Roman name, and Verus returned in triumph, bringing back with him from
the East the seeds of a terrible pestilence which devastated the whole
Empire and by which, on the outbreak of fresh wars, Verus himself was
carried off at Aquileia.

Worthless as he was, Marcus, who in his lifetime had so often pardoned
and concealed his faults, paid him the highest honours of sepulcre, and
interred his ashes in the mausoleum of Hadrian. There were not wanting
some who charged him with the guilt of fratricide, asserting that the
death of Verus had been hastened by his means!

I have only one reason for alluding to atrocious and contemptible
calumnies like these, and that is because--since no doubt such whispers
reached his ears--they help to account for that deep unutterable
melancholy which breathes through the little golden book of the
Emperor's _Meditations_. We find, for instance, among them this isolated
fragment:--

"A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial,
childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent,
tyrannical."

We know not of whom he was thinking--perhaps of Nero, perhaps of
Caligula, but undoubtedly also of men whom he had seen and known, and
whose very existence darkened his soul. The same sad spirit breathes
also through the following passages:--

"Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name,
or not even a name; but name is sound and echo. And the things which are
much valued in life are empty, and rotten, and trifling, and _little