Commodus Is Assassinated After Falling into Insanity: December 31, 192

This text comes from our book, Hope for the Ages.

Though they had done it for previous emperors, the Senate refused to proclaim Hadrian a god following his death in 138. So, as one of his first acts as emperor, Antoninus persuaded the senators to deify his stepfather—an act of devotion and piety for which he received the title Pius, meaning “affectionately dutiful.”

Antoninus Pius’ reign of some 23 years was a period when the Pax Romana was most perfectly realized. Unlike Hadrian, Antoninus traveled little, and he carried on no wars except limited actions to maintain the general peace. His armies, for instance, engaged the Berbers in Africa; they pushed the frontier further into Germany and Dacia, and in Britain they raised a new wall to the north of Hadrian’s. The emperor wielded his absolute power for the good of the empire, not his personal profit; and he reformed laws to make them more humane and gentle. Trade flourished in his time, new roads were built, cities prospered, and the arts were vibrant. The emperor, too, worked to make the lot of the poor easier to bear.

Surviving coins from the period with the words Tranquillitas (peace) and Concordia (harmony) witness to the fundamentally peaceful character of his rule. Antoninus Pius’ reign was indeed a time of prosperity and peace.

A bust of Emperor Marcus Aurelius

In 147, Antoninus made his successor, Marcus Annius Verus, a sort of junior co-emperor. By the time Antoninus died in 161, he had inspired Verus to continue the tradition of mild rule that they had received from Trajan, as well as an interest in securing the far borders of the Danube and Rhine. Upon becoming emperor, Verus changed his name to Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, and thus we remember him as Marcus Aurelius.

Though his rule was impressive and colorful, we remember Marcus Aurelius today more for his work of Stoic philosophy, called the Meditations, than for his governance. Marcus began his reign by making Antoninus’ other heir, Lucius Verus, co-emperor with him, though Verus was young and of weak character. Marcus took command of the Danube legions himself and sent young Verus to Mesopotamia, where his generals won great victories for him, taking the army all the way to Ctesiphon, the capital of Parthia. Though a great victory, this eastern war taxed the resources of the empire and drew troops from the north, weakening the defenses on the northern Danube border. Famine, earthquakes, flooding, and a smallpox plague that Verus’ soldiers carried back from the East brought panic and hardships to the people of the empire.

The reign of the co-emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Verus, witnessed an ominous event. The Germanic peoples of the European plains and forests, stretching from the Black Sea to the Baltic, were pressing on the empire’s borders. To secure the empire’s northern border, Marcus Aurelius and Verus led an expedition north over the Danube against the German Marcomanni people and concluded a peace with them. But then in 167, the Marcomanni invaded the Roman province of Pannonia and laid siege to the city of Aquileia on the northern coast of the Adriatic Sea. Verus died in 169, and until his own death in 180, Marcus Aurelius was engaged in war with the Marcomanni and other German peoples. Though ultimately victorious for Rome, these wars revealed the weaknesses of the empire.

An exhausted Marcus Aurelius died at Vindabona (now Vienna) in the year 180. Since he had not named an heir, his lieutenants appointed his 19-year-old son, Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus (who had been co-emperor since 177), to be emperor. Unlike his statesmanlike father, Commodus was conceited, capricious, spoiled with luxury, and totally unprepared for the office he was to fill.

Abandoning his father’s Stoic philosophy, Commodus devoted himself to sensual pleasure. He produced gladiatorial games in the Roman arenas, the cost of which exhausted the Roman treasury. After a plot, hatched by his sister, Lucilla, to assassinate him, Commodus became a tyrant, putting to death many prominent Romans. Falling into insanity, he began to think himself the demi-god, Hercules, and tried to change the name of Rome to Colonia Commodiana (Commodus’ Colony). Finally, on the last day of the year 192, conspirators who included Commodus’ wife, Marcia, assassinated him. Commodus’ bad rule and death brought the line of the Five Good Emperors—Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the “Antonines” (Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius)—to a disgraceful end.