096 - The Most Aptly Named Emperor

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode ninety-six, The Most Aptly Named Emperor. The mildness of Marcus, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics had been unable to eradicate, formed at the same time the most amiable and the only defective part of his character. His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness in his heart. So begins chapter four of Edward Gibbon's decline and fall of the Roman Empire, also known as the chapter where it starts to get really good and isn't quite so super boring anymore. Marcus, suffering from the defect of excessive kind-heartedness, had sealed his legacy as the last good princeps by entrusting the empire to his son, whose legacy everyone agrees is that he was one of the worst emperors of all time.

But Gibbon himself is not quite as harsh on Commodus as you might think. In Gibbon's estimation, Commodus' failure was not that he was cruel or bloodthirsty or evil, but simply that he was weak. Ascending to the throne at the age of nineteen in March of 180 AD, Commodus naturally fell under the sway of older, savvier men who manipulated the young prince into satisfying their own ambitions. Once he had spent a few years as a mere puppet, the dark habits of his advisors simply ingrained themselves onto his character, and from then on, the weakness of his soul became indistinguishable from the cruelty that manifested as a result. In the end, though, he seemed to have learned his lessons a little too well, and he turned out to be far savvier and far crueler than any of his advisors, and he was only caught out and killed after a good three or four complete and bloody turnovers of personnel within his inner circle. That's Gibbon's assessment, anyway.

Others are not quite so quick to let Commodus off the hook. They see in him from the get-go a self-absorbed hedonist who was intellectually vacant, obsessed with sport, and likely a sociopath to boot. He was Lucius Verus without any Marcus Aurelius to keep him in check. He was Nero and Caligula combined, topping both in scandal, debauchery, and murderous frivolity. Still others, though, loved Commodus, and, at least for the majority of his reign, thought he was the absolute bee's knees.

Now what group of compulsive contrarians would take such a contradictory line on a man so universally reviled by history? Why, the people of Rome, of course. The story of the reign of Commodus, unlike the story of the reign of Domitian, was chronicled by the Roman aristocracy, and they, to a man, loathed him and everything he ever did. The general population never got a say in the way Roman history was written, so all the bits about how Commodus was, for a long time at least, a beloved figure, comes as something of a surprise to modern ears. But unlike Domitian, who comes by his bad rap somewhat, but not totally unfairly, Commodus, I think, earned his in spades.

There was, for example, no underlying soundness of policy to go with the cruelty, no greater vision for the empire, beyond when the next set of games was going to be. And unlike Domitian's reign of terror, which, as I mentioned, was comparable to the political murders of dear old Uncle Claudius, Commodus went back to the well of blood time and time again, in a purge and prescription cycle, that came around every three to five years, as men fell from favor and others rose to take their place. But if there was one thing that Commodus did really well, at least until the very end, it was keeping the people in the street eating out of his often extended hand. The people in the street didn't really care what senator Commodus was in the process of humiliating, or what governor he was in the process of assassinating. What they cared about, honestly, was games. And boy, did Commodus ever give them what they wanted.

Polar opposite of Marcus and his few begrudging spectacles, Commodus embraced the games like no emperor before or since, and the people ate it up. By the end, though, he had driven the empire deep, deep into debt, and had gone so far off his rocker, that even his previously adoring masses turned on him. But for the better part of a decade, we should always remember that his enemies were in the senate, and just about nowhere else. Commodus made it plain from the very beginning that his reign was not going to be like that of his father's.

Shipping the corpse of Marcus to Rome for burial and deification and etc., etc., Commodus stayed and camped along the Danube to finish what his father had started. And by that I mean just that, finish what his father had started. Despite the pleas of Claudius Pompeianus and the other leaders who had poured their blood and sweat into the German campaigns, Commodus announced his intention to wrap things up and head home. "'But the work is undone,' his father's old phalanx of lieutenants cried. It will only take another year, and then we can all bask in the glory of having defeated the barbarians and added new territory to the empire, just as your father always wanted. It was practically his dying wish that you should lead us to victory.' But Commodus was having none of it. He would come to final terms with the Marcomanni and Quadi, and then head back to Rome as soon as possible."

