus, Germania 6; Annals 1.68; Histories 4.60; Goldsworthy, Complete Roman Army, pp.52–3.
91. Tacitus, Annals i.55.
92. Caesar, De Bello Gallico 6.23.
93. Thompson, Early Germans, pp.115–16.
94. Tacitus, Annals 1.63.1; 2.11.3; 2.14.3; 1.64.3; 2.5.3; Histories 5.17. For an example of German frustration during the Marcomannic wars, see C. Caprino, La Colonna di Marco Aurelio (Rome 1955), Plate 34, Fig.68.
95. Caesar, De Bello Gallico 5.32; Tacitus, Annals 1.50, 63.
96. Burns, Rome and the Barbarians op. cit., pp.189–90.
97. Velleius Paterculus, Compendium op. cit., 2.109.1; Tacitus, Annals 2.45.3.
98. Todd, Northern Barbarians op. cit., pp.175, 210.
99. Dio 71.3.5; ILS 1098.
100. Lucian, Alexander 48; L. Robert, À Travers l’Asie Mineure (Paris 1980), pp.393–421; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians op. cit., pp.241–50.
101. Those who credit the story include Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves op. cit., p.233; J. Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire (1970), p.189; C.P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1986), p.144; J. Beaujeu, La religion romaine à l’apogée de l’empire (Paris 1955) i, pp.347–9. Farquharson considers it a ‘ridiculous tale’ (Farquharson ii, p.440). A compromise view is advanced by Rutherford, p.224.
102. Kerr, ‘Chronology’, pp.90–1.
103. ibid.
104. The Sarmatians subdivided into the two principal branches of the Iazyges and Roxolani (Pliny NH 4.12.80–2; 6.19; Ptolemy 3.5.9; Lucian, Toxaris 51–4). See also T.T. Rice, ‘The Scytho-Sarmatian tribes of South-Eastern Europe’, in F. Millar (ed.), The Roman Empire and Its Neighbours (1981), pp.288–92; A. Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia op. cit., pp.36–7, 94–5; R. Rolle (ed.), Gold der Steppe. Archäologie der Ukraine (Schleswig 1991); T. Sulimirski, The Sarmatians (1970).
105. Dio 71.11.1; CIL iii. 1957, 8009, 8021; ILS 1098; Alföldy, KS, p.233; Zwikker op. cit., p.231.
106. Pausanias 8.43.6; Aelius Aristides, Oration 22 in Wehr (ed.), Complete Works op. cit., pp.23–5; A. Von Premerstein, ‘Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Marcus’, Klio 12 (1912), pp.139–49.
107. Pausanias 10.34.2–5; W. Scheidel, ‘Probleme der Datierung des Costoboceneinfalls im Balkanraum unter Marcus Aurelius’, Historia 39 (1990), pp.493–9; C.P. Jones, ‘The levy at Thespiae under Marcus Aurelius’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 12 (1971), pp.445–8.
108. Kerr, ‘Chronology’, p.88.
109. HA Julianus 1.6–8; Böhme, ‘Archäologische Zeugnisse’ op. cit., pp.164–5; Alföldy, KS, p.302.
110. HA Pertinax 2.4–6: Alföldy, KS, pp.330–3.
111. HA Pertinax 2.6–8; Dio 71.3.2.
112. G. Alföldy, ‘P. Helvius Pertinax und M. Valerius Maximianus’, in Alföldy, Römische Heeresgeschichte op. cit., pp.326–41; J. Fitz, ‘Claudius Pompeianus, gener Marci’, Alba Regia 19 (1981), pp.289–300.
113. HA Marcus 22.8.
114. Meds 4.10.10.
115. Dio 71.11.2–3; 71.13.2–3.
116. Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy op. cit., p.74; Walker, Metrology op. cit., p.58; Szaivert, Die Münzprägung op. cit., pp.119–20, 203–4; Mattingly, RIC iii, 270, 340.
