L. AURELIUS ANTONINUS, son of M. Antoninus, succeeded his father in the Roman empire. He was naturally cruel, and fond of indulging his licentious propensities. He wished to be called Hercules; and, like that hero, he adorned his shoulders with a lion's skin, and armed his hand with a knotted club. He publicly fought with the gladiators, and boasted of his dexterity in killing the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. He required divine honours from the senate, and they were granted him. He was accustomed to put such an immense quantity of gold dust in his hair, that when he appeared bareheaded in the sunshine, his head glittered as if surrounded with sunbeams. Martia, one of his concubines, whose death he had prepared, poisoned him; but as the poison did not quickly operate, he was strangled by a wrestler. He died in the thirty-first year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign. It has been observed, that he never trusted himself to a barber, but always burnt his beard, in imitation of the tyrant Dionysius. A.D. 192.