COMMODUS son of Marcus Philippopolis Aurelius Ancient Roman Coin EAGLE i22608

Item: i22608

Authentic Ancient

Coin of:

Commodus – Roman Emperor: 177-192 A.D. –

Bronze 18mm (4.07 grams) Struck at the Roman provincial city of Philippopolis

in Thrace: circa 177-192 A.D.
AVT K M AVP KOMOΔOC, Laureate head
right.
ФIΛIППOΠOΛEITΩN,
Eagle standing three-quarters to right, wings opened, head left.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured,

Authenticity.

Plovdiv (Bulgarian:

Пловдив) is

the second-largest city

in

Bulgaria

with a population of 380,683. Plovdiv’s history spans some 6,000 years, with

traces of a Neolithic settlement dating to roughly 4000 BC. It is the

administrative center of

Plovdiv Province

in southern Bulgaria and three municipalities (Plovdiv,

Maritsa

and

Rodopi

) and Bulgaria’s

Yuzhen tsentralen

planning region (NUTS II), as well as the largest and most

important city in

Northern Thrace

and the wider international historical region of

Thrace
. The

city is an important economic, transport, cultural and educational center.

Known in the West for most of its history by the

Greek

name Philippopolis, it was originally a

Thracian

settlement before becoming a major

Roman

city. In the Middle Ages, it retained its strategic regional importance,

changing hands between the

Byzantine

and

Bulgarian Empires

. It came under

Ottoman

rule in the 14th century. In 1878, Plovdiv was made the capital of

the autonomous Ottoman region of

Eastern Rumelia

; in 1885, it became part of Bulgaria with the

unification

of that region and the

Principality of Bulgaria

.

Plovdiv is situated in the southern part of the Plovdiv Plain on the two

banks of the

Maritsa River

. The city has historically developed on seven

syenite

hills, some of which are 250 m high. Because of these seven hills, Plovdiv is

often referred to in Bulgaria as “The City of the Seven Hills”.

There are many remains preserved from

Antiquity

such as the

Ancient amphitheatre

, Roman odeon,

Roman Stadium

, the archaeological complex Eirene and others.

Plovdiv was given various names throughout its long history. It was

originally a Thracian

settlement by the name of Eumolpias.

Philip II of Macedon

conquered the area in 342-341 BC and renamed the city

Philippoupolis (Greek:

Φιλιππούπολις), of which the later Thracian

name for the city, Pulpu-deva, is a reconstructed translation. After the

Romans took control of the area, the city was named

Latin

: Trimontium, meaning the

Three Hills. During the Middle Ages the city was known as Philippoupolis in

Byzantine Greek

and Paldin (Пълдин) or Plavdiv (Плъвдив) in

Old Bulgarian

, variations of the town’s earlier

Thracian

name. The city was known as Philippopolis in Western Europe well

into the early 20th century. The city was known as Filibe in

Turkish

during the

Ottoman Empire

.

Plovdiv has settlement traces dating from the Neolithic, roughly 4000 BC.

Archaeologists have discovered fine pottery and other objects of everyday life

from as early as the Neolithic Age, showing that in the end of the 4^th

millennium B.C. there already was an established settlement there. According to

Ammianus Marcellinus

, Plovdiv’s written post-Bronze Age history lists it as

a Thracian

fortified settlement named Eumolpias. In 4th century BC the city was a centre of

a trade fair (called panegyreis). In 342 BC, it was conquered by

Philip II of Macedon

, the father of

Alexander the Great

, who renamed it “Φιλιππόπολις”, Philippopolis or

“the city of Philip” in his own honour. Later, it was reconquered by the

Thracians

who called it Pulpudeva (a reconstructed translation of Philipopolis)

In 72 AD it was seized by the Roman general Terentius Varo Lukulus and was

incorporated into the

Roman

Empire
, where it was called Trimontium (City of Three Hills)

and served as metropolis (capital) of the province of

Thrace
. It

gained a city status in late 1st century. Trimontium was an important crossroad

for the Roman Empire and was called “The largest and most beautiful of all

cities” by Lucian
.