117. W. Scheidel, ‘Der Germaneneinfall’, Chiron 20 (1990), pp.10–15; Hans-Jörg Kellner, ‘Raetien und die Markomannenkriege’, Bayerische Vorgeschichtsblätter 30 (1965), pp.154–75; Kerr, ‘Chronology’, pp.77–9.
118. Dio 72.11.1–5.
119. Dio 71.12.1–2.
120. Dio 71.12.3.
121. Dio 67.7.1; 71.11.3; 71.15.1; 71.20.1; 72.2.1; Petrus Patricius, fragment 6.
122. Dio 71.22.1.
123. AE 1956, 24; L. Barkóczi, ‘Die Naristen zur Zeit der Markomannenkriege’, Folia Archaeologica 9 (1957), pp.92–9.
124. HA Marcus 21.10.
125. Dio 72.2.1.
126. Eutropius 8.13.1.
127. Mattingly, RIC iii, pp.234–9.
128. ibid.; Dio 71.3.5; 71.11.2.
129. Dio 71.15.1.
130. Dio 71.3.3–4.
131. Szaivert, Die Münzprägung op. cit. pp.94–141
132. RIC iii. 1046; BMC iv.1425–6.
133. Dio 72.9.3; Herodian 1.13.8; 1.15.1; 1.15.7–8; 1.17.12.
134. HA Julianus 1.7; Alföldy, KS, p.253; E.M. Wightman, Gallia Belgica (1985), p.159.
135. Dio 72.13.1–2; 72.16.1.
136. A. Alfoldi, ‘The moral frontier on Rhine and Danube’, Limeskongress 1 (1952), pp.1–16; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.275; Appian, De bello civico 11.90.
137. Kerr, ‘Chronology’, p.160.
138. Dio 71.7.1; Jeno Fitz, ‘A military history of Pannonia from the Marcomannic wars to the death of Alexander Severus’, Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungariae 14 (1960), pp.25–112.
139. Mattingly, RIC iii, pp.234–9.
140. HA Marcus 14.3.
141. Dio 71.13.3–4.
142. Dio 71.7.1; 71.13.2.
143. Dio 71.10.5; Kerr, ‘Chronology’, pp.160–3.
144. Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army op. cit., p.124.
145. Burns, Rome and the Barbarians op. cit., p.237.
146. B. Andreae, The Art of Rome (1977), pp.432–3. For the Aurelian column in general and its manifold meanings, see C. Caprino et al., La Colonna op. cit.; Felix Piron, ‘Style and message on the column of Marcus Aurelius’, PBSR 64 (1996), pp.137–99; R. Brilliant, ‘The Column of Marcus Aurelius Reviewed’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 15 (2002), pp.499–506. For comparisons with Trajan’s column, see Martin Beckmann, ‘The Columnae Cochlides of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius’, Phoenix 56 (2002), pp.348–57; D. Nardoni, La Colonna Ulpia Traiana (Rome 1986); S. Settis et al. (eds), La Colonna Traiana (Turin 1988).
147. R.R.R. Smith, ‘The use of images; visual history and ancient history’, in T.P. Wiseman (ed.), Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford 2002), pp.60–102 (at p.82).
148. Caesar, De Bello Gallico 3.16; 4.14–15; 8.44. As Smith (‘The use of images’ loc. cit., p.82) says: ‘The modern visual parallel is not All Quiet on the Western Front, but something more like Robocop or Death Wish’
149. Meds. 8.34.
150. A.C. Levi, Barbarians on Roman Imperial Coins and Sculpture (New York 1952), pp.25–6.
151. HA Marcus 24.4; Caprino, La Colonna op. cit., Scene 11; BMC iv.566–7.
152. Szaivert, Die Münzprägung op. cit., pp.206–7; H. Wolff, ‘Welchen Zeitraum stellt der Bilderfries der Marcus-Säule dar?’, Ostbairische Grenzmarken. Passauer Jahrbuch für Geschichte, Kunst und Volkskunde 32 (1990), pp.9–29.
