During this journey of pacification, he lost his wife Faustina, who died
suddenly in one of the valleys of Mount Taurus. History, or the
collection of anecdotes which at this period often passes as history,
has assigned to Faustina a character of the darkest infamy, and it has
even been made a charge against Aurelius that he overlooked or condoned
her offences. As far as Faustina is concerned, we have not much to say,
although there is strong reason to believe that many of the stories told
of her are scandalously exaggerated, if not absolutely false. Certain it
is, that most of the imputations upon her memory rest on the malignant
anecdotes recorded by Dion, who dearly loved every piece of scandal
which degraded human nature. The _specific_ charge brought against her
of having tempted Cassius from his allegiance is wholly unsupported,
even if it be not absolutely incompatible with what we find in her own
existent letters; and, finally, Marcus himself not only loved her
tenderly, as the kind mother of his eleven children, but in his
_Meditations_ actually thanks the gods for having granted him "such a
wife, so obedient so affectionate, and so simple." No doubt Faustina was
unworthy of her husband; but surely it is the glory and not the shame of
a noble nature to be averse from jealousy and suspicion, and to trust to
others more deeply than they deserve.

So blameless was the conduct of Marcus Aurelius that neither the
malignity of contemporaries nor the sprit of posthumous scandal has
succeeded in discovering any flaw in the extreme integrity of his life
and principles. But meanness will not be baulked of its victims. The
hatred of all excellence which made Caligula try to put down the memory
of great men rages, though less openly, in the minds of many. They
delight to degrade human life into that dull and barren plain "in which
every molehill is a mountain, and every thistle a forest-tree." Great