Commodus

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Commodus as
Hercules, Capitoline Museums
Reign 176 – 17 March 180
(with Marcus Aurelius);
18 March 180–
31 December 192 (alone)
Full name Lucius Aurelius Commodus
(from birth to 166);
Caesar Lucius Aurelius Commodus (166 to 176);
Caesar Lucius Aurelius Commodus Augustus (176 to 180);
Caesar Lucius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus (180);
Caesar Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus (180 to 191);
Caesar Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus Augustus (191 to death)
Born 31 August 161(161-08-31)
Birthplace Lanuvium
Died 31 December 192 (age 31)
Place of death Rome
Predecessor Marcus Aurelius (alone)
Successor Pertinax
Consort to Bruttia Crispina
Dynasty Antonine
Father Marcus Aurelius
Mother Faustina
Roman imperial dynasties
Antonine Dynasty Antoninus Pius
Children
   Natural - Faustina the Younger, also one other daughter and two sons, all died before 138
   Adoptive - Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus
Marcus Aurelius with Lucius Verus
Marcus Aurelius alone
Children
   Natural - 13, including Commodus and Lucilla
Commodus

Lucius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus (August 31, 161 – December 31, 192), was a Roman Emperor who ruled from 180 to 192 (also with his father, Marcus Aurelius, from 177 until 180). The name given here was his official name at his accession to sole rule; see 'Changes of Name' for earlier and later forms. His accession as emperor was the first time a son had succeeded his father since Titus succeeded Vespasian in 79. Commodus was the first emperor "born to the purple;" i.e., born during his father's reign.

Early life and rise to power (161–180)

Childhood

Commodus was born as Lucius Aurelius Commodus in Lanuvium, near Rome, the son of the reigning emperor Marcus Aurelius. He had an elder twin brother, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus, who died in 165. On October 12, 166, Commodus was made Caesar together with his younger brother Marcus Annius Verus; the latter also died in 169, having failed to recover from an operation, which left Commodus as Marcus Aurelius’s sole surviving son and heir. He was looked after by his father’s physician, Galen, in order to keep him healthy and alive. Galen treated many of Commodus's common illnesses. Commodus received extensive tuition at the hands of what Marcus Aurelius called ‘an abundance of good masters’. The focus of Commodus’s education appears to have been intellectual, possibly at the expense of military training.

Teenage years

Commodus is known to have been at Carnuntum, Marcus Aurelius’s headquarters during the Marcomannic Wars, in 172. It was presumably there that, on 15 October 172, he was given the victory title Germanicus in the presence of the army. The title suggests that Commodus was present at his father’s victory over the Marcomanni. On January 20, 175, Commodus entered the College of Pontiffs, the starting-point of a career in public life.

In April 175, Avidius Cassius, governor of Syria, declared himself emperor following rumors that Marcus Aurelius had died. Having been accepted as emperor by Syria, Palestine and Egypt, Cassius carried on his rebellion even after it had become obvious that Marcus was still alive. During the preparations for the campaign against Cassius, the prince assumed his toga virilis on the Danubian front on July 7, 175, thus formally entering adulthood. Cassius, however, was killed by one of his centurions before the campaign against him could begin.

Commodus subsequently accompanied his father on a lengthy trip to the eastern provinces, during which he visited Antioch. The emperor and his son then traveled to Athens, where they were initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. They then returned to Rome in the autumn of 176.

Joint rule with father

Marcus Aurelius was the first Emperor since Vespasian to have a son of his own, and though he himself was the fifth in the line of the so-called Five Good Emperors who had each adopted their successor, it seems to have been his firm intention that Commodus should be his heir. On November 27, 176, Marcus Aurelius granted Commodus rank of Imperator, in the middle of 177 the title Augustus, giving his son the same status as his own and formally sharing power. On 23 December of the same year, the two Augusti celebrated a joint triumph, and Commodus was given tribunician power. On January 1, 177, Commodus became consul for the first time, which made him, aged 15, the youngest consul in Roman history up to that time. He subsequently married Bruttia Crispina before accompanying his father to the Danubian front once more in 178, where Marcus Aurelius died on March 17, 180, leaving the 19-year-old Commodus sole emperor.

Sole reign (180–192)

Whereas the reign of Marcus Aurelius had been marked by almost continuous warfare, that of Commodus was comparatively peaceful in the military sense, but was marked by political strife and the increasingly arbitrary and capricious behaviour of the Emperor himself. In the view of Dio Cassius, a contemporary observer, his accession marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron"[1] - a famous comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus's reign as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. Despite his notoriety, and considering the importance of his reign, Commodus’s years in power are not well chronicled. The principal surviving literary sources are Dio Cassius (a contemporary and sometimes first hand observer, but for this reign only transmitted in fragments and abbreviations), Herodian and the Historia Augusta (untrustworthy for its character as a work of literature rather than history, with elements of fiction embedded within its biographies. In the case of Commodus it may well be embroidering upon what the author found in reasonably good contemporary sources).

