Marble portrait of the Emperor Antonius Pius

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Antoninus Pius was chosen by Hadrian as his successor when he was already fifty-one years old. His portraits reflect him as a mature man in a dignified but elegant style that deliberately recalls the imperial imagery adopted by Hadrian. At the start of his reign in A.D. 138, he had to persuade a hesitant Senate to grant Hadrian divine honors, and it's likely for this reason that he himself was given the title of Pius. Unlike Trajan and Hadrian, Antoninus did not initiate any major wars or travel extensively throughout the Empire. In fact, he was essentially the last emperor to spend most of his reign in Rome itself. Regarded as a fair-minded and diligent administrator, Antoninus governed the Empire at its peak—a time that historian Edward Gibbon later famously referred to as the period when “humanity was at its happiest and most prosperous.”