Although it was not the capital of the Province of Thrace, the city was the

largest and most important centre in the province. In those times, the

Militaris
(or Via Diagonalis), the most important military road

in the Balkans
,

passed through the city.

The Roman times were a period of growth and cultural excellence. The ancient

ruins tell a story of a vibrant, growing city with numerous public buildings,

shrines, baths, and theatres. The city had an advanced water system and

sewerage

. It was defended with a double wall. Many of those are still

preserved and can be seen by tourists. Today only a small part of the ancient

city has been excavated.

Lucius

Aurelius Commodus Antoninus (31 August 161 – 31 December 192) was a

Roman

Emperor
who ruled from 180 to 192 (also with his father,

Marcus Aurelius

, from 177 until 180). The name given here was his official

name at his accession to sole rule; see

Changes of name

for earlier and later forms. His accession as emperor was

the first time a son had succeeded his father since

Titus
succeeded

Vespasian

in 79. Commodus was the first emperor “born

to the purple“; i.e., born during his father’s reign.

Commodus vies with Caligula and Nero as Roman history’s most perverse
and sadistic of rulers. Like Caligula and Nero before, Commodus was an ordinary
(by imperial standards) ruler who succeeded Marcus Aurelius, his father, upon
his death. In his one major positive deed, Commodus called off the expedition
against the Germans which his father had commenced on terms favorable to Rome.
He sped off to Rome where he much preferred living the perks of an emperor to
the dirty business of waging wars. While he whiled away his time pursuing a
hedonistic lifestyle he was happy to delegate administrative responsibilities to
others.

Unfortunately, his appointees never seemed to last long on
the job. Whether through incompetence, bad luck or corruption, one by one these
fell and needed replacement. Commodus little by little began gaining a taste for
power as the shuffling of his foremen took place and, finally, he decided to
manage the empire himself. It is starting with this period that Commodus began
to act increasingly unpredictably and cruel. A botched conspiracy against him,
orchestrated by no less than his beloved sister Lucilla, was discovered and his
surviving the episode turned him afterwards into a highly paranoid individual
who had countless officials executed for disloyalty imagined or real.

In his final year of life he shocked Romans of all classes by
personally moonlighting as a gladiator. Of course, these fights were arranged so
that he could invariably come out the victor. Because of this a record-breaking
700+ victories were scored in his name, each one ending in the deaths of one or
more gladiators and/or wild beasts at the Colosseum. A successful conspiracy
against him was finally hatched by one of his lovers who first tried poisoning
him but he threw up and a wrestler was summoned who strangled him to death on
the last day of the year 192.

The recent Hollywood release “The Gladiator” is a
fictionalized account of Commodus as emperor which has him at odds with a
popular gladiator.

//

 Early

life and rise to power (161–180)

 Childhood

Commodus was born as Lucius Aurelius Commodus in

Lanuvium
,

near Rome

, the son of the reigning emperor, Marcus Aurelius. He had an elder twin

brother, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus, who died in 165. On 12 October 166,

Commodus was made

together with his younger brother,

Marcus Annius Verus

; the latter died in 169, having failed to recover from

an operation, which left Commodus as Marcus Aurelius’s sole surviving son. He

was looked after by his father’s physician,

Galen
, in order

to keep him healthy and alive. Galen treated many of Commodus’s common

illnesses.

Commodus received extensive tuition at the hands of what

Marcus Aurelius called “an abundance of good masters”. The focus of Commodus’s

education appears to have been intellectual, possibly at the expense of military

training.

 The

Pompey connection

According to the notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta, he

is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of Triumvir

Pompey the Great through his daughter Pompeia Magna. His paternal great

grandmother Rupilia was the great granddaughter of Scribonia (daughter of Lucius

Scribonius Libo consul 16) , who was herself the great granddaughter of Pompey

the Great on both her parents side. This makes Commodus and his father Marcus

Aurelius, the only Princeps to have been directly related to the son-in-law and

rival of Triumvir Julius Caesar.