153. Dio 71.8–10; Caprino, La Colonna op. cit., Scene 16; BMC iv.609–10; 1483–4.
154. Dio 72.8.1–4; 72.10.1–3.
155. A careful investigation of the evidence shows that the ‘Rain Miracle’ occurred in July 174. See H. Wolff, ‘Welchen Zeitraum’ loc. cit. (at pp.20–2); J. Morris, ‘The Dating of the Column of Marcus Aurelius’, Journal of the Warburg Institute 15 (1952), pp.33–47 (at p.38); Kerr, ‘Chronology’, pp.141, 187; Penelope E. Davies, Death and the Emperor (Cambridge 2000), p.47. But it is only fair to point out that other scholars have dated the ‘Rain Miracle’ to 172. See J. Guey, ‘La date de la “pluie miraculeuse” et la Colonne Aurelienne’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 60 (1948), pp.105–27 and ibid. 61 (1949), pp.93–118; Guey, ‘Encore la pluie miraculeuse, mage et dieu’, Revue Philologique 22 (1948), pp.16–62; Birley, Marcus Aurelius op. cit., pp.172, 251–2; W. Jobst, 11 Juni 172 n. Chr. Der Tag des Blitz- und Regenwunders im Quadenlande (Akademie Wien 335, Vienna 1978), actually tries to pin the miracle down to the precise date of 11 June 172. Still others plump for the year 173 (Farquharson i, p.279; Garzetti, From Tiberius to the Antonines op. cit., pp.493–4). The entire argument ultimately revolves around the dating of the events depicted on the Aurelian column. The supposedly ‘unshakeable’ proposition about 172 is that if the column showed events later in the war, it would have to portray Commodus, who is absent. But Wolff, ‘Welchen Zeitraum’ loc. cit; Morris, ‘Dating’ loc. cit. and Kerr, ‘Chronology’, pp.142–3, 187–8, argue convincingly that the column deals with the years 174–5 and 177–80. So, Scenes 1–54 cover the years 174–6 and Scenes 56–116 represent the war in 178–80. The nonappearance of Commodus can be explained in a number of ways (Kerr, pp.142, 188). Previous scholars seem to have confused the Marcomanni and the Quadi and argue that 174 is impossibly late for the ‘Rain Miracle’, since by that time Marcus was fighting the Iazyges and not the Germans, ignoring the very late entry of the Quadi into the fray. Besides, in a column that goes out of its way to point up striking visual images, it seems inconceivable that, if it was dealing with the years 172–3, the stunning Roman victory on the ice would not have been included. One would have expected this event to have produced ‘stills’ like those from the 1938 Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky.
156. Eusebius 1.4; 5.5–6. As Birley (Marcus Aurelius op. cit., p.173) rightly remarks: ‘It is difficult to see how such a detail could have been invented.’ See also Alföldy, Römische Heeresgeschichte op. cit., pp.333–6; Alföldy, KS, p.246. For the smallness of the Roman force, see Orosius 7.15.10.
157. Kerr, ‘Chronology’, pp.137–41, 183–6.
158. Dio 71.8.1–71.8.4; 72.14; AE 1934, 245; Zwikker, Studien op. cit., p.214; Guey, ‘Encore la pluie miraculeuse’ loc. cit., pp.16–36; Wolff, ‘Welchen Zeitraum’ loc. cit., pp.9–10; G. Fowden, ‘Pagan Versions of the Rain Miracle of AD 172’, Historia 36 (1986), pp.83–95.
159. E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), pp.283–5; Ramsay MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order op. cit., pp.104, 107; H. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy (Cairo 1956), pp.3–5; J.H. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford 1979), pp.210–13. For Julianus himself, see PIR2 J.91.
160. Ovid, Metamorphoses i.264–9.
161. For this, see Tertullian, Apol. 5.2.21; 5.6; Eusebius 5.54.6; A. Von Harnack, ‘Die Quelle der Berichte über das Regenwunder im Feldzuge Marc Aurel’s gegen die Quaden’, Sitzungberichte der Preussichsen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1894), pp.835–52; Michael Sage, ‘Eusebius and the Rain Miracle; some observations’, Historia. Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 36 (1986), pp.96–111; cf. also Thomas Matthews, The Clash of Gods. A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (1993); Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (1997).