There are two interpretations of why Commodus was so quick to withdraw from the Danube, and at least to a good chunk of his father's allies, simply vacate the meaning of twelve years' hard labor in the process. The first take is a high-minded one. Commodus saw himself playing Hadrian to his father's Trajan. That he saw the new German provinces would, rather than add wealth to the empire, prove to be militarily indefensible and become a dangerous drain on the treasury. Whatever romantic notions of victory Marcus had forged in the heat of battle, someone, namely Commodus, had to bring some objective, clear thinking to the situation, and the fact of the matter was, the whole campaign had probably been an unforgivable waste of men and money. To see it through to the end would not secure his father's legacy, it would damn it as an example of criminal overreach.

But the other interpretation, and these two rationales are by no means mutually exclusive, is that Commodus had had it up to here with freezing to death in a plague-infested legionary camp. He was going back to Rome, where the baths were hot and the women were plentiful. What was the point of being emperor if you couldn't live like one? Not totally insensible to appearances, Commodus did decide to lead a force across the river one last time, where, after picking a suitably overmatched collection of Germans, he beat said overmatched collection of Germans soundly. This allowed the new emperor the necessary optical cover he needed to declare victory and leave. He came to terms with the grateful and utterly exhausted Quadi and Marcomanni, and in the autumn of 180 A.D. began the trip back to Rome.

What we should make of this decision to leave is still open to debate, but it is worth mentioning that when the Romans called off the fight this time, the Germans took peace for an answer, and it proved to be more than seventy years before there was once again serious trouble north of the Danube. Commodus took the relative peace as proof of the wisdom of his actions, but it is also worth pointing out that the various German tribes had just had the snot kicked out of them for the better part of twelve years. Their leaders were all dead, and the ranks of their armies had been reduced by plague and war even worse than the legions had been. If Commodus had pursued the same policy a decade earlier, the whole northern empire might have been overrun. But he didn't pursue the policy then, he was pursuing it now, and much as it irked the hawks in the senate and among his own circle of imperial advisors, there was no great fallout to come from abandoning the war.

In October 180, Commodus returned to Rome to begin the process of securing his rule. As you will recall from last week's episode, Marcus had been very careful about making sure that there would be no pretenders to the throne when Commodus succeeded him, and in this he was entirely successful. None of his various brothers-in-law had any interest in challenging him, and no one else had the guts or support to pull a fast one on the empire, especially after the fall of Ovidius Cassius. But that did not mean that there was not still work to be done.

In securing their own positions, Marcus and Antoninus Pius had worked assiduously to curry favor within the senatorial class. But Commodus, as in all things where his father did one thing, he did the exact opposite. Commodus figured his rule would be unchallenged if he won the support of two groups, the soldiers in the field and the masses in the street. He had already earned the love of the common soldiers in the army by cancelling the war in Germany. Soldiers, in general, love it when you tell them they don't have to slog around dank forests enduring guerrilla attacks anymore. So upon his return to Rome, Commodus set about earning the love of the people. This meant, first, issuing a generous donative to every male citizen in the city, and second, it meant throwing spectacular games to celebrate his ascension. Fat with cash and prizes, the people, needless to say, were in Commodus' pocket from day one.

The senate, meanwhile, looked on all of this with a mixture of hope and disdain. They knew Commodus' reputation, and knew that he was still a teenager, but hoped that maybe one day, once he's done proving to everyone what a super-wonderful guy he is, that he would get down to the serious business and work with the senate to govern the empire responsibly. But their hope quickly faded, engulfed by the disdain. Because it wasn't just that Commodus planned to ignore the senate, no, he was about to embark on a policy of openly antagonizing them.