 Teenage

years

Commodus is known to have been at

Carnuntum
,

the headquarters of Marcus Aurelius during the

Marcomannic Wars

, in 172. It was presumably there that, on 15 October 172,

he was given the victory title Germanicus in the presence of the

army
.

The title suggests that Commodus was present at his father’s victory over the

Marcomanni
.

On 20 January 175, Commodus entered the

College of Pontiffs

, the starting point of a career in public life.

In April 175,

Avidius Cassius

, governor of

Syria

, declared himself emperor following rumors that Marcus Aurelius had

died. Having been accepted as emperor by Syria,

Palestine

and

Egypt

, Cassius carried on his rebellion even after it had become obvious

that Marcus was still alive. During the preparations for the campaign against

Cassius, the prince assumed his

toga virilis

on the

Danubian
front

on 7 July 175, thus formally entering

adulthood

. Cassius, however, was killed by one of his

centurions

before the campaign against him could begin.

Commodus subsequently accompanied his father on a lengthy

trip to the eastern provinces, during which he visited

Antioch
. The

emperor and his son then traveled to

Athens
, where

they were initiated into the

Eleusinian mysteries

. They then returned to Rome in the

autumn
of 176.

 Joint

rule with father

Marcus Aurelius was the first emperor since

Vespasian

to have a son of his own, and though he himself was the fifth in the line of the

so-called

Five Good Emperors

who had each adopted their successor, it seems to have

been his firm intention that Commodus should be his heir. On 27 November 176,

Marcus Aurelius granted Commodus rank of

Imperator
,

and in the middle of 177, the title

, giving his son the same status as his own and formally sharing

power. On 23 December of the same year, the two Augusti celebrated a joint

triumph

, and Commodus was given

tribunician

power. On 1 January 177, Commodus became

consul
for the

first time, which made him, aged 15, the youngest consul in Roman history up to

that time. He subsequently married

Bruttia Crispina

before accompanying his father to the Danubian front once

more in 178, where Marcus Aurelius died on 17 March 180, leaving the 19-year-old

Commodus sole emperor.

 Sole

reign (180–192)

Whereas the reign of

Marcus Aurelius

had been marked by almost continuous warfare, even though he

preferred books over war, that of Commodus was comparatively peaceful in the

military sense but was marked by political strife and the increasingly arbitrary

and capricious behaviour of the emperor himself. In the view of

Dio Cassius

, a contemporary observer, his accession marked the descent “from

a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron”^[1]—a

famous comment which has led some historians, notably

Edward Gibbon

, to take Commodus’s reign as the beginning of the

decline of the Roman Empire

. Despite his notoriety, and considering the

importance of his reign, Commodus’s years in power are not well chronicled. The

principal surviving literary sources are Dio Cassius (a contemporary and

sometimes first-hand observer, but for this reign, only transmitted in fragments

and abbreviations),

Herodian

and the

(untrustworthy for its character as a work of

literature rather than history, with elements of fiction embedded within its

biographies; in the case of Commodus, it may well be embroidering upon what the

author found in reasonably good contemporary sources).

Commodus remained with the Danube armies for only a short

time before negotiating a peace treaty with the Danubian tribes. He then

returned to Rome and celebrated a triumph for the conclusion of the wars on 22

October 180. Unlike the preceding Emperors

Trajan
,

Hadrian
,

Antoninus Pius

and Marcus Aurelius, he seems to have had little interest in

the business of administration and tended throughout his reign to leave the

practical running of the state to a succession of favourites, beginning at this

time with Saoterus

, a freedman from

Nicomedia

who had become his

chamberlain

. Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs would lead to a

series of conspiracies and attempted coups, which in turn eventually provoked

Commodus to take charge of affairs, which he did in an increasingly dictatorial

manner. Nevertheless, though the

senatorial order

came to hate and fear him, the evidence suggests that he

remained popular with the army and the common people for much of his reign, not

least because of his lavish shows of largesse (recorded on his coinage) and

because he staged and took part in spectacular

gladiatorial

combats. One of the ways he paid for his donatives and mass entertainments was

to tax the senatorial order, and on many inscriptions, the traditional order of

the two nominal powers of the state, the Senate and People (Senatus

Populusque Romanus) is provocatively reversed (Populus Senatusque…).

