It is, besides, asserted, that he received an indemnity in money for the
provinces beyond the Euphratus. But still it remains true, that in his
reign the God Terminus made his first retrograde motion; and this emperor
became naturally an object of public obloquy at Rome, and his name fell
under the superstitious ban of a fatal tradition connected with the
foundation of the capitol. The two Antonines, Titus and Marcus, who came
next in succession, were truly good and patriotic princes; perhaps the
only princes in the whole series who combined the virtues of private and
of public life. In their reigns the frontier line was maintained in its
integrity, and at the expense of some severe fighting under Marcus, who
was a strenuous general at the same time that he was a severe student. It
is, however, true, as we observed above, that, by allowing a settlement
within the Roman frontier to a barbarous people, Marcus Aurelius raised
the first ominous precedent in favor of those Gothic, Vandal, and Frankish
hives, who were as yet hidden behind a cloud of years. Homes had been
obtained by Trans-Danubian barbarians upon the sacred territory of Rome
and Caesar: that fact remained upon tradition; whilst the terms upon which
they had been obtained, how much or how little connected with fear,
necessarily became liable to doubt and to oblivion.
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