Nero had been a truculent student, a boy who was biding his time so he could do whatever he wanted when he got his power. The respect he had had for Seneca when he was young transmogrified with time into a kind of resentment and disgust. Seneca seemed to be willing to go along with this, to say his piece and hope it landed, and was otherwise unalarmed enough to allow Nero to get that power he so craved.
Marcus, on the other hand, was eager to learn and remained so for the rest of his days, even when the power dynamic between him and his tutor shifted. In the Historia Augusta, we’re told he greeted Junius with a kiss, always, and honored him before anyone else on his staff. He sought counsel in private and in public, and genuinely revered his teacher, to whom he considered himself a “disciple.” Rusticus had managed to do the thing that so few teachers manage, even with lowly pupils: He reached Marcus Aurelius.
Plutarch would talk later talk about how many politicians sought to govern as an exemption from being governed by others. Perhaps what made Marcus so special was that he seemed to place an advisor and a philosopher like Rusticus above himself, despite the fact that his power as emperor was nearly absolute. Why did Marcus remain good while so many other rulers have broken bad? His relationship and deference to a wise, older man like Rusticus explains a lot of it.
Almost immediately after Marcus became emperor, Junius was given major roles serving the state. In 162 AD, he served his second term as consul (almost thirty years after his first). For five years, he was urban prefect, essentially the mayor of Rome, supervising its police, legal enforcement, public works, and the city’s food supply. Given the vast corruption that had been endemic in Rome, this was a position of immense responsibility and trust. By all accounts, he acquitted himself honorably.
It would also put Junius on a collision course with an event that would, unfortunately, define his legacy for most of history. In 165 AD, a seemingly minor court case came to Junius’s desk. A Christian philosopher named Justin Martyr and a Cynic philosopher named Crescens had become involved in some sort of nasty dispute that had spilled out into the streets. Denounced by Crescens, who accused these Christians of being atheists, Justin and six of his students were charged and brought in to face questioning.
Justin had in fact studied under a Stoic teacher in Samaria but left the school in favor of the burgeoning Christian faith. Many of Justin’s writings would evoke similarities between the Stoics and the Christians and he may well have been familiar with Junius’s own philosophical work. He quite reasonably expected a favorable ruling from his Stoic judge. As a devout Christian, he knew that a century before, Seneca’s brother had fairly judged and and freed Saint Paul in Corinth.
But this was Rome in a very different time, and Rusticus was not simply a pen-and-ink philosopher. His job was to protect the peace. These Christians refused to acknowledge the Roman gods, the supremacy of the Roman state. That was crazy, disruptive, dangerous. Wasn’t Rusticus’s job to enforce the laws? To prevent these kinds of things from happening? And, perhaps, with Marcus away at the front and no one to check him, Rusticus was a little lost in the sway of his own power.
In her 1939 novel about Christianity in ancient Rome, written as fascism was crushing religious minorities in Europe, Naomi Mitchison has a Stoic philosopher, Nausiphanes, attempt to explain this collision course between the Stoics and the Christians. “[The Christians] were being persecuted,” he says, “because they were against the Roman state; no Roman ever really bothered about a difference of gods; in religious matters they were profoundly tolerant because their own gods were not of the individual heart but only social inventions—or had become so. Yet politically they did and must persecute: and equally must be attacked by all who had the courage.”
We think we are doing the right thing. We think we are protecting the status quo. We do terrible things in the process.
The proceedings of the trial, and its all too modern undertones, are recorded in The Acts of Justin. Rusticus gets right down to business, demanding an account of how Justin is living. Is he a Christian?
Yes. Yes, I am, he says, admitting that he knows his beliefs are seen as a threat by the powers that be. That power is not Rusticus, but the empire he represents. Even so, Rusticus seems to take personally Justin’s claim that that it is the Romans who “hold fast in error.” “Are the [Christian] doctrines approved by you, wretch that you are?” Rusticus demands, and their encounter spirals out of control from there.
As pride goeth before the fall, contempt goeth before injustices and moral failings.
Seneca had written his famous essay On Clemency to Nero in 55–56 AD. It’s likely, given how Nero turned out, that Rusticus was not a big admirer of Seneca’s philosophy. Yet in this case, the thrust of that essay—about how the decisions that the powerful make in regard to the powerless define who they are—was desperately relevant. Here, Rusticus controlled the full weight of the Roman legal system. Justin was just a small man, one man dissenting against a widely held belief. His example mattered very little. He could have been allowed to go free.
He deserved mercy. Most everyone does.
Rusticus was too frustrated to give it. He was baffled by Justin’s faith, by his firm belief in something that the Roman system did not countenance. That’s why Justin was sitting in court before Rusticus in the first place.
“Listen,” Rusticus says, “if you were scourged and beheaded, are you convinced that you would go up to heaven?” Justin replies, “I hope that I shall enter God’s house if I suffer that way. For I know that God’s favor is stored up until the end of the whole world for all who have lived good lives.”
Marcus said that from Rusticus he had learned “to show oneself ready to be reconciled to those who have lost their temper and trespassed against one, and ready to meet them halfway as soon as ever they seem to be willing to retrace their steps.” Where was that readiness with Justin? How much better would Rusticus have come off if he had managed to muster it?
He gave Justin a chance to repent, to submit to the law and go on his way. Justin didn’t have to mean it. He just had to do as every other Roman was expected to do. “Now let us come to the point at issue,” Rusticus said, “which is necessary and urgent. Gather round then and with one accord offer sacrifice to the gods.” The punishment for not doing so would be the same as for any Roman who dared impiety, who spurned the gods whose favor the empire believed it needed.
He was presenting Justin with the same choice offered to Agrippinus, to Cato, to Thrasea, to Helvidius. Go along to get along. Thrasea had faced it, had a chance at reprieve, but refused even help from Arulenus, Rusticus’s grandfather. Now, years later, the roles were reversed. It was not a tyrant demanding obeisance from a Stoic. It was a Stoic demanding it of a Christian.
This time, the Christian would be the brave one. “No one who is right thinking stoops from true worship to false worship,” Justin replied. And in so doing, chose to die for what he believed in rather than compromise and live.
Holding the immense power of the state in his hands, Rusticus chose to use it. “Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to obey the command of the emperor,” he ordered, “be scourged and led away to suffer capital punishment according to the ruling of the laws.”
In the name of Marcus Aurelius, at the order of Rusticus, this poor man was sent off to be cruelly beaten, whipped until the skin was torn from his body, and then beheaded.*