Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

206 STOICISM.and anxiety over the last years of his Ufe. One ofhis best generals, Avidius Cassius, was known to havelong chafed at what he thought the need of a strongerhand to grapple with abuses and misgovernment, andnow, at a false rumour of the emperor's death, herose with his army in the East and proclaimed himselfa sovereign ruler. The movement was short-livedindeed, but the danger had been very real, and therewere ugly suspicions of disloyalty in the Senate andthe official circles, which did not spare even the wifeof the emperor himself There was enough in theconditions of the age to task the energies of the mostresourceful and resolute of rulers, but it seemed astrange irony of fortune which set the sensitive andtender-hearted Antoninus to the roughest work ofpolitics and war. He was perhaps too unsuspiciousand forbearing to cleanse the Augean stables ofcorruption in the public service ;he had too little ofthe soldier's tastes to make himself a name in history,like Trajan, as a great strategist or conqueror.But at least his lessons of philosophy had taught himnot to spare himself when duty called. He was notcontent to leave the distant legions to make headagainst the savage foes ;he would not depute to lessermen the post of danger when the Empire's safetyseemed at stake, but he left the court and Rome, andall the comforts which his quietmeditative natureprized, and faced the worst inclemencies of wintry warfareon the frontiers, where more than half his standingarmy was encamped for years, or was doing battlewith the swarms of multitudinous invaders. While