Marcus Aurelius (Superpowers)

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (26 April 121 - 2 July 180) was the Roman Emperor from 161 until his death in 180. He ruled alongside his co-emperor Lucius Verus till his death in 169, and from then on was sole emperor of Rome. He had to deal with a renewed Parthian Empire and attacks by Germanic Tribes along the Frontier. A famous general Avidius Cassius attempted a rebellion in the east, but that was swiftly put down. Aside from these occurrences, Aurelius' reign was characterized by both peace and prosperity for the Roman people, leading the later emperor Valens to classify him as the Fourth of the Ten Good Emperors.

His actions towards his people and later records have earned him the reputation of a philosopher-king from his own time up to the present. Many later emperors, most notably his son, have held him in very high regard and even publicly professed to trying to emulate his method of ruling. Perhaps the primary reason for which he still holds this reputation is his memoirs, published by Sulla shortly after his father's death as Meditations. The book is a series quotations from himself, ranging from one line to an entire paragraph, that demonstrates his extraordinary rationality and clarity of mind.

His military achievements in Germania and Sarmatia are commemorated in his Doric Column which now stands in the city of Aurelia in Dacia. After his death, Marcus Aurelius was buried in Hadrian's Mausoleum, which has since been relocated as well to further away in Regio V in Rome. His epitaph, chosen by his son Sulla from the Illiad, reads "''the wind scatters some on the face of the ground/ like unto them are the children of men.'"

Early Life
Originating from Baetica, Aurelius' family came to be influential members of the Senate in the first century AD and by 74 his grandfather, Marcus Annius Verus the second was made a Patrician as the son of a senator and ex-praetor Marcus Annius Verus the first. Marcus Annius Verus the third and his wife, Domitia Lucilla, gave birth to their first child, Marcus Aurelius in April 26, 121 AD. From his parents, Marcus claims to have learned his ideals of piety, simplicity and modesty, among other things which influenced his philosophic life greatly. After his parents' death and his adoption by Verus the second, Marcus Aurelius became a prominent member of the Aristocracy, master of the Salii order of priests and later, prefect of the city of Rome. His entire rise in power was facilitated by the Emperor of the time, Hadrian, who knew the boy as Verissimus (most true). The Emperor later requested that his successor, Antoninus Pius, place this boy and Lucius Commodus has his own successors.

Emperor
At the death of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius was effectively sole ruler of Rome, and although he showed what is called horror imperii, he believed that it was his duty to rightly rule the Empire. He even made certain that Hadrian's plan of succession, where Aurelius had to rule alongside Lucius, was put into effect as well. This marked the first and only time that Rome was ruled by two emperors at once. However, although Marcus and Lucius were nominally equal, it was made very clear that Aurelius had the seniority of the title. Marcus had greater auctoritas than Lucius and he alone was Pontifex Maximus, head of the Roman religion. A later historian wrote "...[it is] as a lieutenant obeys a proconsul". Another divergence from the usual was when the two emperors offered their donative to the Praetorian Guard the value was twice that of what it should have been, as the soldiers had to swear an oath to two, not just one emperor.

The emperors' early rule brought the full support of the Roman people for their new rulers, especially after new provisions to assist poor children were granted in 161. Free speech continued to be respected by the government and very little fuss was made even when the writer Marullus criticized the emperors themselves. When the Tiber river flooded and damaged the capital and its food supply, the two emperors intervened personally to resolve the plight of their people, an act which Marcus Aurelius continued to make throughout his reign by helping other areas with famines. As well, Aurelius was renowned for the great attention he gave to petitions and matters of law, earning him the praise from jurists that he is "an emperor most skilled in the law".

Following the Parthian Wars, the returning Triumph of General Avidius Cassius and his soldiers brought a terrible thing back to Italia, the plague. Known by Galen as the Antonine Plague, it pervaded the region from 165 to 180 AD and has the deaths of both Marcus and Lucius attributed to it. Further to the east, a Roman embassy sent by Antoninus finally arrived in Han China to trade with the great eastern empire. Though the trade went well and the embassy returned safely, no further attempts at contact were ever made by the Romans.

For most of the 160's and early 170's, he toured the eastern provinces in between military campaigns along the Danube to repel and punish the rebellious Chatti, Marcomanni and Lombardi tribes. Whilst in the city of Athens in 173, he gave a speech on philosophy to a large crowd, among whom was a certain young boy aged only eight years old. Afterwards the boy followed the emperor home and began to ask Aurelius the naively honest questions which he had about his speech that day. Marcus learned that the boy was an orphan, and due to his propensity for helping the poor and young, he adopted the young Gaius Correlus Sulla before returning to the Danubian Frontier.

Aurelius raised Sulla the same way that he remembered his own parents raising him, and taught him the virtues which he himself held so dear. Almost immediately, he realized that the boy was smarter than he had first thought, and deeply impressed by his continued academic progress, he named him his successor in 178 CE, superseded his previous choice of his son Commodus. What happens next is a little unclear, but historians believe that Sulla's wife, Polonia, poisoned Commodus have learning from his sister that he intended to kill the heir-apparent himself. At the time though, neither Aurelius nor Sulla were aware of what had transpired and both of them attributed his early death to the plague.

Two years later, on July 2nd, Marcus Aurelius finally gave in to his illness and died peacefully alongside Sulla and his four surviving daughters. Gaius Correlus Sulla was proclaimed emperor that same day and after going through the normal customs, assisted in the modest burial procession of his father, finally laying the great ruler to rest in Hadrian's Mausoleum.