He fought in the arena with wild animals and gladiators. He was addicted to gambling. He slept with whomever he could, regardless of gender or background. He dressed in lion skins, feminine robes, and even an amazon outfit. He murdered his sister. He murdered praetorian prefects and senators. He wanted to burn Rome down.
Oven bath!
In the movie entitled "Gladiator" Ridley Scott presented the reign of the last of the Antonines as a period of tyranny, omnipresent corruption, decay of morality, and finally even economic crisis and the fall of the authority of Princeps. It was Joaquin Phoenix who had to play the role of the "evil" Emperor Commodus, whose author of the biography contained in the collection Historia Augusta (Polish title Historians of the Roman Empire ) about two hundred years later, he compared it to a snake, and was to spend his childhood breaking cups, dancing, singing, whistling, debauchery, and finally playing clown and becoming like gladiators.
Commodus' rule was a cruel tyranny
In the same collection, the content of which should be treated as anecdotes rather than factual accounts, there is a mention of the cruel nature of the young emperor . It takes place near the city of Centumcellae, located in southern Etruria (today's Tuscany). Commodus was supposed to burn himself when he entered the bath prepared for him. The anger of young Antoninus was so great that he ordered the unfortunate bath-man to be thrown into the stove immediately, and then threatened that if he did not smell the burning body, his other subordinates would end up in the same way . The tutor finally took pity on the bathing man and threw the sheepskins into the oven.
Down with cursus honorum
The year 176 could have been crucial for the reign of Kommmodus. Shortly after the victorious civil war in the East, where Avidius Cassius was usurped a year earlier, Commodus, prepared for his triumph, received a consulate, although he had not previously held any of the functions that formally preceded this office in the republican order.
Commodus was one of the most controversial Roman emperors
Emperor Marcus Aurelius was certainly not guided in this decision by only paternal love. The situation in the Roman state in the mid-70s of the 2nd century was extremely difficult. The plague has raged for almost ten years (probably plague) brought from the East by the soldiers of Avidius Cassius, mentioned above, one of the most outstanding generals of the party's war of 161-166. Probably at the turn of 167/168, the Danube was crossed by a coalition of Germanic tribes, which started the devastating Marcomannic wars. In 169, Lucius Verus, co-ruler of Marcus Aurelius, died, and the philosopher himself fell ill for a few weeks suffering the effects of the plague. We know a message that in a visual way symbolizes the growing apocalyptic moods spread from the beginning of the 1980s on the Tiber:
(...) the man (...) spoke in public from the fig tree in the Field of Mars and proclaimed that when he himself fell from the tree and turned into a stork, fire would fall from the sky and the world would end (Scriptores Historiae Augustae. Marcus Antoninus. 14, translated by H. Szelest, Warsaw 1966)
As if that were not enough, the struggle on the Marcomannic front was interrupted in 175 due to the usurpation of Avidius Cassius (which, moreover, was supposed to have occurred through an apparently harmless misunderstanding), and the rebellion of the Iberian tribes.
All these factors meant that Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was more and more afraid for his life, finally buried the cursus honorum and made his son consul. From the point of view of dynastic power, it was important because most emperors assumed their function most often through adoption (e.g. Tiberius, Trajan, or Hadrian).
The Stoic emperor thus wanted to guarantee the continuity of the dynasty, because he sincerely doubted whether, after his eventual sudden death, the senate would be willing to hand over power to the young Antoninus. A month after taking over the consulate, Commodus participated in a wonderful triumph organized in honor of Marcus Aurelius and his victory over Cassius. It must have aroused a lot of surprise when the people of Rome in the triumphal square saw not the emperor, but just Commodus while Marcus Aurelius marched alongside.
Another Caligula in power?
Commodus took power in March 180, probably immediately after the death of Marcus Aurelius (March 17, 180). He was 18 at the time (born August 31, 161), making him one of the youngest to take purple in Rome and put it in a row with Caligula (24 when he came into power), Nero (17 when he came into power), or Alexander III of Macedon himself (20 when he took power).
It is easy to guess that for Roman biographers, and probably also for the then Commodus Romans, the resemblance to the first two rulers evoked negative associations.
