COMMODUS, Lucius AURELIUS, a Roman emperor, b. 161 A.D., was the son of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Great pains were taken with his education. But the solicitude of his father was all to no purpose. C. only waited for an opportunity to exhibit as start ling and detestable a mixture of sensuality, cruelty, and meanness as had ever been wit nessed in Rome. When he was summoned to the throne on his father's decease. 17th Mar., 108, he manifested a shameful eagerness to plunge into the dissipations of Rome. At that period he was successfully fighting the Marcomanni and other tribes on the upper Danube, and, not to be balked of his anticipated pleasures, he hastily concluded a treaty with the barbarians, and reached the capital in the beginning of the autumn. The cruelty to which he was always prone, was especially called into action after a con spiracy by his sister Lucilla against his life had been discovered in the year 18i. Nearly all who, by virtue, ability, and learning, had risen to honor during his father's lifetime, were sacrificed to appease his savage jealousy of the good and the great. Gross prodi
gality in the expenditure of the resources of the state on the amusements of the amphi theater also marked his reign. He was proud of his own physical strength, and exhib ited it in gladiatorial combats. For each of these exhibitions, lie charged the state an enormous sum. He used also to sing, dance, play, act the buffoon, the peddler, or the horse-dealer, and engage in all the filthy and horrible orgies of Egyptian sacrifice. A glutton, a debauchee, who wallowed in the most sensual abominations, he yet demanded to be worshiped as a god, and assumed the title of Hercules Romanus. Many plots were devised against the life of this mingled monster and madman, and at last one of them accomplished its purpose. His mistress, Marcia, in concert with the prefect Laetus and the imperial chamberlain Eclectus, after they had failed in an attempt to poison him, caused bins to be strangled by Narcissus, a fampus athlete, on the 31st of Dec., 192.