However, the facts are not
sufficiently known to warrant us in criticising very severely his behavior
on so trying an occasion.
It would be too much for human frailty, that absolutely no stain should
remain upon his memory. Possibly the best use which can be made of such a
fact is, in the way of consolation to any unhappy man, whom his wife may
too liberally have endowed with honors of this kind, by reminding him that
he shares this distinction with the great philosophic emperor. The
reflection upon this story by one of his biographers is this--"Such is the
force of daily life in a good ruler, so great the power of his sanctity,
gentleness, and piety, that no breath of slander or invidious suggestion
from an acquaintance can avail to sully his memory. In short, to Antonine,
immutable as the heavens in the tenor of his own life, and in the
manifestations of his own moral temper, and who was not by possibility
liable to any impulse or 'shadow of turning' from another man's
suggestion, it was not eventually an injury that he was dishonored by some
of his connections; on him, invulnerable in his own character, neither a
harlot for his wife, nor a gladiator for his son, could inflict a wound.
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