Hand a hedonistic, dull-witted lout control of the world’s most powerful empire. Make everyone obey his every wish. Surround him with conniving people and sycophants. Let him indulge his fantasies and delusions of grandeur.
What could possibly go wrong? As it turned out, nearly everything.
Everyone’s seen Gladiator, right? Commodus certainly comes across as a villain in Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal.
But that version has one major flaw. It depicts the emperor as manipulative, calculating, even clever. Commodus was none of those things.
Born to the purple and handed the empire by his father Marcus Aurelius, Commodus inherited Rome at the height of its power.
Then things unraveled with alarming speed. As the years passed, he grew increasingly erratic, feral, and untethered from reality.
He preferred gladiatorial fantasies to governing and terror to statesmanship. He debased the office itself.
Commodus inherited Rome at the height of its power. By the end of his reign, the empire had gone from gold to what historian Cassio Dio called “iron and rust” — politically damaged, financially strained, and exhausted by chaos.
And if I had to cast a vote for the worst emperor in Roman history, Commodus gets mine. Rome survived monsters. What it could not survive forever was unlimited power in the hands of a man with no interior life.
Commodus Biography: Rome’s Unhinged Emperor
Early Life
Born in 161 AD, Commodus was the first natural-born son of a sitting emperor in more than two centuries of imperial rule.
That’s pretty amazing when you think about it. Most of Rome’s emperors came to power through adoption. Well, that and a penchant for murdering potential rivals to clear the path.
Titus and Domitian were Vespasian’s biological sons. But they were adults by the time dear old dad seized power back in 69 AD. Marcus Aurelius himself was adopted by Antoninus Pius, Pius by Hadrian, and so on.
Even then, whispers circulated that Commodus, biological son or not, might not live up to Marcus’ shining example.
One story, which may be apocryphal, has a 12 year old Commodus dipping his toe in a bath, finding it a tad chilly, and flying into a rage. He supposedly ordered the attendant responsible thrown into a furnace and burned alive.
Some historians see young Commodus as a psychopath hiding in plain sight.
Others argue that he was manipulated by people exploiting weaknesses in his character and point out there are no stories about young Commodus torturing animals.
Everyone agrees on one thing though: Commodus was not his father. The contrast could hardly have been starker.
Still, an effort was made. Marcus gave him the education expected of an imperial prince. He hired elite tutors in rhetoric, literature, and philosophy.
Was Marcus trying to raise a philosopher and failed? Ancient sources imply as much, for what that’s worth.
Commodus also accompanied Marcus on campaigns and appeared in imperial ceremonies. He became co-emperor at age 15.
So Commodus wasn’t suddenly handed power out of nowhere. He had years of official grooming and visibility before taking over.
A lot of people criticize Marcus for breaking with precedent and not choosing the most capable man through Rome’s carefully engineered adoption system.
But in his defense, none of his predecessors had natural sons. It’s not as if they deliberately skipped over an heir in favor of someone more capable.
Parents overstate their kids’ talents all the time. Marcus probably believed he’d done everything possible to prepare his son for the burden of rule, complete with real on-the-job training.
A lot was at stake. Rome was in its golden age. Commodus inherited the empire after Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.
No pressure.
Was Aurelius Wrong?
It’s hard to know what Marcus was thinking when he weighed his son’s character. For such a gifted thinker and philosopher, his track record as an evaluator was not exactly spotless.
Take Faustina. Ancient sources accused her of sleeping her way through much of Rome’s nobility. Some of this was probably the usual Roman character assassination directed at imperial women. Still, Marcus either ignored the rumors or didn’t believe them.
Did he miss the telltale signs in Commodus too?
Perhaps. But he was choosing his son.
And to a Roman, bypassing your biological heir may have seemed strange, even dangerous. Marcus may have thought: why should I pass over my own flesh and blood?
Plus, what exactly happens if Marcus picks someone else?
A passed-over son with a claim to the throne is not a minor inconvenience. He’s a standing political problem. A magnet for factions, resentment, and unrest.
And Commodus does not strike me as the sort of person who would have gracefully accepted demotion.
So Marcus may have been less a philosopher making an abstract mistake and more a father-emperor managing a live threat inside his own household.
Which is rather tragic. Because he probably hoped what parents have hoped forever: perhaps responsibility will mature him.
The result was less happy ending and more horror movie.
Marcus spent years trying to master fate. But he couldn’t master his son or his own hope that Commodus might become better than he was.
Commodus Become Emperor
When Marcus died in 180 AD, great lamentations rose to the heavens. Rome had lost a remarkable leader, a man famous for self-discipline, seriousness, and commitment to fairness.
Marcus had spent his final years at the frontier battling Germanic tribes. He had dragged his rather reluctant son north with him, hoping military life might teach Commodus discipline, responsibility, and perhaps a little grit.
When Marcus died, Commodus inherited an ongoing war of enormous complexity. Instability still simmered along the frontier, and Rome and its allies remained vulnerable to barbarian incursions.
