DURING the Eastern war there came a moment when schism in the empire had seemed possible through the defection of Lucius Verus; when to Aurelius it had also seemed possible to confirm his allegiance by no less a gift than his beautiful daughter Lucilla, the eldest of his children--the domnula, probably, of those letters.

The little lady, grown now to strong and stately maidenhood, had been ever something of the good genius, the better soul, to Lucius Verus, by the law of contraries, her somewhat cold and apathetic modesty acting as counterfoil to the young man's tigrish fervour.

Conducted to Ephesus, she had become his wife by form of civil marriage, the more solemn wedding rites being deferred till their return to Rome.
The ceremony of the Confarreation, or religious marriage, in which bride and bridegroom partook together of a certain mystic bread, was celebrated accordingly, with due pomp, early in the spring; Aurelius himself [231] assisting, with much domestic feeling.

A crowd of fashionable people filled the space before the entrance to the apartments of Lucius on the Palatine hill, richly decorated for the occasion, commenting, not always quite delicately, on the various details of the rite, which only a favoured few succeeded in actually witnessing.

"She comes!" Marius could hear them say, "escorted by her young brothers: it is the young Commodus who carries the torch of white-thornwood, the little basket of work-things, the toys for the children:"-- and then, after a watchful pause, "she is winding the woollen thread round the doorposts.