There doesn't seem to be any real rationale for Commodus' attitude towards the senate, and his reasoning may not have been any deeper than that he had been born a high prince, and was now the undisputed ruler of the Roman empire. He was not, as Marcus and Antoninus had been, a member in good standing of the aristocratic mutual admiration society, and probably figured that as long as he had the people and the armies on his side, that he could pretty much do whatever he wanted with the old fuddy-duddies in the senate. And in a way, he was right.

People ask during the hundredth episode thread, when the old Roman senate stopped convening, and the answer is that we don't exactly know, but in the west it looked like it persisted at least into the 600s AD. However, for all practical purposes, they could have closed up shop right now. Despite a few brief flirtations with relevance during the chaos of the mid-third century, the reign of Commodus marked the end of the line for the aristocratic assembly. The Severans had no time for the senate, the crisis period was a running battle between rival generals, and then when Diocletian reformed the governmental structure of the empire to better reflect reality, the senate was left out of the bargain completely. In this respect, Commodus did have a major hand in helping push the old Roman order off a cliff.

Remember how worried Hadrian had been about having the blood of four senators on his hand? Or how proud Antoninus and Marcus had been that they had not executed any members of the senate during their reign? That was all over. When 193 rolled around, the senate was not just irrelevant, it had been transformed by execution, prescription, murder and exile into an entirely different assembly than the one Commodus had inherited in 180. The senate Septimius Severus inherited was not just ignorable, it was, after being packed with low-life supporters of Commodus, probably worth ignoring.

At the outset, though, no one, probably not even Commodus himself, knew that was the direction the young emperor was headed. For right now, anyway, Commodus didn't seem to have much interest in anything as boring or time-consuming as an epic purge of the senate. He instead retired to the palace to enjoy the benefits of being emperor, and turned over actual administration of the empire to his imperial chamberlain and sometimes male lover, a freedman named Soterus. The senate was obviously scandalized that the emperor was handing power over to some freedman lover, male lover no less, and Soterus was universally despised in the upper classes.

This hatred was only heightened when Soterus realized that the treasury could not support the promises Commodus had made to the people, and he hit upon the old idea of property confiscation, to help pay for it all. In fits and starts at first, but then more routinely, senators would be accused of treason on trumped-up charges, and wake up to find that their estates had been seized by the emperor. It was right around this time that all hope dissolved, and the disdain fully took over, and also the fear.

But it wouldn't be the senate who took the first shot at Commodus, nor would that first shot be taken to strike a blow for liberty in the face of despotic tyranny. Commodus' sister Lucilla, by virtue of her long dead marriage to Lucius Verus, still retained the title of Augusta, and since the death of Faustina in 175, had enjoyed the perks that came with being the pre-eminent woman of the empire. But now that her younger brother wore the purple, his pretty little thing of a wife Crispina suddenly supplanted Lucilla. Funny as it sounds, the most commonly relayed version of the story is that the final break came when Lucilla was forced to give up the prize box at the theater in favor of Crispina.

From that moment on, it seems that Lucilla opened up a conspiracy to kill her little brother. She took into confidence her lover Marcus Quadratus, and a few other particularly dissatisfied senators, though, importantly, not her husband Claudius Pompeianus, who Lucilla seems to have had no like or love for whatsoever, and a plot was hatched. As 181 gave way to 182, the plan hardened and the details were set. A young senator, and nephew of Claudius Pompeianus, named Pompeius Quintanus, was enlisted to actually lay the killing stroke, and one night, as Commodus returned home from the theater, Quintanus was hiding in the shadowy porticos of the Colosseum. He leapt out of his hiding place as the imperial party passed, catching the emperor and his bodyguards by surprise.

