Editing Lucius Verus (section)

==== Luxury and logistics at Antioch (162?–165) ====
[[File:Antioch in Syria engraving by William Miller after H Warren.jpg|thumb|350px|right|Antioch from the southwest (engraving by [[William Miller (engraver)|William Miller]] after a drawing by H. Warren from a sketch by Captain [[Thomas Byam Martin|Byam Martin]], R.N., 1866)]]
[[File:Atleta, con testa non pertinente di lucio vero, corpo da mirone (460-450 ac.), inv. 2217.JPG|thumb|Statue of Lucius Verus on a body modelled after a sculpture by the [[Ancient Athens|ancient Athenian]] sculptor [[Myron]], [[Vatican Museums]]]]
Lucius spent most of the campaign in Antioch, though he wintered at [[Laodicea ad Mare|Laodicea]] and summered at Daphne, a resort just outside Antioch.<ref>Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> He took up a mistress named Panthea,{{#tag:ref|Or "Pantheia".<ref>Barry Baldwin, review of C.P. Jones' ''Culture and Society in Lucian'', ''American Historical Review'' 92:5 (1987), 1185.</ref>|group=notes}} from [[Smyrna]].<ref>Smyrna: Lucian, ''Imagines'' 2; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> The biographer calls her a "low-born girl-friend",<ref>''HA Verus'' 7.10, qtd. and tr. Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> but she was described as a "woman of perfect beauty" by Lucius. One biographer has postulated that Panthea may have been more beautiful than any of [[Phidias]] and [[Praxiteles]]' statues.<ref>Lucian, ''Imagines'' 3, qtd. and tr. Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> The mistress was musically inclined and spoke [[Ionic Greek]], spiced with Attic wit.<ref>Lucian, ''Imagines'' 11, 14–15; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref>

Panthea read Lucian's first draft, and criticized him for flattery. He had compared her to a goddess, which frightened her—she did not want to become the next [[Cassiopeia (Queen of Aethiopia)|Cassiopeia]].<ref>Lucian, ''Pro Imaginibus'' 7; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> She had power, too. She made Lucius shave his beard for her. The Syrians mocked him for this, as they did for much else.<ref>''HA Verus'' 7.10, cf. 7.4; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref>

Critics decried Lucius' luxurious lifestyle.<ref>''HA Verus'' 4.4; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> He had taken to gambling, they said; he would "dice the whole night through".<ref>''HA Verus'' 4.6, tr. Magie; cf. 5.7; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> He enjoyed the company of actors.<ref>''HA Verus'' 8.7, 8.10–11; Fronto, ''Principae Historia'' 17 (= Haines 2.217); Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> He made a special request for dispatches from Rome, to keep him updated on how his chariot teams were doing.<ref>''HA Verus'' 6.1; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> He brought a golden statue of the Greens' horse Volucer around with him, as a token of his team spirit.<ref>''HA Verus'' 6.3–4; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> Fronto defended his pupil against some of these claims: the Roman people needed Lucius' [[bread and circuses]] to keep them in check.<ref>''Principae Historiae'' 17 (= Haines 2.216–17); Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref>{{#tag:ref|Fronto called it "the corn-dole and public spectacles" (''annona et spectaculis''), preferring his own pompous rephrase to [[Juvenal]]'s plain ''panem et circenses''.<ref>''Principae Historiae'' 17 (= Haines 2.216–217); Juvenal, 10.78; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> (Fronto was, in any case, unfamiliar with Juvenal; the author was out of style through the classicizing mania of the [[Second Sophistic]], and would not become popular until the later fourth century).<ref>Alan Cameron, "Literary Allusions in the Historia Augusta", ''Hermes'' 92:3 (1964), 367–368.</ref>|group=notes}}

This, at least, is how the biographer has it. The whole section of the ''vita'' dealing with Lucius' debaucheries (''HA Verus'' 4.4–6.6) is an insertion into a narrative otherwise entirely cribbed from an earlier source. Some few passages seem genuine;{{#tag:ref|In the judgment of [[T.D. Barnes]]: 4.8, "He was very fond also of charioteers, favouring the 'Greens'."; 4.10, "He never needed much sleep, however; and his digestion was excellent."; perhaps 5.7,  "After the banquet, moreover, they diced until dawn.".<ref name="ReferenceB">Barnes, 69. Translations from the ''HA Verus'': Magie, ''ad loc''.</ref>|group=notes}} others take and elaborate something from the original.{{#tag:ref|In the judgment of T.D. Barnes: 4.8 ("He was very fond also of charioteers, favouring the 'Greens'.") and 10.9 ("Among other articles of extravagance he had a crystal goblet, named Volucer after that horse of which he had been very fond, that surpassed the capacity of any human draught.") are the seed for 6.2–6, "And finally, even at Rome, when he was present and seated with Marcus, he suffered many insults from the 'Blues,' because he had outrageously, as they maintained, taken sides against them. For he had a golden statue made of the 'Green' horse Volucer, and this he always carried around with him; indeed, he was wont to put raisins and nuts instead of barley in this horse's manger and to order him brought to him, in the [[House of Tiberius]], covered with a blanket dyed with purple, and he built him a tomb, when he died, on the Vatican Hill. It was because of this horse that gold pieces and prizes first began to be demanded for horses, and in such honour was this horse held, that frequently a whole peck of gold pieces was demanded for him by the faction of the 'Greens'."; 10.8, "He was somewhat halting in speech, a reckless gambler, ever of an extravagant mode of life, and in many respects, save only that he was not cruel or given to acting, a second Nero.", for the comparison with other "bad emperors" at 4.6 ("...he so rivalled Caligula, Nero, and Vitellius in their vices..."), and, significantly, the excuse to use [[Suetonius]].<ref name="ReferenceB">Barnes, 69. Translations from the ''HA Verus'': Magie, ''ad loc''.</ref>|group=notes}} The rest is by the biographer himself, relying on nothing better than his own imagination.<ref>Barnes, 69.</ref>

