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The Danube: Marcus Aurelius
Statue of Marcus Aurelius, Carnuntum Museum (© 1999 BFA Documentary Photography).]
The
final victory in a 12-year campaign led by the Roman emperor Marcus
Aurelius 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 film Gladiator).
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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