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The Danube: Marcus Aurelius
The final victory in a 12-year campaign
led by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (fig.1) at Vindobona (modern
Vienna) over Germanic and Sarmatian tribes secured the borders of the Empire,
and served to protect the Danubian frontier for some period of time. Ailing
and approaching death, the emperor sent for his son Commodus, and there are
some indications that Commodus may have had a hand in hastening his
father’s death. According to Cassius Dio’s History of Rome
(72:33-34; written ca. AD 230), the emperor’s demise was prematurely
brought about by his physicians on the orders of Commodus (a story which
forms the backdrop of the recent film Gladiator).
[Fig.1: Statue of Marcus Aurelius at Carnuntum Museum (© 1999
BFA Documentary Photography).]
With Romanization came a new social fabric, meshing barbarian tribes from
the north and east with the institutions of Imperial settlements, providing
access to the Empire’s commercial wealth and far-flung trading resources.
Here the process initiated by Augustus and continued under later emperors
from Hadrian to Caracalla paralleled that started by Caesar in Gaul in the
1st century BC. It also yielded its own literary masterpiece, the
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a stoic philosophical treatise written
in Danubian camps.
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