In 180, Commodus decided to end the war with the Germans and move back to the capital. On the Tiber he triumphed in honor of his deceased father. During the ceremonial entry into the city, he changed the "protocol" practiced during the triumph since the republican times, according to which only the winner should be in the quadriga. He was accompanied by a certain Saoterus, a lover whom the emperor had kissed several times during the procession, instead of greeting the people who greeted him.
In recreating the image of Commodus, Ridley Scott and the scriptwriters could have been guided by the descriptions from the above-cited biography of the emperor from the collection Scriptores Historiae Augustae . Its significant drawback is, for example, the fact that it was written most likely at the turn of the 4th / 5th century, and thus the content devoted to such emperors as Commodus, Maksymin Trak, or Galerian is "programmatic" and was formulated in the biographical style typical of Suetonius, rather than recalling to authentic tales dedicated to the person. This does not mean, however, that the information regarding the lifestyle of Commodus must be completely made up by the author of the SHA.
Commodus hated the senate
Certainly the young emperor hated senators (with reciprocity) . He willingly and quickly removed senators who opposed his decisions. Quite soon (probably at the end of 182) a conspiracy was set up against him, which probably inspired the film's script. Commodus's sister Lucylla was to be involved in it, as well as two distinguished commanders from the period of the Marcomannic wars, Kwadratus and Claudius Pompejanus (Lucylla's husband). The latter was supposed to deal the death blow to the tyrant, but literally before the blow he decided to shout at his victim "The Senate is sending you this dagger" .
Kwadratus and Pompejanus were murdered probably the same night (the praetorians worked very well in such cases), while Lucylla was to become the emperor's slave (which could also have inspired the role of Connie Nielsen). Commodus's sister did not stay at court for too long. Soon enough, one of the emperor's closest associates, a certain Perennis, persuaded the ruler to send Lucylla to Capri, and then murdered there, away from the sight of the Romans . This was probably the culmination of the madness into which Commodus fell. His next victims were the other sisters (he had at least seven!), Whom he first reduced to the role of sex slaves, and then killed after a short time . In his sexual excesses, he even decided to name one of his lovers after his mother.
Insanity
The emperor's list of victims grew longer with the years of his reign, and there was little indication that it would ever be closed. Everything was possible thanks to the enormous work performed by his closest advisers, including the most important of them - Perennis (commander of the Praetorian Guard), who probably served him until 186 AD. He then shared the fate of many hated "gray eminences" and was murdered in a conspiracy by equites, senators and the military. The lack of an influential guardsman did not weaken the tyranny committed by the emperor.
More names were added to the list of victims. It included Burrus - the husband of one of the sisters, Kleander (Perennis' successor), and all his concubines with their children. It happened that he persecuted such respected families as the Mamertines, Petroniusz, and Celiusz families, whose only crime in the eyes of Antonin was to be their consul. The insanity is further enhanced by an application for sui generis, the moral reform that the emperor wanted to introduce. In his opinion, the name of the city, which had been developing on the Tiber for almost 900 years, was already outdated and needed to be corrected . From then on, Rome was to be named after him , i.e. Commodus, where the senators, slightly ridiculing his decision, began to call the meetings of the senate the Commodian Assembly.
Since a city was named after him, the logical consequence was deification. Began to be called Hercules. The emperor himself certainly enjoyed this nickname, believing that this was the first deification of vivente rege in the history of the City. , and the senators emphasized with this comparison the scale of the ruling madness. Later it would only get worse. The emperor ordered huge statues of Hercules to be erected in his honor. He became so familiar with the new nickname that Antoninus' favorite pastimes began to include dressing in lion skins and killing wild animals (often in the arena). It wasn't even the best he had at his disposal.
Against Commodus, the so-called damnatio memoriae, or "damnation of memory"
Commodus belonged to people whose behavior was difficult to predict, which he confirmed even more once when he decided to "slim down" an obese man. Apparently assuming that a big belly is just a sack that collects things during one of the meetings he pulled out a knife, cut open the man's stomach and watched the guts pouring out of it , certainly satisfied that he has, in a sense, achieved his goal.
Conspiracy and death
Among the concubines, Commodus had his favorite - Marcia. She had such a unique position among the emperor's lovers that it was because of her that the decembris (December) was called Amazonius. Commodus loved it when Marcia appeared in the bedroom in an Amazon costume. This fascination even gave the ruler the idea to one time appear in the arena in this outfit, in a fight with wild animals or gladiators.
