Description

THE reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.) marked the close of the good period of the Antonine emperors, under whom Rome reached the height of her imperial dominion and administrative efficiency. He died fighting the restive bar-barians on the Danube frontier and was buried not far from the camp on the site of what we now call Vienna. Under his son, the dissolute Commodus, the political decline set in that eventually ended in the collapse of the centuries-old imperial structure in the West and its replacement by the raw, un-stable, barbaric kingdoms of Italy, Spain, France, and Eng-land.

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