Lucius faced quite a task. Fronto described the scene in terms recalling [[Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo|Corbulo]]'s arrival one hundred years before.<ref>Birley, "Hadrian to the Antonines", 162.</ref> The Syrian army had turned soft during the east's long peace. They spent more time at the city's open-air cafés than in their quarters. Under Lucius, training was stepped up. Pontius Laelianus ordered that their saddles be stripped of their padding. Gambling and drinking were sternly policed.<ref>''Ad Verum Imperator'' 2.1.19 (= Haines 2.149); Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129.</ref> Fronto wrote that Lucius was on foot at the head of his army as often as on horseback. He personally inspected soldiers in the field and at camp, including the sick bay.<ref>''Principae Historia'' 13 (= Haines 2.209–211); Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 129–130.</ref>

Lucius sent Fronto few messages at the beginning of the war. He sent Fronto a letter apologizing for his silence. He would not detail plans that could change within a day, he wrote. Moreover, there was little thus far to show for his work: "not even yet has anything been accomplished such as to make me wish to invite you to share in the joy".<ref>''Ad Verum Imperator'' 2.2 (= Haines 2.117), tr. Haines; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 130; "Hadrian to the Antonines", 162.</ref> Lucius did not want Fronto to suffer the anxieties that had kept him up day and night.<ref>''Ad Verum Imperator'' 2.2 (= Haines 2.117–119); Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 130; "Hadrian to the Antonines", 162.</ref> One reason for Lucius' reticence may have been the collapse of Parthian negotiations after the Roman conquest of Armenia. Lucius' presentation of terms was seen as cowardice.<ref>Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 130; citing ''Panegyrici Latini'' 14(10).6.</ref> The Parthians were not in the mood for peace.<ref name="ReferenceC">Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 130; "Hadrian to the Antonines", 162.</ref>

Lucius needed to make extensive imports into Antioch, so he opened a sailing route up the [[Orontes River|Orontes]]. Because the river breaks across a cliff before reaching the city, Lucius ordered that a new canal be dug. After the project was completed, the Orontes' old riverbed dried up, exposing massive bones—the bones of a [[Giants (Greek mythology)|giant]]. [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] says they were from a beast "more than eleven cubits" tall; [[Philostratus III|Philostratus]] says that it was "thirty cubits" tall. The oracle at [[Claros]] declared that they were the bones of the river's spirit.<ref>Pausanias 8.29.3–4; Philostratus, ''Heroicus'' 138.6–9 K., 9.5–7 L.; Christopher Jones, "The Emperor and the Giant", ''Classical Philology'' 95:4 (2000): 476–481.</ref> These bones would later be understood to be that of several large unspecified animals.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NmCLOcvMnqwC&pg=PA73|year=2011|last=Mayor|first=Adrienne|title=The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0691150130|page=73}}</ref>

[[File:Statue of Lucilla detail.jpg|thumb|Lucilla depicted as [[Ceres (mythology)|Ceres]]]]
In the middle of the war, perhaps in autumn 163 or early 164, Lucius made a trip to Ephesus to be married to Marcus' daughter Lucilla.<ref>''HA Verus'' 7.7; ''Marcus'' 9.4; Barnes, 72; Birley, "Hadrian to the Antonines", 163; cf. also Barnes, "Legislation Against the Christians", ''Journal of Roman Studies'' 58:1–2 (1968), 39; "Some Persons in the Historia Augusta", ''Phoenix'' 26:2 (1972), 142, citing the ''Vita Abercii'' 44ff.</ref> Lucilla's thirteenth birthday was in March 163; whatever the date of her marriage, she was not yet fifteen.<ref>Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 131; "Hadrian to the Antonines", 163.</ref> Marcus had moved up the date: perhaps stories of Panthea had disturbed him.<ref name="Birley, Marcus Aurelius, 131">Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 131.</ref> Lucilla was accompanied by her mother Faustina and M. Vettulenus Civica Barbarus, the half-brother of Lucius' father.<ref>''HA Verus'' 7.7; ''Marcus'' 9.4; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 131.</ref>

Marcus may have planned to accompany them all the way to Smyrna (the biographer says he told the senate he would); this did not happen.<ref>''HA Verus'' 7.7; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 131.</ref> Marcus only accompanied the group as far as Brundisium, where they boarded a ship for the east.<ref>''HA Marcus'' 9.4; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 131.</ref> Marcus returned to Rome immediately thereafter, and sent out special instructions to his proconsuls not to give the group any official reception.<ref>''HA Marcus'' 9.5–6; Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', 131.</ref> Lucilla would bear three of Lucius' children in the coming years. Lucilla became Lucilla Augusta.<ref>Birley, "Hadrian to the Antonines", 163.</ref>