In spite of such engrossing problems, Marcus Aurelius remained a keen scholar of Stoicism, and in the last ten years of his life, in breaks between his campaigning and administrative duties, he wrote his Meditations. Written in Greek and randomly arranged just as they came to him, these are an eclectic selection of diary entries, fragments and epigrams in which he addresses the challenges of life at war, the fear of death, and the cares and injustices of everyday life.
The general sentiment of the Meditations is that overreaction and lingering bitterness are the most damaging responses to life’s iniquities. “If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs you, but your own judgment of it,” he writes. “And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now.” Another typical injunction reads: “A cucumber is bitter; throw it away. There are briars in the road; turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add ‘And why were such things made in the world?’”
As the Meditations were written against the backdrop of war, mortality naturally features prominently in them. Marcus’ position is clear: “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
It is advice that Marcus followed throughout his life but he did not succeed as a father. Before he died on campaign in 180, he appointed as his successor his son Commodus, whose diabolical and demented tyranny ended in assassination. But in spite of all, Marcus Aurelius managed to articulate with greater compassion than any of his contemporaries a timeless vision of fortitude in the face of human injustice and mortality.
COMMODUS
AD 161–92
… even from his earliest years he was base and dishonorable, and cruel and lewd, defiled of mouth, moreover, and debauched.
Historia Augusta
Malevolent, scheming, cruel, depraved, murderous, megalomaniacal and corrupt, Commodus has recently re-entered popular consciousness in the Hollywood film Gladiator. Whatever its historical accuracy, that movie captured the essence of Commodus, whose reign, in the judgment of the English historian Edward Gibbon, marked the early decline of the Roman empire.
Born in Lanuvium near Rome, son of the philosophical Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Commodus was groomed from an early age to succeed to the throne, being declared Caesar (“junior emperor”) when he was just five years old. By AD 169, the death of his two brothers had left him as sole son and heir to the emperor, and he subsequently traveled with his father across the empire, seeing firsthand how the business of government was conducted.
In AD 176, Commodus (still only fourteen) was awarded the title of Imperator, and a year later, that of Augustus as he became de jure co-ruler and the emperor’s anointed heir. Other offices followed, including those of tribune and consul. The latter position, granted in AD 177, made him the youngest consul thus far in Rome’s history. Three years later, his father died and Commodus became sole emperor in AD 180.
On attaining exclusive power, Commodus immediately signed a peace deal to end his father’s military campaigns on the Danube, celebrating with a major triumph through the streets of Rome to commemorate his “achievements.” He showed little interest, however, in affairs of state, leaving the day-to-day business of government to a succession of personal favorites, the first of whom was Saoterus—a former slave. Others included the Praetorian prefects Tigidius Perennis and Marcus Aurelius Cleander.
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.
When Constantine was born in the middle or late 280s, the Roman empire had recently been divided by the emperor Diocletian into eastern and western halves. Constantine was the son of Constantius, a general who later, in 305, was to be proclaimed emperor of the western empire. As a child, Constantine was sent to Nicomedia (modern Izmit in Turkey) to be raised at the court of Diocletian, who had taken for himself the eastern portion of the empire. Under Diocletian’s rule, Constantine witnessed fierce persecution of Christians, which intensified after 303.