162. Birley, Marcus Aurelius op. cit., p.173.
163. For this entire question, see J. Helgeland, ‘Christians in the Roman Army, AD 173–337’, ANRW 2.23.1 (1979), pp.724–834 (pp.766–73 deal with the ‘Rain Miracle’). Garzetti, From Tiberius op. cit., p.494, remarks that Christian claims on the miracle had ‘some foundation, for there must have been many of them in the army by now and they could certainly have raised their prayers to God at such a difficult moment’. Some Christian apologists claim that the pagan position was inherently problematical, since the official Roman religion was sceptical of actual miracles, as opposed to signs and portents (Tacitus, Histories 2.78). The hold of the ‘Rain Miracle’ on the Christian imagination is certainly tenacious. No less a figure than Cardinal Newman believed that there had been intervention from the Christian God that day (J.H. Newman, Essays on Miracles (1853), Essay 2.51).
164. Dio 71.10.4; RIC iii.299–309; 1109–21.
165. As Kerr wryly remarks: ‘Although the Quadi were defeated, it took a “miracle” to accomplish it; the Romans had had a fright’ (Kerr, ‘Chronology’, p.165).
166. Dio 71.13.1.
167. Dio 71.15.1; 71.16.1.
168. Dio 71.16.1.
169. For Marcus’s intentions in 175, see G. Alföldy, Die Krise des Römischen Reiches (Stuttgart 1989), pp.25–37.
170. Kerr, ‘Chronology’, pp.178–80, 198–9.
171. Dio 71.16.1; 71.17.
172. HA Marcus 24.5–6; 25.1.
173. Dio 71.17; HA Marcus 4.24–5; CIL 8.2276; Farquharson ii, p.835.
174. AE 1956, 24.
175. Dio 71.15; 71.16.2.
176. Dio 72.15–16; 73.3.2.
177. Dio 71.13.1–71.14.2.
178. In AD 50 Claudius allowed a Suebian king and his tribe to settle in Pannonia, and in 57 a governor of Moesia resettled within his province 100,000 Germans from across the Danube (Suetonius, Augustus 21.1; Tacitus, Annals 12.27.1; 13.30.2; Strabo 4.34; 7.3.10). See also Ste Croix, Class Struggle op. cit., pp.509–18.
179. Dio 71.11.4; HA Marcus 21.10; 22.2; 24.3; Velleius Paterculus, Compendium op. cit., 2.106.1; 22.10; 24.3; W. Will, ‘Römische Klientel-Randstaaten am Rhein? Eine Bestandsaufnahme’, Bonner Jahrbücher 187 (1987), pp.1–62; E. Ewig, ‘Probleme der fränkischen Frühgeschichte in den Rheinlanden’, in H. Beumann (ed.), Festschrift für W. Schlesinger (Cologne 1974), pp.47–91. See in general W. Pohl, Kingdoms of the Empire. Integration of barbarians in late antiquity (Leiden 1997).
180. Joseph Vogt, The Decline of Rome (1967), p.59.
181. Dio 71.16.2.
182. I.A. Richmond, ‘The Sarmatae Bremetennacum veteranorum, and the Regio Bremetennacensis’, JRS 35 (1945), pp.15–29.
183. Dio 71.6.3; 71.24.4; 71.34.2; 71.36.3; Herodian 1.2.1.
184. S.Frere, Britannia. A History of Roman Britain (1987), pp.143–6; see also Michael Fulford, ‘Britain’, CAH 11, p.566.
185. Alföldy, KS, pp.189, 253.
186. AE 1956, 24.
187. Dio 71.10.5; BMC iv.609–11; 1483–5.
188. HA Commodus 1.11; 2.2; 12.2–3.