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 III

ANTONINUS PIUS, A.D. 138—A.D. 161 MARCUS ANTONINUS, A.D. 161—**A.D. 180

After the death of Hadrian, in A.D. 138, for forty-two years the Empire of Rome was ruled by two sovereigns who, pagan though they were, live in the pages of historians of all lands as the most perfect of any known sovereign rulers. They are known as the two Antonines: the first is distinguished by the title given him by his contemporaries, "Pius"; the second, by the best known of his several names, "Marcus Aurelius."

They were not conquerors, not even great legislators; although under their beneficent, and with one sad exception generally wise rule, the laws of the State, in the case especially of the downtrodden and helpless, were materially improved and supplemented.

Our contemporary pagan literature here, alas! is but scanty; what has come down to us is even more unsatisfactory than what we possess in the contemporary records of Hadrian.

No great writer in prose or poetry arose in these forty-two years; and when in the fifth and following centuries, the era of confusion and universal decay, manuscripts began to be only sparingly copied, the records of this period were neglected, and what attention to literature was given, the copyists of the MSS. devoted to the masterpieces of the Augustan and even of an earlier age, such as the famous prose works of Cicero and Tacitus, of Pliny and of Suetonius; of poets such as Lucretius, Vergil and Ovid, Propertius, Juvenal and Horace.

We possess only abbreviations of the Chronicles of the Antonines, somewhat dry and uninteresting, wanting in details and in picturesque illustration. It is true that no great war—no striking conquest—no terrible intestine dis