Think of such a man,--not master of a little barbaric island or a
half-established throne in a country no bigger than a small province,
but the supreme sovereign of a vast empire, at the time of its greatest
splendor and prosperity, with no mortal power to keep his will in
check,--nothing but the voice within him; nothing but the sense of duty;
nothing but the desire of promoting the happiness of others: and this
man a Pagan!

But the state of that Empire, with all its prosperity, needed such a man
to arise. If anything or anybody could save it, it was that succession
of good emperors of whom Marcus Aurelius was the last, in the latter
part of the second century. Let us glance, in closing, at the real
condition of the Empire at that time. I take leave of the man,--this
"laurelled hero and crowned philosopher," stretching out his hands to
the God he but dimly saw, and yet enunciating moral truths which for
wisdom have been surpassed only by the sacred writers of the Bible, to
whom the Almighty gave his special inspiration. I turn reluctantly from
him to the Empire he governed.

Gibbon says, in his immortal History, "If a man were called to fix the
period in the history of the world during which the condition of the
human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation,
name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of
Commodus."

This is the view that Gibbon takes of the prosperity of the old Roman
world under such princes as the Antonines. Niebuhr, however, a greater
critic, though not so great an artist, takes a different view; and both
are great authorities. If Gibbon meant simply that this period was the
happiest and most prosperous during the imperial reigns, he may not have