Divested of all extraneous additions, the fact which occurred,—­as established by the evidence of medals, and by one of the bass-relievi on the “Column of Antonine,”—­appears to have been as follows.  Marcus Aurelius and his army had been entangled in a mountain defile, into which they had too hastily pursued a sham retreat of the barbarian archers.  In this defile, unable either to fight or to fly, pent in by the enemy, burned up with the scorching heat and tormented by thirst, they lost all hope, burst into wailing and groans, and yielded to a despair from which not even the strenuous efforts of Marcus could arouse them.  At the most critical moment of their danger and misery the clouds began to gather, and heavy shows of rain descended, which the soldiers caught in their shields and helmets to quench their own thirst and that of their horses.  While they were thus engaged the enemy attacked them; but the rain was mingled with hail, and fell with blinding fury in the faces of the barbarians.  The storm was also accompanied with thunder and lightning, which seems to have damaged the enemy, and filled them with terror, while no casualty occured in the Roman ranks.  The Romans accordingly regarded this as a Divine interposition, and achieved a most decisive victory, which proved to be the practical conclusion of a hazardous and important war.

The Christians regarded the event not as providential but as miraculous, and attributed it to the prayers of their brethren in a legion which, from this circumstance, received the name of the “Thundering Legion.”  It is however now known that one of the legions, distinguished by a flash of lightning which was represented on their shields, had been known by this name since the time of Augustus; and the Pagans themselves attributed the assistance which they had received sometimes to a prayer of the pious Emperor and sometimes to the incantations of an Egyptian sorcerer named Arnuphis.

One of the Fathers, the passionate and eloquent Tertullian, attributes to this deliverance an interposition of the Emperor in favour of the Christians, and appeals to a letter of his to the Senate in which he acknowledged how effectual had been the aid he had received from Christian prayers, and forbade any one hereafter to molest the followers of the new religion, lest they should use against him the weapon of supplication which had been so powerful in his favour.  This letter is preserved at the end of the Apology of Justin Martyr, and it adds that, not only are no Christians to be injured or persecuted, but that any one who informed against them is to be burned alive!  We see at once that this letter is one of those impudent and transparent forgeries in which the literature of the first five centuries unhappily abounds.  What was the real relation of Marcus to the Christians we shall consider hereafter.

To the gentle heart of Marcus, all war, even when accompanied with victories, was eminently distasteful; and in such painful and ungenial occupations no small part of his life was passed.  What he thought of war and of its successes is graphically set forth in the following remark:—­