Lucius Verus …
… used to have quite a reputation as a party boy. But it may have been a literary and maybe political ploy used by reporters to emphasise his adopted brother and co-emperor Marcus Aurelius’s gravitas and auctoritas.
In any case, he seemed to have waged a very successful war in the East against the Parthians, by shrewdly delegating his command and limiting the objectives to the reasonable and politicaly expedient.
Unfortunately his legions brought back a lethal infectious disease from their campaign – later known as the Antonine plague – which he apparently contracted himself and died from at the early age – for a patrician – of 38, leaving Marcus Aurelius on his own to repel the encroachments launched by the Marcomani and Quadi kingdoms in what is now Hungary (Gladiator anyone :-)
Lucius Verus …
… used to have quite a reputation as a party boy. But it may have been a literary and maybe political ploy used by reporters to emphasise his adopted brother and co-emperor Marcus Aurelius’s gravitas and auctoritas.
In any case, he seemed to have waged a very successful war in the East against the Parthians, by shrewdly delegating his command and limiting the objectives to the reasonable and politicaly expedient.
Unfortunately his legions brought back a lethal infectious disease from their campaign – later known as the Antonine plague – which he apparently contracted himself and died from at the early age – for a patrician – of 38, leaving Marcus Aurelius on his own to repel the encroachments launched by the Marcomani and Quadi kingdoms in what is now Hungary (Gladiator anyone :-)