So what did Commodus do? He looked around and essentially decided: war is not for me. Rather than continue the campaign, Commodus quickly negotiated peace and headed back to Rome.
Ancient sources insist his motivation was simple. He wanted comfort, pleasure, and the easier life waiting for him back in the capital. He was now in charge, and the burdens of empire didn’t interest him very much.
Once back in Rome, Commodus slid into a life of indulgence. No one could really say no, and few dared try. As long as his antics remained confined to the imperial palace, things remained more or less manageable.
Marcus had at least left Commodus an operating system. Advisors, counselors, and retainers did their best to keep the machinery of empire running smoothly.
They tried to groom him. But Commodus didn’t seem terribly interested in learning how to rule. He was learning how to party.
First Assassination Attempt
Still, things trudged along reasonably well. Commodus happily let advisors handle the tedious administrative work. As long as he could sleep with any living human with a pulse, life was apparently agreeable.
Then came the night everything changed.
As the emperor’s entourage approached the palace, a would-be assassin emerged from the shadows of a nearby alleyway. Blade in sweaty hand, he lunged at Commodus and shouted: “The Senate sends you this!”
Not exactly a master class in stealth.
Had he resisted the urge for dramatic dialogue, the blade may have found its mark. Instead, his impetuous declaration alerted the imperial bodyguards, who immediately sprang into action.
The assassin was seized and forced to confess. The conspiracy reached uncomfortably close to home.
The mastermind was none other than Commodus’ own sister, Lucilla, who hoped to remove her brother and replace him with her husband.
Commodus changed after this event. Yes, he knew the plot itself was familial. But the assassin’s words had a terrible effect.
They lodged themselves in his mind. Maybe this attempt wasn’t really the Senate. But would the next one would be?
Paranoia began creeping in. Commodus increasingly saw treachery everywhere. Suspicion hardened into fear, fear hardened into cruelty, and his reign took a darker, bloodier turn.
Reign of Terror
Commodus’ private flaws had now become a public catastrophe. The increasingly paranoid and flailing emperor unleashed a reign of terror.
He began a bloodletting Rome had not seen since the days of Sulla and the late Republic.
Edward Gibbon observed that: “When Commodus had once tasted human blood, he became incapable of pity or remorse.”
That may be dramatic. In Commodus’ case, it also seems alarmingly plausible.
No one was safe. In fact, the closer you stood to the emperor, the greater the danger.
And Commodus didn’t stop with individual victims. Entire families could be erased.
Earlier imperial purges, even under someone like Caligula, often possessed a warped internal logic. Rivals, threats, perceived enemies.
Commodus increasingly seemed to kill almost by reflex. Person after person after person.
And his violence did more than spread fear. It hollowed out the empire itself.
Rome lost talented administrators, capable officials, and experienced advisors. Into the vacuum stepped opportunists eager to exploit the empire’s growing sickness.
Enter Cleander.
Cleander possessed an almost heroic level of avarice. Offices, influence, favors, power — everything appeared to be for sale. And he got away with it because Commodus received his cut.
Until Cleander overstepped. Then Commodus solved the problem in his usual fashion. Cleander was promptly decapitated.
Ancient sources even claim that at one point Commodus became convinced the people of Rome were mocking him and contemplated mass slaughter on a staggering scale.
Even allowing for Roman exaggeration, the fact that contemporaries found the story believable tells you something.
How long could this level of insanity continue?
Gladiator Cosplaying Hercules
Along with bloodshed, the only thing Commodus seems to have taken seriously was martial training.
We have now arrived at the point where the emperor finally stops pretending to be emperor and fully becomes … Hercules.
Or at least the version of Hercules playing in his own head.
The mythological hero carried a massive club and wore a lion skin. So naturally Commodus followed suit. Statues of him proudly display the fantasy.
But cosplay was not enough.
If Commodus was going to fill Hercules’ enormous sandals, he’d have to train. To be fair, he actually applied himself here. He practiced relentlessly with bows, swords, chariots, and athletic exercises.
And, inconveniently for everyone, he wasn’t terrible.
But while Commodus may have been a decent athlete, he was also a spectacularly bad sport. For all his bluster and bravado, he was, at bottom, a coward.
To showcase his greatness, a megalomaniacal Commodus decided Rome needed front-row seats to his talents.
He imported exotic animals and slaughtered them in the Colosseum. Usually from a safe distance. Sometimes from elevated platforms where he faced little danger. Other times he simply killed animals trapped in nets.
Not exactly Hercules wrestling the Nemean lion.
If anyone found this absurd, matters became considerably worse when Commodus entered the arena as a gladiator. This was deeply unseemly.
Yes, gladiators were the rock stars of the Roman world. Crowds adored them.
But for an emperor to fight in the arena was something else entirely. It degraded not just the office, but the dignity of Rome itself.
Naturally, that distinction meant nothing to Commodus.
