The Reign of Antoninus Pius Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. The Early Life Of Antoninus. On September 19th, 86 A.D.1, when the Emperor Domitian was consul for the 12th time and Cornelius Dolabella for the 1st time, there was born at a country house near Lanuvium a child who was destined to become Emperor fifty-two years afterwards. His name according to Capitolinus2 was Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Antoninus; Eutropius3 calls him Fulvius, but an inscription4 shows that Fulvus is the correct form of the name. The same inscription adds to him the name of Arrius which is found also in Capitolinus5. On the father's side6 the family of T. Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus came originally from the town of Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis,?a town of considerable size and importance lying in the fertile and well-watered district to the west of the mouth ofthe Rhone, at a distance of 20 miles from the coast and about 14 miles from the bank of the river, and situated on the Via Domitia, the high road which extended from the north of Italy along the south coast of Gaul into Spain. The town was accordingly in a most advantageous position for trade and formed a commercial centre for communication between the valley of the Rhone, Spain and the north of Italy. It is then a reasonable conjecture that the ancestors of Antoninus became wealthy through trade at Nemausus before they followed the example of so many rich provincial families and migrated to Rome, a conjecture which is supported by the fact that one of the first actions of Antoninus, when he had become Emperor, was to improve the means of communication1 and to restore the roads of Gallia Narbonensis in the interests of commerce, as though he were paying back to that district some of the advantages which his family had received therefrom. 1 V. P. 1, 8. " V. P. 1, 1. 3 Eu...Read More