This Week in History recalls memorable and decisive events and personalities of the past.

27th November 176 – Emperor Marcus Aurelius grants his son Commodus the rank of ‘Imperator’ and makes him Supreme Commander of the Roman legions

Born into the imperial Roman family of the Emperor Hadrian in the year 121, Marcus Aurelius was destined for power from an early age. Having grown up when Roman power and prosperity were at their height, he would inherit an empire at its zenith. He would spend most of his reign fighting hard to maintain his empire’s stature, bad luck, circumstance and some poor decisions would ultimately see him fail.

The son of the Emperor Hadrian’s nephew, Marcus was close to power his entire life. When Hadrian’s son died, Marcus’ uncle, Antoninus Pius, was chosen by Hadrian as the new heir. Antoninus was already a middle-aged man at this time, and there is some indication that the young Marcus was considered the true heir, as the condition for Antoninus’s adoption as Hadrian’s heir was that he had to declare Marcus one of his heirs in turn. As Marcus was still young, Hadrian chose Antoninus, perhaps not expecting him, given his advanced age – being already in his 40s when he became emperor – to last that long.

Antoninus’s reign was however one of the most peaceful in Roman history, with no major revolts or invasions, and Antoninus was never compelled to leave Italy to embark on dangerous campaigns. Perhaps as a result of this time of unrivalled peace and prosperity (quite possibly the most peaceful period in European history until the modern era) Antoninus lived into his 70s, and as a result Marcus only became emperor at the age of 40 in the year 161, alongside Hadrian’s grandson, Lucius Verus.

More often than not in the course of Roman history, when the empire was split between the rule of two men, they would come to blows fairly quickly and one would be killed by the other. In the case of Marcus and Lucius, however, it seems that the two men worked together fairly well. Indeed Marcus was so committed to following Hadrian’s will that he refused to be declared emperor by the senate unless Lucius was as well, despite the senate not being terribly enthusiastic about Lucius.

Interestingly, while Marcus was known as a tough and thoughtful man who wrote Stoic philosophy and committed himself to long and difficult campaigns on the frontier with Germania and Pannonia, Lucius spent most of his reign enjoying the pleasures of the city of Antioch in the East, while his generals fought the Parthian Empire. Lucius would die in 169 while on campaign in the north, likely from smallpox – during an outbreak of disease known as the Antonine Plague, which ravaged the Roman world during Marcus’s reign. The Antonine Plague would beset the empire for 15 years, starting in 165 and only ending in 180 after it had killed some seven million people.

Marcus had not only the plague to deal with; the peaceful condition of the empire rapidly deteriorated during his reign. In 161, the year of his coming to power, the Parthian Empire invaded the eastern Roman provinces and replaced the client king of Armenia, who was a Roman ally, with one loyal to them.

After the eastern Roman legions suffered a series of military defeats, Lucius was sent to take command, perhaps in the hope that this would reform his bad behavior. Even before coming to the throne, Lucius was known as a pleasure-seeking layabout who lacked virtue.

This plan failed to change Lucius; as noted earlier, he whiled his days away in Antioch – though his generals managed to beat back the Parthians and Lucius was able to claim credit for the victories, improving his reputation.

In 166, a new threat would emerge on the empire’s northern frontier. A group of Germanic tribes, primarily the Marcomanni and some Sarmatian horse nomads called the Iazyges, crossed the Danube and began raiding Roman territory. This would lead to the three Marcomannic Wars, a 14-year period of on-and-off conflict that would last the rest of Marcus’s life.

The Marcomanni, their allies and the Romans repeatedly clashed – with with the Marcomanni seeking a place to settle within the empire, and the Romans seeking to protect their territories from raids but also subdue the tribes on their frontier with a mind to annexing the regions to the north.

The wars would see both sides commit atrocities against one another in what became a brutal war of attrition. At one point the Germanic tribes would even invade Italy, the first such incursion in over 250 years. It was during this period that Marcus likely wrote his famous ‘meditations’, a collection of self-improvement tips he wrote for himself based on the principles of Stoic philosophy. These were published after his death and are still widely regarded as some of the most inspirational works of easily accessible philosophy.

The first of the three Marcomannic Wars would end in 176, and Marcus returned to Rome for the first time in eight years. His son, Commodus, 15 at the time, had been with him on campaign, and Marcus decided to begin cementing his claim to the throne by having him crowned co-emperor. On 27 November 176, Marcus had Commodus declared co-emperor and joint supreme commander of the Roman legions.

Within a year Marcus and his son were back on campaign in the Second Marcomannic War, and it was during this period that Marcus would fall ill and die, aged 58, on 17 March 180. While the cause of his death is not known for certain, it is widely believed he died of the same plague that had killed Lucius.

Commodus became sole emperor of the Roman Empire and would go down in history as one of its worst rulers. He was very young and inexperienced and took far more interest in pretending to be a gladiator in the arena than being emperor of the world’s largest empire.

He paid for his high spending on the army and the Roman people by devaluing the currency, and as his reign went on and he faced several plots and coup attempts, he became increasingly dictatorial and cruel, isolating the Roman elite. He was assassinated on 31 December 192 by people he had been planning to execute. His death would see Rome fall into a period of civil war known as the ‘Year of the Five Emperors’, after which Septimius Severus took control and transformed the empire into something much more like a crude military dictatorship.

This was Marcus’s legacy, and yet much of it was due to his unexpected death, and misfortune. Many historians have criticised his decision to give Commodus the imperial reins, but it is not clear whether he could have acted differently. Perhaps the best observation on the life of Marcus is that of Roman historian Cassius Dio, a contemporary of Marcus, who said the following:

‘[Marcus] did not meet with the good fortune that he deserved, for he was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles throughout practically his entire reign. But for my part, I admire him all the more for this very reason, that amid unusual and extraordinary difficulties he both survived himself and preserved the empire. Just one thing prevented him from being completely happy, namely, that after rearing and educating his son in the best possible way he was vastly disappointed in him. This matter must be our next topic; for our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.’

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