The author of the SHA ascribes to Commodus 735 fights fought in the arena as a gladiator during the reign of his own, and 365 times during the life of Marcus Aurelius. While for an ordinary participant in gladiatorial fights such numbers would certainly be an exaggerated achievement, it is worth remembering that as Emperor Commodus could not simply lose such a fight.
The biography of the last of the Antoninas makes it often possible to get the impression that he has reached the height of madness, just to see how much can still be done in this "work". Commodus' gladiatorial fights began to tire even the Romans themselves, who silently mocked the emperor. When he found out about it, he decided to burn down all of Rome in an act of revenge (not limiting himself to the few districts that burned down in Nero's time).
Shortly before the tyrant's death, there were events that are often taken as prodigiae - omens such as a solar eclipse, the appearance of a comet, an earthquake, as well as unspecified fire birds flying before sunrise. None of these signs heralded the death of the emperor, unlike the one made by Kommmodus himself. Visiting a gladiator school, he saw a wounded warrior. He walked over to him and dipped his hand into the wound, then smeared his blood on his face, then appeared in this "arrangement" in public during the Games.
Emperor Commodus leaves the arena with the head of a gladiator
In December 192, the patience of the Romans ran out. The Praetorian Prefect (Quintus Emilianus) and Marcia formed a conspiracy. On December 31, 192, Commodus was poisoned during a dinner. As was his custom, the Emperor drank far too much wine, so he vomited up his meal while partially cleansing the body of poison. Quintus could not let the tyrant escape from his death this time, so he let a wrestler (gladiator?) Into his chamber, who then strangled the emperor while he was sleeping .
This description is symbolic because in the republican times, suffocation was one of the death sentences awarded to those who abused dictatorial power in order to gain royal power. On the night of December 31 to January 1, 193, a similar euphoria prevailed over the Tiber to the one used to celebrate the coming of the new year (New Year's Eve!). Certainly no one went to bed too early as everyone wanted to see the tyrant's body dragged behind the chariot through the city streets, chanting every now and then:
Let the enemy of the homeland, the murderer, the gladiator perish torn apart in the amphitheater! The enemy of the gods, the tormentor of the senate, the enemy of the gods, the murderer of the senate (...) Let those who were murdered by the senate into the amphitheater (...) drag him on a hook! Whosoever murdered innocents should be dragged on a hook!
Common sense between the cards of insanity
There is no doubt that the biography of Commodus left to us by Elius Lampridius in the collection Scriptores Historiae Augustae corresponds to a large extent with what Joaquin Phoenix achieved through his acting as Emperor from Ridley Scott's film. Beating the statue of the father with a sword, a bloody deal with political enemies, difficult love for one's sister, fascination with gladiatorial games these are all the elements that dominate both the film and the tradition dedicated to the last Antonin. There is, of course, also an element of common-sense source analysis.
As I mentioned above, the SHA is a source that provides us with a huge amount of information from the life of Commodus, but was probably written at the end of the 4th or at the beginning of the 5th century. Although six different authors appear under individual biographies (Elius Spartianus, Julius Kapitolinus, Elius Lampridius, Vulcacius Gallikanus, Trebelius Polion, Flavius Vopiskus), more than a hundred years of research tradition more and more often believes that the author was one person most likely from the senatorial environment.
This senatorial origin is partially determined by the content of the biography of the emperor, who tried to reduce the role of the senate in the Roman state. Often you can find there content similar to those quoted above, devoted to Commodus, which makes the image of the ruler distorted, and the very excesses of the ruler should be questioned. However, this does not change the fact that the so-called damnatio memoriae , that is, "damnation of memory" (which was later withdrawn by Septimius Severus). As a result, the name and deeds of the last Antonin were to be erased from the public space of Rome forever. Paradoxically, over 1800 years of life and deeds of Commodus Antonin were immortalized by Joaquin Phoenix in the film "Gladiator".
References:
- Syme R., Emperors and Biography:Studies in the Historia Augusta, Oxford 1971 Syme R., Historia Augusta papers, Oxford 1983.
- Thomson M., Studies in the Historia Augusta, Bruxelles 2012.
- White P., The Autorship of the Historia Augusta, “Jorunal of Roman Studies” 1967, vol. 57, no. 1/2.
- Veyne P., Who was the Roman Emperor, [in:] The Greco-Roman Empire, trans. P. Domański, Kęty 2008.