The virtues of Marcus have certainly done much harm: even his great favour and indulgence towards the senate had many evil consequences; for the senate was bad. The Emperor died on the Marcomannian frontier in his camp, March A. D. 180, after a reign of nineteen years, his son Commodus being at that time nineteen years old. The only reproach ever made against him, was that in his reign the exclusiveness of a court began to show itself: the former emperors, down to Antoninus Pius, had still looked upon themselves as being only as it were the first magistrates of the state. This did not certainly come from one like him, who valued men according to their intrinsic worth, but from the overbearing Faustina. There were yet several excellent generals in the army, such as Pescennius Niger in the East, and L. Septimius Severus on the Illyrian frontier: in the administration, Helvius Pertinax was distinguished, who afterwards became emperor. Claudius Severus also seems to have still been alive; an excellent man he was, if we may judge from what is told us by Marcus, on whom we may rely in this instance, although he was elsewhere mistaken. There still was much intellectual life and refinement lingering in the world, especially in the East: in Italy it was waning fast. Gellius wrote in the reign of M. Aurelius, and indeed only after the death of Fronto, which was brought on by the plague somewhat about the year 169: (it is decidedly wrong to give it an earlier date.) This book shows the grammatical and rhetorical tendency which then prevailed: we see in a remarkable manner how the existing institutions had no influence whatever on him. COMMODUS. PERTINAX. DIDIUS JULIANUS. SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. Had not Marcus been so weak, he would hardly have allowed Commodus to become his successor: he must have seen how coarse and void of all virtue the youth was, and he should have come to the resolution of adopting one of his leading generals. The idea of the empire’s being an heir-loom, was scarcely yet a settled one; but Marcus established it.