Commodus, LUCIUS AURELIUS

Commodus, LUCIUS AURELIUS, a Roman emperor, born at Lanuvium in 161 A.D., was the son of the great Marcus Aurelius and his profligate wife, the younger Faustina. He was carefully educated under his father's care, but lived to become one of the most worthless and bloody wretches that ever disgraced a throne. At his father's death in the spring of 180, he was successfully fighting the Marcomanni and other tribes on the upper Danube, but he at once concluded a treaty with the barbarians, and hastened to Rome to enjoy the pleasures of power. After the discovery of his sister Lucilla's plot against his life in 183, he gave uncontrolled vent to the senseless savagery of his nature. Nearly all who, by virtue, ability, and learning, had risen to honour during his father's lifetime, were sacrificed to appease his savage jealousy of the good and the great. Proud of his own physical strength, he demeaned himself by exhibiting it in gladiatorial combats, and besides used, in public, to sing, dance, play, and act the buffoon. Though a glutton and a shameless debauchee, who wallowed in the most sensual abominations, he yet demanded to be worshipped as a god, and assumed the title of Hercules Romanus. Many unsuccessful plots were devised against the life of this mingled monster and madman, until at length his mistress, Marcia, finding her own name marked down in his tablets for death, in concert with two confederates, tried first to poison him, then caused him to be strangled by Narcissus, a famous athlete, on the 31st of December 192.