MARCUS AURELIUS (121–180), Roman Emperor from 161. The adopted son of his predecessor, Antoninus Pius (138–61), whose daughter he married, he was a professed Stoic, though influenced by other philosophical teaching. His extant Meditations are best interpreted as a work of spiritual reflection intended only for his own eyes and designed to fortify himself in fidelity to his own convictions. Very little in it bears directly on what he saw as his providential role as Emperor, though parts at least were written during the campaigns which occupied much of his reign; the Empire was afflicted with plague and foreign invasions; Marcus ultimately restored the imperial defences.

    As a professed disciple of Antoninus Pius, not a Stoic, whom he depicts as having conformed to the principles which the ruling classes had always desired in an Emperor, he followed traditional policies. Hence the Christians still suffered sporadic persecutions, perhaps aggravated by the misfortunes of his reign, if these were ascribed to divine retribution for Christian ‘impiety’. He himself denied that the gods were ever responsible for evil, but he adhered to Trajan’s attitude to the Christians. Some scholars see dark allusions to them in the Meditations, and one text (11. 3) explicitly imputes to them a spirit of refractory opposition; it may be a gloss, and no clear view of Marcus’ opinions on the Christians (if he had any) can be extracted from the Meditations.

    A number of Christian writers addressed ‘Apologies’ to him, including Athenagoras and perhaps Theophilus of Antioch, whose works survive, and Miltiades, Claudius Apollinarius, and Melito, whose Apologies are lost, but there is no reason to think that he read them.

xcxxcxxc  F ” “ This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 1998....x....  ’ “”.