 The

conspiracies of 182

At the outset of his reign, Commodus, aged 19, inherited many

of his father’s senior advisers, notably

Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus

(the second husband of Commodus’s sister

Lucilla
), his

father-in-law

Gaius Bruttius Praesens

,

Vitrasius Pollio

, and

Aufidius Victorinus

, who was

Prefect of the City of Rome

. He also had five surviving sisters, all of them

with husbands who were potential rivals. Four of his sisters were considerably

older than he; the eldest, Lucilla, held the rank of

Augusta

as the widow of her first husband,

Lucius

Verus
.

The first crisis of the reign came in 182, when Lucilla

engineered a conspiracy against her brother. Her motive is alleged to have been

envy of the

Empress

Crispina. Her husband, Pompeianus, was not involved, but two men

alleged to have been her lovers,

Marcus Ummidius Quadratus

(the consul of 167, who was also her first cousin)

and

Appius Claudius Quintianus

, attempted to murder Commodus as he entered the

theatre. They bungled the job and were seized by the emperor’s bodyguard.

Quadratus and Quintianus were executed; Lucilla was exiled to

Capri
and later

killed. Pompeianus retired from public life. One of the two

praetorian prefects

,

Tarrutenius Paternus

, had actually been involved in the conspiracy but was

not detected at this time, and in the aftermath, he and his colleague

Sextus Tigidius Perennis

were able to arrange for the murder of Saoterus,

the hated chamberlain.

Commodus took the loss of Saoterus badly, and Perennis now

seized the chance to advance himself by implicating Paternus in a second

conspiracy, one apparently led by

Publius Salvius Julianus

, who was the son of the jurist

Salvius Julianus

and was betrothed to Paternus’s daughter. Salvius and

Paternus were executed along with a number of other prominent consulars and

senators.

Didius Julianus

, the future emperor, a relative of Salvius Julianus, was

dismissed from the governorship of

Germania Inferior

. Perennis took over the reins of government and Commodus

found a new chamberlain and favourite in

Cleander
, a

Phrygian

freedman

who had married one of the emperor’s mistresses, Demostratia. Cleander was in

fact the person who had murdered Saoterus. After those attempts on his life,

Commodus spent much of his time outside Rome, mostly on the family estates at

Lanuvium. Though physically strong, he was mentally lazy, and his chief interest

was in sport: taking part in

horse

racing
,

chariot racing

, and combats with beasts and men, mostly in private but also

on occasion in public.

 Dacia

and Britain

Commodus was inaugurated in 183 as consul with Aufidius

Victorinus for a colleague and assumed the title

Pius. War broke

out in Dacia
: few

details are available, but it appears two future contenders for the throne,

Clodius Albinus

and

Pescennius Niger

, both distinguished themselves in the campaign. Also, in

Britain

in 184, the governor

Ulpius Marcellus

re-advanced the Roman frontier northward to the

Antonine Wall

, but the

legionaries

revolted against his harsh discipline and acclaimed another

legate, Priscus, as emperor. Priscus refused to accept their acclamations, but

Perennis had all the legionary

legates
in

Britain

cashiered

. On

15 October

184 at the

Capitoline Games

, a

Cynic
philosopher

publicly denounced Perennis before Commodus, who was watching, but was

immediately put to death. According to Dio Cassius, Perennis, though ruthless

and ambitious, was not personally corrupt and generally administered the state

well.^[2]

However, the following year, a detachment of soldiers from Britain (they had

been drafted to

Italy

to suppress brigands) also denounced Perennis to the emperor as

plotting to make his own son emperor (they had been enabled to do so by Cleander,

who was seeking to dispose of his rival), and Commodus gave them permission to

execute him as well as his wife and sons. The fall of Perennis brought a new

spate of executions: Aufidius Victorinus committed suicide. Ulpius Marcellus was

replaced as

governor of Britain

by

Pertinax
;

brought to Rome and tried for treason, Marcellus narrowly escaped death.

