Antoninus Pius - Roman Emperor

Hadrian’s adopted son presided over 23 years of peace

History has judged Antoninus
Pius to be a benevolent leader

Antoninus Pius, the fourth of the so-called Five Good Emperors who ruled the Roman Empire between 96 and 180AD, assumed power on this day in 138 following the death of Hadrian at his villa outside Naples the previous day.

As well as being notable for peace and stability, his reign was one of well-run administration, support for education and public works projects including expanded free access to drinking water in all parts of the empire.

He was seen as a wise and benevolent ruler who made the well-being of his subjects a priority, an example being the attention he gave to ensuring freed slaves were given the full rights of citizenship.

Antoninus instigated legal reforms, built temples and theatres, was an active promoter of the arts and sciences, and rewarded the teachers of rhetoric and philosophy in particular with honours and financial incentives.

Despite a number of disturbances in different parts of the empire during his time, he was reluctant to commit to any aggressive military action. Revolts in Mauretania, Germany, Dacia and Egypt were successfully contained by his armies with no recourse to escalation.

Only in response to an uprising of the Brigantes, who controlled large parts of northern Britain, did Antoninus take a more aggressive approach.

He appointed a new governor, Quintus Lollius Urbicus, who had previously governed Germania Inferior. Antoninus ordered Lollius to invade southern Scotland, driving the Brigantes back and constructing a new wall, the Antonine Wall across the Scottish territory 100 miles (62km) north of Hadrian’s Wall, from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde. 

The map of the Roman Empire as it looked during
the 23-year reign of Antoninus Pius

Unlike Hadrian’s Wall, the Antonine Wall was not maintained and had been abandoned by the time Antoninus died in 161.

Antoninus Pius was born Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Antoninus near Lanuvium, on the site of modern-day Lanuvio, about 38km (24 miles) south of Rome. His father, Titus Aurelius Fulvus, was a consul, whose father had been a senator of the same name. 

Titus Aurelius Fulvus died when Antoninus was a child and he was raised instead by his maternal grandfather, Gnaeus Arrius Antoninus, who was a friend of Pliny the Younger and had a reputation as a man of integrity. 

Antoninus held a number of official roles during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, including consul and proconsul, impressing Hadrian with his performance in these roles in Etruria and Asia. He married Hadrian's niece, Faustina, and following the death of Hadrian's first adopted son, Lucius Aelius Caesar, was adopted as Hadrian’s son and successor.

His own adoption by Hadrian was conditional on adopting future emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as his own successors. 

On taking over from Hadrian, Antoninus persuaded the senate to convey divine honours on his predecessor. They in turn gave Antoninus the surname Pius.

A coin from the reign of Antoninus Pius. The head
on the reverse is that of his son, Marcus Aurelius 

When Faustina died in 141, Antoninus asked the senate to deify her as a goddess. He authorised the construction of a temple to be built in the Roman Forum in her name and in her memory founded the Puellae Faustinianae, a charitable institution for the daughters of the poor.

Much of Antoninus’s popularity stemmed from his skill as an administrator and his generosity.

Free access for Roman citizens to drinking water was expanded with the construction of aqueducts, not only in Rome but throughout the Empire. He also built bridges and roads, yet still managed to reach the end of his reign with a substantial treasury surplus. 

He suspended the collection of taxes from multiple cities affected by natural disasters such as the fires and floods and offered large financial grants for rebuilding and recovery of Greek cities after two serious earthquakes.

The health of Antoninus declined as he approached 70 years of age. He found it difficult to stand and often fell asleep during official meetings. Anticipating his death after contracting a fever at his ancestral estate at Lorium, about 19 km (12 miles) west of Rome, he summoned the imperial council and passed the state to Marcus Aurelius.

Antoninus's body was buried in Hadrian's mausoleum. Marcus and Lucius nominated their father for deification, a request granted readily by the senate.  A column dedicated to Antoninus on the Campus Martius and the temple he had built in the Forum in 141 to his deified wife Faustina was rededicated to Faustina and Antoninus.

The term Good Emperors was coined by the political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, who noted that while most emperors to succeed to the throne by birth were “bad” in his view, there was a run of five - Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, all of whom succeeded by adoption - who enjoyed the reputation as benevolent dictators, governing by earning the good will of their subjects.

The Torre Medievale was built in the ninth century
to protect Lanuvio against Saracen attacks

Travel tip:

The ancient Lanuvium, over which the present day town of Lanuvio is built, was a prosperous town under the Roman Empire but was destroyed by the Barbarians. Rebuilt in the 11th century, it was enriched by noble families such as the Cesarini and the Colonna. Situated in the Castelli Romani area south of Rome, Lanuvio has among its main visitor attractions the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which has a rich history dating back to the 13th century and contains the Colonna family tombs. Lanuvio’s civic museum contains more than 2,000 artefacts from prehistoric, pre-Roman, Roman, and Mediaeval periods. Look out also for the Torre Medievale, a cylindrical tower in two graduated sections with an encircling walkway, thought to have been erected in the ninth century to protect against Saracen attacks. Today the tower is home to the Consortium Vini Colli Lanuvini, with a tasting room and information on the vintages.  Lanuvio is host to an annual Festa della Musica every June, and the Festa del Vino in September.

