The Roman emperor who ruled 23 years and probably never saw a legion
Antoninus Pius presided over the calmest stretch of Rome's Principate, from AD 138 to 161, and one historian doubts he ever came within five hundred miles of a legion. Yet his reign also produced Rome's northernmost frontier, a turf wall across Scotland that was abandoned within about two decades.
He was born in 86 near Lanuvium in Italy, into the Aurelii Fulvi, a fairly new senatorial family from Nemausus, today's Nîmes, whose rise the Flavian emperors had backed. His father died young and he was raised by his maternal grandfather, a friend of Pliny the Younger. A consulship in 120, a stint as one of four proconsuls governing Italy and a well-regarded term as proconsul of Asia around 134 to 135 brought him to Hadrian's attention. On 25 February 138, after his first chosen heir died, Hadrian adopted Antoninus on condition that he in turn adopt the future Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.
The surname Pius, meaning dutiful, most likely came from his persistence in getting a reluctant Senate to deify Hadrian. Other explanations say he helped his aged father-in-law into Senate meetings, or rescued men Hadrian had condemned to death while ill. He kept Hadrian's arrangements largely intact, governed through a tight circle of senatorial families, and left his successors a large treasury surplus, wider free access to drinking water and easier enfranchisement for freed slaves.
His wife Faustina the Elder died in 141. He had her declared a goddess, built her a temple in the Roman Forum, struck coins in her name and founded a charity for poor girls called the Girls of Faustina. He never remarried, living instead with her freedwoman Galeria Lysistrate, an arrangement that could produce no rival heirs.
Peace was not total: there was trouble in Mauretania, Judea and among the Brigantes of Britain. In 139 he sent Quintus Lollius Urbicus to govern Britain, and the invasion of southern Scotland produced the Antonine Wall between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, 37 miles long against Hadrian's 73. The land it added was barren and costly to supply, and the wall was run down from the mid-150s. Some historians think the campaign mainly bought a new emperor military prestige; he took the title Imperator in 142. He died of illness on 7 March 161.
Source: Antoninus Pius
