Titans of History

Commodus preferred to spend time at the gladiatorial amphitheater, both as a spectator and, more extraordinarily, as a participant. Convinced that he was the reincarnation of the mythical god-hero Hercules, he entered the arena dressed in a lion skin and carrying a club or sword. In front of startled senators and plebeians alike, the most powerful man in the empire would comport himself like a ferocious slave (which is what most gladiators were), butchering wild beasts and slaying human opponents who had been carefully handicapped in advance. Some were reportedly wounded soldiers or amputees, brought in from the streets.

When not fighting mock battles, the emperor earned a reputation for debauchery. Rumors had it that a harem of 300 women and girls and 300 boys allowed him to play out his every sexual fantasy. Roman high society was scandalized by stories of orgies and moral decadence. Unhappiness with the drift and apparent licentiousness of Commodus’ rule soon provoked unrest, and his reign became marked by a series of conspiracies and revolts. As early as 182, his eldest sister Lucilla led a plot to overthrow him; but the plans were exposed and Commodus had the conspirators executed (including Lucilla herself).

Commodus now directed a blood-spattered reign of terror. Ministers he considered insubordinate or simply insufficiently deferential were killed; so too were those who even hinted at opposition to his rule. The emperor became increasingly obsessed with personal aggrandizement, so much so that even the name Rome was deemed an inadequate reflection of his majesty. The city was thus renamed Colonia Commodiana—the Colony of Commodus—and “re-founded” in AD 190, with Commodus portraying himself as a latter-day Romulus. He renamed the months of the year after the twelve names that he had now given himself. The legions were renamed Commodianae, part of the African fleet was given the title Alexandria Commodiana Togata, the Senate was called the Commodian Fortunate Senate, and his palace and the Roman people were all given the name Commodianus. Truly, this was megalomania on an enormous scale.

Unsurprisingly, conspiracies against Commodus multiplied, and finally, in early AD 193, a plot involving his mistress Marcia succeeded where others had failed. Commodus was strangled in his bath by a wrestler named Narcissus.

After his death, Rome’s citizens—especially the upper classes—breathed a collective sigh of relief and the Senate proclaimed the city prefect, Publius Helivius Pertinax, the new emperor. However, he too soon faced a challenge and the empire slipped once more into civil war—a sad dénouement to the Antonine dynasty that had sought to end such internecine strife.

Commodus was the first emperor since Domitian—almost eighty years earlier—to take power on the basis of birth, rather than merit or force. Tragically for the future of Rome, the consequences were remarkably similar to that previous occasion. As the celebrated Roman historian Cassius Dio, observed, Commodus’ rule marked the shift from “a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron.” The Historia Augusta, a collection of biographies of Roman emperors produced in the 4th century AD, records that the Senate proclaimed the following after Commodus’s passing:

Let the memory of the murderer and the gladiator be utterly wiped away … More savage than Domitian, more foul than Nero. As he did unto others, let it be done unto him … The guiltless are yet unburied; let the body of the murderer be dragged in the dust. The murderer dug up the buried; let the body of the murderer be dragged in the dust.

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

c. 285–337

In hoc signo vinces—“In this sign shalt thou conquer”

The words accompanying the divinely inspired vision that appeared to Constantine before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, AD 312

Constantine was a bundle of contradictions—he was no saint but a brutal, bull-necked, flamboyant soldier who murdered his friends and allies and even his closest family. He owed his supremacy to the sword. Nonetheless, his embrace of Christianity was a decisive act in Western history.