 Cleander’s

zenith and fall (185–190)

Cleander proceeded to concentrate power in his own hands and

to enrich himself by becoming responsible for all public offices: he sold and

bestowed entry to the Senate, army commands,

governorships

and, increasingly, even the

suffect consulships

to the highest bidder. Unrest around the empire

increased, with large numbers of army deserters causing trouble in

Gaul and

Germany
.

Pescennius Niger mopped up the deserters in Gaul in a military campaign, and a

revolt in Brittany

was put down by two

legions

brought over from Britain. In 187, one of the leaders of the deserters, Maternus,

came from Gaul intending to assassinate Commodus at the Festival of the Great

Goddess in March, but he was betrayed and executed. In the same year,

Pertinax

unmasked a conspiracy by two enemies of Cleander—Antistius

Burrus (one of Commodus’s brothers-in-law) and Arrius Antoninus. As a

result, Commodus appeared even more rarely in public, preferring to live on his

estates. Early in 188, Cleander disposed of the current praetorian prefect,

Atilius Aebutianus

, and himself took over supreme command of the Praetorians

at the new rank of a pugione (“dagger-bearer”) with two praetorian

prefects subordinate to him. Now at the zenith of his power, Cleander continued

to sell public offices as his private business. The climax came in the year 190,

which had 25 suffect consuls—a record in the 1,000-year history of the Roman

consulship—all appointed by Cleander (they included the future Emperor

Septimius Severus

).

In the spring of 190, Rome was afflicted by a food shortage,

for which the praefectus annonae

Papirius Dionysius

, the official actually in charge of the

grain supply

, contrived to lay the blame on Cleander. At the end of June, a

mob demonstrated against Cleander during a horse race in the

Circus Maximus

: he sent the praetorian guard to put down the disturbances,

but Pertinax, who was now City Prefect of Rome, dispatched the

to oppose them. Cleander fled to Commodus, who was at

Laurentum

in the house of the

Quintili

, for protection, but the mob followed him calling for his head. At

the urging of his mistress

Marcia

, Commodus had Cleander beheaded and his son killed. Other victims at

this time were the praetorian prefect Julius Julianus, Commodus’s aunt Annia

Fundania Faustina, and his brother-in-law Mamertinus. Papirius Dionysius was

executed too. The emperor now changed his name to Lucius Aelius Aurelius

Commodus and, at 29, took over more of the reins of power, though he continued

to rule through a cabal consisting of Marcia, his new chamberlain Eclectus, and

the new praetorian prefect

Quintus Aemilius Laetus

, who about this time also had many Christians freed

from working in the mines in

Sardinia
.

Marcia, the widow of Quadratus, who had been executed in 192, is alleged to have

been a Christian.

 A

new order (190–192)

In opposition to the Senate, in his pronouncements and

iconography

, Commodus had always laid stress on his unique status as a

source of god-like power, liberality and physical prowess. Innumerable statues

around the empire were set up portraying him in the guise of

Hercules
,

reinforcing the image of him as a demigod, a physical giant, a protector and a

battler against beasts and men (see “Commodus and Hercules” and “Commodus the

Gladiator” below). Moreover, as Hercules, he could claim to be the son of

Jupiter
, the

representative of the supreme god of the Roman

pantheon

. These tendencies now increased to

megalomaniac

proportions. Far from celebrating his descent from Marcus

Aurelius, the actual source of his power, he stressed his own personal

uniqueness as the bringer of a new order, seeking to re-cast the empire in his

own image.

