This Caesar, therefore, dying thus prematurely, never tasted of empire; and
his name would have had but a doubtful title to a place in the
imperatorial roll, had it not been recalled to a second chance for the
sacred honors in the person of his son--whom it was the pleasure of
Hadrian, by way of testifying his affection for the father, to associate
in the order of succession with the philosophic Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
This fact, and the certainty that to the second Julius Verus he gave his
own daughter in marriage, rather than to his associate Caesar Marcus
Aurelius, make it evident that his regret for the elder Verus was
unaffected and deep; and they overthrow effectually the common report of
historians--that he repented of his earliest choice, as of one that had
been disappointed not by the decrees of fate, but by the violent defect of
merits in its object. On the contrary, he prefaced his inauguration of
this junior Caesar by the following tender words--Let us confound the
rapine of the grave, and let the empire possess amongst her rulers a
second AElius Verus.
"_Diis aliter visum est:_" the blood of the AElian family was not
privileged to ascend or aspire: it gravitated violently to extinction; and
this junior Verus is supposed to have been as much indebted to his
assessor on the throne for shielding his obscure vices, and drawing over
his defects the ample draperies of the imperatorial robe, as he was to
Hadrian, his grandfather by fiction of law, for his adoption into the
reigning family, and his consecration as one of the Caesars.
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