Antoninus
Antoninus names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Antoninus Surnamed Pius
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
Surnamed Pius, was adopted by the Emperor Adrian, whom he succeeded. He was remarkable for all the virtues forming a perfect statesman, philosopher, and king. He treated his subjects with affability and humanity, and listened with patience to every complaint brought before him." He died in his seventy-fifth year, after a reign of twenty-three years, A. D. 160. Antonius, Marcus. Mark Antony, the triumvir, distinguished himself by his ambitious views. When Julius Caesar was killed in the senate house, Antony delivered an oration over his A body, the eloquence of which is recorded in Shakespeare's tragedy of Julius Caesar. Antony had married Fulvia , whom he repudiated to marry Octavia , the sister of Augustus. He fought by the side of Augustus at the battle of Philippi , against the murderers of Julius Caesar. Subsequently he became enamored with Cleopatra , the renowned queen of Egypt, and repudiated Octavia to marry her. He was utterly defeated at the battle of Actium, and stabbed himself. He died in the fifty-sixth year of his age, B. C. 30. Shakespeare, in his noble tragedy-Antony and Cleopatra-makes Antony appeal to his attendant, Eros, to slay him, who refuses, when Antony falls on his own sword. The reader is referred to the fourth act of the play, where Antony, defeated and heartbroken, addresses his attendant: "Unarm, Eros; the long day's task is done, And we must sleep." Antonius, Julius. Son of the famous triumvir Antony, by Fulvia, was consul with Paulus Fabius Maximus. He was surnamed Africanus, and put to death by order of Augustus, but some say he killed himself.
Antoninus Wall of, a military defense constructed by the Romans in Britain about 140 A
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Wall of, a military defense constructed by the Romans in Britain about 140 A. D. It led from Old Kirkpatrick on the Clyde to the Firth of Forth, a distance of twenty-seven miles. The work was designed to keep out the northern barbarians. It consisted of a ditch about twenty feet deep and forty wide; a breastwork of earth and stones, twenty-four feet thick at the base and about twenty feet high, and a military road following the south side of the wall from Clyde to Forth. The work was protected by a chain of nineteen forts with watch towers at frequent intervals. A force of Roman soldiers kept constant guard. Traces of the wall may still be found. The defense was named for Emperor Antoninus Pius, during whose reign it was constructed. See Hadrian
Antoninus . See Marcus Aurelius
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
. See Marcus Aurelius
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The biographical sketches stand: Antoninus Pius still reads as the model of the mild philosopher-emperor, though modern chronology puts his death in March 161, not the A.D. 160 given by 1000 Classical Characters in 1900, and he is now normally grouped with Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius as the last of the "Five Good Emperors." The wall has fared differently. When Aiton's wrote in 1910 that "traces of the wall may still be found," it was an antiquarian curiosity measured at twenty-seven miles; excavation since has put the turf rampart nearer sixty kilometres, and in 2008 the whole line was inscribed by UNESCO as part of the transnational "Frontiers of the Roman Empire" World Heritage Site. Aiton's does not mention what is now the central fact about it: the Romans gave the wall up after roughly twenty years and withdrew to Hadrian's line, making Antoninus's frontier the shortest-lived in Britain.
Written for this edition, 2026.