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As far as we know, the younger Faustina was a most loyal and loving wife, the mother of a full dozen children. Coins issued by Marcus Aurelius stamped with the features of his wife, and the inscription Concordia, Faustina and Venus Felix, attest the felicity, or “felixity,” of the marriage.

Their oldest boy, Commodus, was very much like his grandmother, Faustina, and a man who knows all about the Law of Heredity tells me that children are much more apt to resemble their grandparents than their father and mother.

I believe I once said that no house is big enough for two families, but this truth is like the Greek verb–it has many exceptions. In the same house with Emperor Antoninus Pius dwelt Lucilla, mother of Marcus, and Marcus and his wife. And they were all very happy–but life was rather more peaceful after the death of Faustina, the elder, which occurred a few years after her husband became Emperor.

She could not endure prosperity.

But her husband mourned her death and made a public speech in eulogy of her, determined that only the best should be remembered of one who had been the wife of an Emperor and the mother of his children. As far as we know, Antoninus never spoke a word concerning his wife except in praise, not even when she left his house to be gone for months.

It was Ouida, she of the aqua-fortis ink, who said, “A woman married to a man as good as Antoninus must have been very miserable, for while men who are thoroughly bad are not lovable, yet a man who is not occasionally bad is unendurable.” And so Ouida’s heart went out in sympathy and condolence to the two Faustinas, who wedded the only two men mentioned in Roman history who were infinitely wise and good.

In one of his essays, Richard Steele writes this, “No woman ever loved a man through life with a mighty love if the man did not occasionally abuse her.” I give the remark for what it is worth. However, Montesquieu somewhere says that the chief objection to heaven is its monotony; so possibly there may be something in the Ouida-Steele philosophy–but of this I really can’t say, knowing nothing about the subject, myself.

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Happy is the man who has no history. The reign of Antoninus Pius was peaceful and prosperous. No great wars nor revulsions occurred, and the times made for education and excellence. Antoninus worked to conserve the good, and that he succeeded, Gibbon says, there is no doubt. He left the country in better condition than he found it, and he could have truthfully repeated the words of Pericles, “I have made no person wear crape.”

But there came a day when Antoninus was stricken by the hand of death. The captain of the guard came to him and asked for the password for the night. “Equanimity,” replied the Emperor, and turning on his side, sank into sleep, to awake no more. His last word symbols the guiding impulse of his life. Well does Renan say: “Simple, loving, full of sweet gaiety, Antoninus was a philosopher without saying so, almost without knowing it. Marcus was a philosopher, but often consciously, and he became a philosopher by study and reflection, aided and encouraged by the older man. You can not consider the one man and leave the other out, and the early contention that Antoninus was, in fact, the father of Marcus has at least a poetic and spiritual basis in truth.”

There was much in Renan’s suggestions. The greatest man is he who works his philosophy up into life–this is better than to talk about it. We only discuss that to which we have not attained, and the virtues we talk most of are those beyond us. The ideal outstrips the actual. But it is no discredit that a man pictures more than he realizes–such a one is preparing the way for others. Marcus Antoninus has been a guiding star–an inspiration–to untold millions.