Commodus remained with the Danube armies for only a short time before negotiating a peace treaty with the Danubian tribes. He then returned to Rome and celebrated a triumph for the conclusion of the wars on October 22, 180. Unlike the preceding Emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, he seems to have had little interest in the business of administration and tended throughout his reign to leave the practical running of the state to a succession of favourites, beginning at this time with Saoterus, a freedman from Nicomedia who had become his chamberlain. Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs would lead to a series of conspiracies and attempted coups, which in turn eventually provoked Commodus to take charge of affairs, which he did in an increasingly dictatorial manner. Nevertheless, though the senatorial order came to hate and fear him, the evidence suggests that he remained popular with the army and the common people for much of his reign, not least because of his lavish shows of largesse (recorded on his coinage) and because he staged and took part in spectacular gladiatorial combats. One of the ways he paid for his donatives and mass entertainments was to tax the senatorial order, and on many inscriptions the traditional order of the two nominal powers of the state, the Senate and People (Senatus Populusque Romanum) is provocatively reversed (Populus Senatusque ...).

The conspiracies of 182

At the outset of his reign Commodus, aged 19, inherited many of his father’s senior advisers, notably Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus (the second husband of Commodus’s sister Lucilla), his father-in-law Gaius Bruttius Praesens, Vitrasius Pollio, and Aufidius Victorinus, who was Prefect of the City of Rome. He also had five surviving sisters, all of them with husbands who were potential rivals. Four of his sisters were considerably older than he; the eldest, Lucilla, held the rank of Augusta as the widow of her first husband, Lucius Verus.

The first crisis of the reign came in 182, when Lucilla engineered a conspiracy against her brother. Her motive is alleged to have been envy of the Empress Crispina. Her husband Pompeianus was not involved, but two men alleged to have been her lovers, Marcus Ummidius Quadratus (the consul of 167, who was also her first cousin) and Appius Claudius Quintianus, attempted to murder Commodus as he entered the theatre. They bungled the job and were seized by the Emperor’s bodyguard. Quadratus and Quintianus were executed; Lucilla was exiled to Capri and later killed. Pompeianus retired from public life. One of the two praetorian prefects, Tarrutenius Paternus, had actually been involved in the conspiracy but was not detected at this time, and in the aftermath he and his colleague Tigidius Perennis were able to arrange for the murder of Saoterus, the hated chamberlain.

Commodus took the loss of Saoterus badly, and Perennis now seized the chance to advance himself by implicating Paternus in a second conspiracy, one apparently led by Publius Salvius Julianus, who was the son of the jurist, Salvius Julianus and was betrothed to Paternus’s daughter. Salvius and Paternus were executed along with a number of other prominent consulars and senators. Didius Julianus, the future Emperor, a relative of Salvius Julianus, was dismissed from the governorship of Germania Inferior. Perennis took over the reins of government and Commodus found a new chamberlain and favourite in Cleander, a Phrygian freedman who had married one of the Emperor’s mistresses, Demostratia. Cleander was in fact the person who had murdered Saoterus. After those attempts on his life, Commodus spent much of his time outside Rome, mostly on the family estates at Lanuvium. Though physically strong he was mentally lazy, and his chief interest was in sport: taking part in horse-racing, chariot-racing, and combats with beasts and men, mostly in private but also on occasion in public.

Dacia and Britain

Commodus was inaugurated in 183 as consul with Aufidius Victorinus for a colleague and assumed the title 'Pius'. War broke out in Dacia: few details are available but it appears two future contenders for the throne, Clodius Albinus and Pescennius Niger, both distinguished themselves in the campaign. Also in Britain in 184 the governor Ulpius Marcellus re-advanced the Roman frontier northward to the Antonine Wall but the legionaries revolted against his harsh discipline and acclaimed another legate, Priscus, as Emperor. Priscus refused to accept their acclamations, but Perennis had all the legionary legates in Britain cashiered. On 15 October 184 at the Capitoline Games a Cynic philosopher publicly denounced Perennis before Commodus, who was watching, but was immediately put to death. According to Dio Cassius, Perennis, though ruthless and ambitious, was not personally corrupt and generally administered the state well.[2] However the following year a detachment of soldiers from Britain (they had been drafted to Italy to suppress brigands) also denounced Perennis to the Emperor as plotting to make his own son Emperor (they had been enabled to do so by Cleander, who was seeking to dispose of his rival) and Commodus gave them permission to execute him as well as his wife and sons. The fall of Perennis brought a new spate of executions: Aufidius Victorinus committed suicide. Ulpius Marcellus was replaced as governor of Britain by Pertinax; brought to Rome and tried for treason, Marcellus narrowly escaped death.

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