The Meditations Of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Classic Reprint

Excerpt from The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus In the year A. D. 135 Emperor Hadrian adopted as his son and successor Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who bore also the names of Aurelius and of Annius Verus. Roman nobles of this time often boasted a long string of family appellations. As a rule only two of these were employed, but the same individual might use a different pair at different times, or the son, for distinction's sake, might use one pair, while his father had used another. Partly for this reason, partly because his pedigree is not given, we do not know exactly who Commodus was. But he would seem to have been related on the one side to the Aurelian house, which drew its origin from Nimes in Southern Gaul, on the other to that of Annius Verus, which came, like Trajan and Hadrian, from Spain. Most probably he was related to Hadrian. Certainly he cannot have been selected on the ground of his personal merits. Commodus was a handsome and gentlemanly debauchee, who had never distinguished himself in any way whatever; and was moreover, at the time of his adoption, in the last stage of consumption. But Hadrian was strongly attached to him. Gibbon and others have spoken of adoption as an excellent method for ensuring the succession of a competent Emperor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.