During 191, the city of Rome was extensively damaged by a

fire that raged for several days, during which many public buildings including

the Temple of Pax, the

Temple of Vesta

and parts of the imperial palace were destroyed.

Perhaps seeing this as an opportunity, early in 192 Commodus,

declaring himself the new

Romulus

, ritually re-founded Rome, renaming the city Colonia Lucia Annia

Commodiana. All the months of the year were renamed to correspond exactly

with his (now twelve) names: Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius,

Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus,

Exsuperatorius, Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, Pius.

The legions were renamed Commodianae, the fleet which imported grain from

Africa

was termed Alexandria Commodiana Togata, the Senate was

entitled the Commodian Fortunate Senate, his palace and the Roman people

themselves were all given the name Commodianus, and the day on which

these reforms were decreed was to be called Dies Commodianus.^[3]

Thus he presented himself as the fountainhead of the Empire and Roman life and

religion. He also had the head of the

Colossus of Nero

adjacent to the

Colosseum

replaced with his own portrait, gave it a club and placed a

bronze

lion at its feet to

make it look like Hercules, and added an inscription boasting of being “the only

left-handed fighter to conquer twelve times one thousand men”.^[4]

 Character

and physical prowess

 Character

and motivations

Dio Cassius, a first-hand witness who had no known reason to

defend Commodus, describes him as “not naturally wicked but, on the contrary, as

guileless as any man that ever lived. His great simplicity, however, together

with his cowardice, made him the slave of his companions, and it was through

them that he at first, out of ignorance, missed the better life and then was led

on into lustful and cruel habits, which soon became second nature.”^[5]

His recorded actions do tend to show a rejection of his father’s policies, his

father’s advisers, and especially his father’s austere lifestyle, and an

alienation from the surviving members of his family. It seems likely that he was

brought up in an atmosphere of

Stoic

asceticism
,

which he rejected entirely upon his accession to sole rule. After repeated

attempts on Commodus’ life,

Roman citizens

were often killed for raising his ire. One such notable event

was the attempted extermination of the house of the Quintili. Condianus and

Maximus were executed on the pretext that, while they weren’t implicated in any

plots, their wealth and talent would make them unhappy with the current state of

affairs.^[6]

 Changes

of name

On his accession as sole ruler, Commodus added the name

Antoninus to his official nomenclature. In October 180 he changed his

praenomen

from Lucius to Marcus, presumably in honour of his father. He later took the

title of Felix in 185. In 191 he restored his praenomen to Lucius

and added the family name Aelius, apparently linking himself to Hadrian and

Hadrian’s adopted son

Lucius Aelius Caesar

, whose original name was also Commodus. Later that year

he had dropped Antoninus and adopted as his full style Lucius Aelius

Felix Pius (the order of some of these titles varies in the sources).

Exsuperatorius (the supreme) was a title given to Jupiter, and Amazonius

identified him again with Hercules.

An inscribed altar from

Dura-Europos

on the Euphrates shows that Commodus’s titles and the renaming

of the months were disseminated to the furthest reaches of the Empire; moreover,

that even auxiliary military units received the title Commodiana, and that

Commodus claimed two additional titles: Pacator Orbis (pacifier of the

world) and Dominus Noster (Our Lord). The latter eventually would be used

as a conventional title by Roman Emperors, starting about a century later, but

Commodus seems to have been the first to assume it.^[7]

 Commodus

and Hercules

Disdaining the more philosophic inclinations of his father,

Commodus was extremely proud of his physical prowess. He was generally

acknowledged to be extremely handsome. As mentioned above, he ordered many

statues to be made showing him dressed as Hercules with a lion’s hide and a

club. He thought of himself as the reincarnation of Hercules, frequently

emulating the legendary hero’s feats by appearing in the arena to fight a

variety of wild animals. He was left-handed, and very proud of the fact. Cassius

Dio and the writers of the

Augustan History

say that Commodus was a skilled archer, who could shoot the

heads off

ostriches

in full gallop, and kill a

panther

as it attacked a victim in the arena.