But rather than just killing the emperor, Quintanus added a little dramatic flourish, crying, see, this is what the senate sends you. This unnecessary hesitation allowed the startled Praetorians time to recover, tackle Quintanus, and wrestle him to the ground. Caught and tortured, the young assassin revealed the full details of the plot, and that the prime mover of the conspiracy had been none other than Lucilla. Quadratus and Quintanus were immediately executed, and Lucilla was exiled to the island of Capri. Once she had been out of sight and mind for a while, Commodus sent along the order to have her killed.

But the attempt on Commodus' life had only been part of the plan. The other half of the plot actually succeeded, and with the help of the two Praetorian prefects, Soterus turned up dead a few days later. Still reeling from his own brush with death, when Commodus learned that his favorite had been murdered, the emperor went into a frenzy. Just as the reign of Commodus was a turning point in the history of Rome, the assassination attempt of 182 was the turning point within the turning point. With the unnecessary and only partially true words, this is what the senate sends you, ringing in his ears, Commodus' attitude towards the senate would take a homicidal turn for the worse.

In the immediate aftermath of the botched plot, Claudius Pompeianus wisely retired from public life. Though he was not under suspicion, his wife and nephew had been prime movers in the attempt on the emperor's life. It was time for his long and distinguished career to come to an end. Obviously in this situation, politicians cite the desire to spend more time with their families as the reason they are retiring, but obviously, that would not have been the most prudent excuse given the circumstances, so Pompeianus cited, um, poor eyesight, yeah, that's the ticket, instead.

The rest of the fallout came when one of the Praetorian prefects, a ruthlessly ambitious equite named Tigidius Perennis, double-crossed his Praetorian colleague and everyone else he knew who was involved in the plot. Keeping his own role hidden, the information Perennis provided led to the executions of his Praetorian colleague, two of the consuls for the year, the secretary of correspondence, and the governor of Upper Germany, Salvius Julianus. Surviving with his head intact, but nonetheless removed from his post as the long-serving governor of Lower Germany, was Julianus' cousin Didius Julianus, who, those of you who are reading ahead, know that we'll have cause to deal with a little bit down the road.

Also caught up in the purge were the famous Quintilius brothers, who had been key lieutenants of Marcus during the Marcomannic Wars, and who, as a reward, had shared a consulship together. His paranoia now raging unchecked, Commodus fired the innocent and highly capable governors, Septimius Severus and Pertinax, for their failure to capture one of the conspirators who had gotten out of Rome alive. We'll have cause to deal with both of them down the road as well.

The purge then extended to all of his father's old advisors, and then to every legionary commander across the whole empire. Commodus fired every single one of them, and replaced them with his own men. Back in Rome, anyone who raised the ire of the emperor, man, woman, or child, was likely to wind up murdered and their estates confiscated. All in all, the failed assassination attempt led the empire into the bloodiest round of purges since the end of Domitian's reign. But really, not since the old, old days of Tiberius and Sejanus had the aristocracy lived with such a cloud of fear hanging over their heads.

Playing the part of Sejanus to Commodus' Tiberius was the arch-Machiavellian Perennis, who had parlayed his insider information—information he had because he was, you know, totally in on the plot to kill Commodus—into the position of the emperor's right-hand man. Commodus handed over the day-to-day operations of the empire to Perennis, and for the next three years, while the emperor himself engaged in every debauched activity you think of when you think of debauched Roman aristocrats, to giddy as Perennis was the man in charge. When Commodus did climb down into the real world of politics, it was mostly to humiliate some senator or rearrange the provincial postings to keep everyone on their toes.

Beginning during this period, but not perfected until the fall of Perennis and the rise of Cleander, who had recently been made Chamberlain to replace the assassinated Soterus, was the regular sale of office and the constant shuffling of office-holders. Perennis and Commodus were, in a way, engaged in a friendly rivalry to see who could create the most political and bureaucratic chaos, so that the dust would keep swirling, and they, themselves, would remain safely concuned in the center of the storm. Consulships were bought and sold, praetorian prefects were appointed and fired sometimes within the span of days, governors were sent out to provinces, and learned that they had been replaced when they arrived at their new posting, and, most important of all, membership in the Senate was open to anyone who Commodus favored, or, perhaps more importantly, who the Emperor thought the old senators would hate.