The Pantheon is the most notable survivor of the
buildings that covered the Campus Martius

Travel tip:

Campus Martius in Roman times was a floodplain of the Tiber river, covering the land to the east of the curve in the river that begins south of Piazza del Popolo and loops round to the Isola Tiberina. It was the site of the altar of Mars and the temple of Apollo in the 5th century BC, later being drained and used as a military exercise. From the first century BC, it became covered with large public buildings, including baths, an amphitheatre, theatres, a gymnasium, crematorium and many temples, of which The Pantheon is the most notable surviving structure. The district of Rome called Campo Marzio covers part of the area. Like many of the structures of ancient Rome, the Column of Antoninus Pius ultimately collapsed and became buried. The remains were discovered in 1703, when some buildings were demolished in the area of Montecitorio. The marble base was restored between 1706 and 1708 and erected in the centre of Piazza di Montecitorio in 1741, before being taken to the Vatican Museums in 1787. Today it occupies a space in the courtyard outside the entrance to the Vatican Pinacoteca.

Also on this day: 

1576: The murder of noblewoman Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo

1593: The death of artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo

1934: The birth of fashion designer Giorgio Armani

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Caravaggio and a death in Campo Marzio

Hot-tempered artist killed man in Rome in row over a woman

Caravaggio was a brilliant painter but had
a reputation for drunken violence

The brilliant late Renaissance artist Caravaggio committed the murder that would cause him to spend the remainder of his life on the run on this day in 1606.

Renowned for his fiery temperament and history of violent acts as well as for the extraordinary qualities of his paintings, Caravaggio is said to have killed Ranuccio Tomassoni, described in some history books as a ‘wealthy scoundrel’, in the Campo Marzio district of central Rome, not far from the Piazza Monte D'Oro.

The incident led to Caravaggio being condemned to death by order of the incumbent pope, Paul V, and then fleeing the city, first to Naples, eventually landing in Malta.

It was thought that the two had a row over a game of tennis, which was gaining popularity in Italy at the time, and that the dispute escalated into a brawl, which was not unusual for Caravaggio. The story was that Tomassoni wounded the painter in some way, at which Caravaggio drew a sword and lashed out at his rival, inflicting a gash in the thigh from which he bled to death.

This was accepted by historians as a plausible story for almost 400 years until evidence emerged to challenge the theory in 2002, when papers unearthed in a search of Vatican and Rome state archives suggested a different explanation.

According to the English art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, who revealed the findings in a BBC television documentary, Caravaggio killed Tomassoni in a botched attempt to castrate him.

Caravaggio lived among the narrow
streets of the Campo Marzio district

The evidence had been turned up by Monsignor Sandro Corradini, an Italian art historian with a particular interest in Caravaggio, who found a surgeon’s report written on the day of Tomassoni’s death.

Maurizio Marini, another historian, told Graham-Dixon in the documentary that the surgeon’s report described a fatal wound to Tomassini’s femoral artery and surmised that Caravaggio was probably trying to castrate him.

Such barbaric acts were relatively common in Rome at the time, part of a ‘code of honour’ that dictated that if a man was insulted by another man he would cut his face, but that if a man’s woman was insulted then the man delivering the insult could expect a different part of his anatomy to be under threat.

The woman at the heart of their row was said to be Fillide Melandroni, who had allegedly succumbed to Caravaggio’s charms after he was asked to paint her for an Italian nobleman. It is thought that she was a prostitute and that Tomassino was her pimp.

It is little wonder, after he had been found guilty of murder, that Caravaggio was not keen to hang around. The sentence was beheading. Worse still, from the artist’s point of view, the sentence allowed for any member of the public, on spotting Caravaggio, to carry out the sentence themselves, on the spot.

In the event, Caravaggio escaped, yet died only four years later in mysterious circumstances. Official records said that he fell victim to a fever at Porta Ercole, on the Tuscan coast, but no records exist of a funeral or a burial and it is suspected that he himself may have been murdered, either by relatives of Tomassino or representatives of the ancient order of the Knights of Malta, avenging the maiming of one of their members in another brawl involving the painter, in Malta.

Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath.
painted shortly before he died in 1610

Shortly before he died, while lying low in Naples with the intention of returning to Rome to seek clemency, he completed his David with the Head of Goliath, in which the severed head of the giant bears his own facial features, while David is given an expression of compassion for his victim.

Born Michelangelo Merisi in Milan in 1571, Caravaggio became known by the name of the town, in the province of Bergamo, where his family settled after leaving Milan to escape an outbreak of plague.

His work became famous for his realistic observation of the physical and emotional state of human beings and for his dramatic use of light and shade, known as chiaroscuro, which gave his paintings an almost three-dimensional quality. This was a formative influence for the baroque school of painting.

Some of his major works, such as The Calling of St Matthew, The Crucifixion of St Peter and Deposition, can be found in churches in Rome, but his work is also well represented in the Uffizi gallery in Florence.

The Sanctuary of the Madonna in Caravaggio

Travel tip:

In addition to its connection with the artist, another attraction of the town of Caravaggio is the Sanctuary of the Madonna di Caravaggio, which was built in the 16th century on the spot where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a local peasant woman.  The Sanctuary was later rebuilt and completed in the 18th century and is now visited by pilgrims from all over the world.  The town did have a theatre named after Caravaggio that was held in high regard but it was destroyed during the Second World War.

The Piazza del Popolo is among the highlights of Campo Marzio

Travel tip:

Campo Marzio is Rome’s 4th rione - district - situated in the centre of Rome, comprising an area that includes Piazza di Spagna and the Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti - otherwise known as the Spanish Steps - and Piazza del Popolo, as well as the fashion district with the Via dei Condotti at its centre, overlooked by the Pincian Hill.  During the Middle Ages it was the most densely populated quarter of the city. It is bordered by the Tiber, the Quirinal hill in the north and the Capitoline Hill.

More reading:

The mysterious death of Caravaggio

Also on this day:

1987: The birth of Leandro Jayarajah, former member of the Italy national cricket team

1999: Da Vinci's The Last Supper goes back on display after 20-year restoration

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