 Commodus

the gladiator

The emperor also had a passion for gladiatorial combat, which

he took so far as to take to the

arena
himself,

dressed as a gladiator. The Romans found Commodus’ naked gladiatorial combats to

be scandalous and disgraceful.^[8]

It was rumoured that he was actually the son, not of Marcus, but of a gladiator

whom his mother Faustina had taken as a lover at the coastal resort of

Caieta
.^[9]

In the arena, Commodus always won since his opponents always submitted to the

emperor. Thus, these public fights would not end in a death. Privately, it was

his custom to slay his practice opponents.^[10]

For each appearance in the arena, he charged the city of Rome a million

sesterces
,

straining the Roman economy.

Commodus raised the ire of many military officials in Rome

for his Hercules persona in the arena. Often, wounded soldiers and amputees

would be placed in the arena for Commodus to slay with a sword. Commodus’

eccentric behaviour would not stop there. Citizens of Rome missing their feet

through accident or illness were taken to the arena, where they were tethered

together for Commodus to club to death while pretending they were giants.^[11]

These acts may have contributed to his assassination.

Commodus was also known for fighting exotic animals in the

arena, often to the horror of the Roman people. According to Gibbon, Commodus

once killed 100 lions in a single day.^[12]

Later, he decapitated a running ostrich with a specially designed dart^[13]

and afterwards carried the bleeding head of the dead bird and his sword over to

the section where the Senators sat and gesticulated as though they were next.^[14]

On another occasion, Commodus killed three

elephants

on the floor of the arena by himself.^[15]

Finally, Commodus killed a

giraffe
which

was considered to be a strange and helpless beast.^[16]

 The

end of the reign (192)

In November 192, Commodus held Plebian Games in which he shot

hundreds of animals with arrows and javelins every morning, and fought as a

gladiator every afternoon, naturally winning all the bouts. In December he

announced his intention to inaugurate the year 193 as both consul and gladiator

on 1 January.

At this point, the prefect Laetus formed a conspiracy with

Eclectus to supplant Commodus with Pertinax, taking Marcia into their

confidence. On 31 December Marcia poisoned his food, but he vomited up the

poison and the conspirators therefore sent the wrestler

Narcissus

to strangle him in his bath. Upon his death, the Senate declared

him a public enemy (a de facto

) and restored the original name to the city of Rome

and its institutions. Commodus’ statues were thrown down. His body was buried in

the

Mausoleum of Hadrian

. However, in 195, the emperor

Septimius Severus

, trying to gain favour with the family of Marcus Aurelius,

rehabilitated Commodus’s memory and had the Senate deify him.

Commodus was succeeded by

Pertinax
,

whose reign was short lived, being the first to fall victim to the

Year of the Five Emperors

. Commodus’s death marked the end of the

Nervan-Antonian dynasty

.

 Commodus

in popular culture

 Film

• In 1964’s

  The Fall of the Roman Empire

  , Commodus is portrayed by

  Christopher Plummer

  .

• In 2000’s

  Academy Award

  -winner for Best Picture,

  Gladiator

  , Commodus serves as the main antagonist of the film. He is

  depicted as a very evil and insane villain; mainly a murderous, manipulative

  egomaniac with a sister complex who is arrogant, cowardly, greedy and

  ruthless. He is played by

  Joaquin Phoenix

  .

Both films are fictional works and do not depict actual

history.

 Other

• British adventure writer Talbot Mundy’s novel Caesar

  Dies deals with Commodus’ murder and events leading up to it.

• The video game

  Colosseum: Road to Freedom

  included Commodus as an opponent in the

  Colosseum.

• Along with other contemporary figures, Commodus also

  features prominently in the historically authentic

  MMORPG

  Roma

  Victor
  , which is set in the 180s.