The Empire was lucky during this chaotic period for two reasons. First, the borders were relatively peaceful. The two groups who would have posed the biggest threat to the Empire were the Parthians and the Germans, and they had both been recently humbled by massive defeat at the hands of the legions, and were not looking to make trouble again any time soon. So even though Rome had become politically schizophrenic, no foreign enemy was ready to take advantage of the Empire's madness.

Second, though he was personally ruthless, Perennis was no administrative slouch. He kept the grain flowing, the books balanced, and the games running. It all would have fallen apart much sooner, had he been utterly corrupt or a dismal accountant, but he was neither, and so the Empire, while not exactly flourishing, was not yet to be driven into the ground. But discontentment was stirring.

In 183, a brief war in Dacia broke out that was put down by a combined effort of the final two of the five would-be emperors in the fast-approaching year of the five emperors, Claudius Albinus and Pescinius Niger, the other three being the aforementioned Pertinax, Didius Julianus, and Septimius Severus. The next year, unrest in Britain led the commander there to press north and retake the Antonine Wall, which had been abandoned around the time of Marcus' ascension. The general in question, though, was a harsh disciplinarian who the regular troops hated, and following the campaign they revolted against his leadership and proclaimed another commander-emperor. This commander wisely refused the honor, and got the troops back under control for the moment, but the next year, rebellion among the British legions flared up once again.

This time their ire was directed at Perennis himself, who they blamed for being late with equipment, stingy with pay, and saddling them with harsh masters who would not indulge the lax atmosphere they had come to expect. In a sign of things to come, that is, the failure of discipline that would soon become an epidemic in the legions, a deputation of 1,500 armed soldiers marched out of Britain for Rome, where they planned to present their grievances to the emperor in person. Missing the greater point of the precedent he was endorsing, Commodus allowed the rogue company to enter Italy and march on Rome armed to the teeth.

Hearing the news that this force from Britain was on the way, the imperial chamberlain Cleander saw the perfect opportunity to make his own Machiavellian strike. With the help of some dissatisfied senators, Cleander set about trumping up charges against Perennis that seemed to show he was aiming to make either himself or his son emperor at some point in the not-too-distant future. When the soldiers from Britain arrived to present their case, Perennis was confident that he would be able to dispatch them with ease, but at the same moment Cleander was presenting Commodus with the allegation that Perennis was planning on overthrowing him. Having hit the emperor's paranoid center right where it hurt, Commodus suddenly turned on the blindsided Perennis and ordered his former favorite and his entire family executed. Cleander then dutifully led the emperor through the list of senators who were involved in the trumped-up plot—conveniently, they were all personal enemies of Cleander—and the aristocracy was once again caught up in a bloody purge, already the second of Commodus's short reign.

The fall of Perennis would send the empire off a cliff, because while the old Praetorian prefect had been a capable administrator, his replacement as imperial favorite Cleander was nothing of the sort. Next week, the wheels will come off the bus. The art of creating bureaucratic chaos for fun and profit will be perfected by Cleander, who will run the empire—if you could even call it that—for five years while Commodus drifted further off into his own private fantasy land. Cleander will finally be eaten by the monster he creates, and Commodus, now nearing his thirties, will be forced to step in and actually do some real governing.

But by this time, he was convinced not only that he was the reincarnation of Hercules, but also that he was the greatest gladiator who ever lived, so it's not like he brought a lot of stability to the situation. Like Domitian before him, Commodus would eventually be done in by members of his own inner circle, who were worried that they were about to be caught up in yet another round of purges. His assassination on New Year's Eve 192 will spark the first great domestic crisis since the year of the four emperors, and 193 A.D. will go down in history with a nice little nod to inflation, as the year of the five emperors.

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