United States or Fiji ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Under Hadrian and the Antonines this process went on with even growing force. Country life, or that mixture of town and country life afforded by the small provincial towns, came to be more and more of a fashion, and the depopulation of the capital had made sensible progress long before the period of renewed anarchy that followed the assassination of Commodus.
And now followed a three and thirty years' reign of wisdom, justice, and prosperity, unexampled in the history of those centuries. Between the days of the Antonines and those of Charlemagne, I know no such bright spot in the dark history of Europe. At least it was done so, says Cassiodorus, that it notoriously gave satisfaction to the Romans themselves. One can well conceive it.
By this choice, indeed, Nerva commenced and inaugurated the finest period of the Roman empire, the period that contemporaries entitled the golden age, and that history has named the age of the Antonines.
The journey through Upper Egypt was at this time perfectly open and safe, and the legs and feet of the statue are covered with names, and inscriptions in prose and verse, of travellers who had visited it at sunrise during the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines.
Look at the working of our parliaments during the reigns of William III and Anne, and see how powerless good constitutions are, when the men who work them are false and venal. Look, on the other hand, at the Roman Empire from the time of Vespasian to that of the Antonines, and see how well even a bad constitution will succeed, when good men are working it.
We know nothing as to when he lived, but he wrote in the Ionian dialect, as did ARRIAN in his book on India, and it would seem difficult to put him later than the second century. It is probable that his undertaking belonged to that movement towards research which began in the reign of Augustus and was prolonged to the last years of the Antonines. Ch.
Since the priesthood had forbidden the old heathen practice of mummifying the dead, and even cremation had been forbidden by the Antonines, the dead had to be interred soon after decease; only those of high rank were hastily embalmed and lay in state in some church or chapel to which they had contributed an endowment.
Aurelius has always exercised a powerful fascination over the minds of eminent men "If you set aside, for a moment, the contemplation of the Christian verities," says the eloquent and thoughtful Montesquieu, "search throughout all nature, and you will not find a grander object than the Antonines.... One feels a secret pleasure in speaking of this Emperor; one cannot read his life without a softening feeling of emotion.
After him come men still more worthy of respect, but whom one almost despairs of imitating; Epictetus in bondage, the Antonines and the Julians on the throne.
Take that period which great historians have agreed to praise as the happiest of human ages the age of the Antonines. How benign and unruffled it was! What bland and leisurely culture could be enjoyed in exquisite villas beside the Mediterranean, or in flourishing municipalities along the Rhone! Many a cultivated and comfortable man must have wished that reasonable peace to last for ever.
Word Of The Day