He wasn’t merely emperor. He fancied himself a warrior. A primal force. Maybe Hercules himself.
So Commodus strode onto the arena floor. Well … perhaps “strode bravely” gives too much credit.
He rigged the game whenever possible. Opponents could be wounded or maimed before matches even began. Commodus preferred triumph with safeguards attached.
And afterward, in another flourish of sadism, ancient sources claim he sometimes mutilated defeated opponents, cutting off ears and noses as trophies.
If all this sounds wildly insecure, it probably was.
It was very important to Commodus that he alone be viewed as Rome’s legendary warrior and supreme huntsman. If someone performed a similar feat or threatened to outshine him, Commodus reportedly reacted with jealous fury.
Because by this point, emperor had become secondary. The performance was all that mattered.
Megalomania On Steroids
As his megalomania reached new heights, Commodus became gloriously unhinged. He decided to remake the Roman world in his own image and likeness.
Because apparently he did not want anyone forgetting him for even five minutes.
The two most important aspects of Roman power were the capital itself and the legions that projected imperial might. As befitting a godlike warrior-hero such as Commodus, those old names simply would not do.
The legions became the Commodian Legions. The much-persecuted Senate became the Commodian Senate. Even a day of the week was renamed Commodiana.
Naturally, the empire itself required a rebrand. Rome would henceforth be known as the Immortal, Fortunate, Colony of the Earth. After all, with Commodus in charge, humanity was clearly very fortunate indeed.
The Romans themselves were no longer to be called Romans. No. They were now the People of Commodus.
And because modesty had long since left the building, his reign was officially declared a new Golden Age.
To match the occasion, Commodus erected golden statues of himself. He needed to be everywhere. And increasingly, he seemed determined to become everything.
Sadly, imperial finances eventually began drying up. So what did Commodus do? More or less what you’d expect.
He accused wealthy Romans of treason and seized their property. Real Henry VIII energy.
And Commodus? Nice enough name, I suppose. But perhaps a touch too plebeian for a magnificent superhuman destined to reshape civilization.
Clearly dissatisfied, he gave himself a new title: Amazonius Invictus Felix Pius Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus Augustus Hercules Romanus Exsuperatorius.
Twelve names. Twelve months. One month for each name.
By this point, Commodus had moved well beyond vanity. The line between emperor and empire had begun to disappear.
Rome was no longer Rome. Rome was Commodus.
No Interior Life
What exactly was happening inside this man’s head besides status, pleasure, fear, and spectacle?
Not much.
For a man raised by philosophers, Commodus showed remarkably little curiosity about ideas. There doesn’t seem to have been any deeper project underneath him.
Augustus had an empire-building project. Hadrian had intellectual and architectural passions. Marcus left behind the Meditations — a work of constant self-scrutiny, duty, restraint, and wrestling with human weakness.
Even some of Rome’s worst emperors displayed flashes of ability or interest.
Caligula was reportedly a gifted orator. Nero wrote passable poetry and played instruments. Even Caracalla left behind giant baths.
Commodus, though, was fundamentally unequal to the job he inherited. Rome could survive bad emperors because many at least arrived with hardware attached.
Military ability. Political instinct. Administrative talent. Charisma. Intellect. Something.
Commodus simply did not possess these traits. He was lazy, self-indulgent, violent, and brooding.
He wasn’t militarily brilliant, wasn’t administratively competent, wasn’t intellectually curious, wasn’t cultured, and showed little political skill.
He feels strangely hollow, a mere spectacle machine. A man handed absolute power over the largest empire on earth who chose arena fantasies and Hercules cosplay.
Take away the flattery. Take away the arena. Take away the spectators.
What remains? Not much.
Assassination
For a creature such as Commodus, you might expect a spectacular ending. Fire. Thunder. A final burst of theatrical insanity.
But Commodus did not deserve a glorious death. Thankfully, he didn’t get one.
Instead, he met his end through humiliation rather than drama. A mistress slipped poison into his food. Dazed and weakened, he went to bathe.
Then his wrestling partner wrapped his hands around the emperor’s neck and squeezed. And that was that. Commodus probably did not even understand what was happening.
He lived a coward’s life and, appropriately enough, died without much of a fight. Good riddance.
He was only 31 years old and had ruled for barely a dozen years. In little more than a decade, he had taken Rome from the age of Marcus Aurelius and pushed it toward something dark and unstable.
Finally free of him, the people erupted in a release of long suppressed fury. They wanted his body desecrated and thrown into the Tiber. Instead, his successor had Commodus’ ashes placed in Hadrian’s Mausoleum.
A surprisingly dignified resting place for a man who had done so much to strip dignity from everything around him. Rome had grace; Commodus did not.
It’s unsettling to imagine what might have happened had Commodus lived as long as his father. Given the direction things were heading, Rome might have emerged badly scarred, depopulated, and profoundly diminished.
Rome survived him. But it staggered.
After Commodus came civil wars, foreign wars, the Year of the Five Emperors, breakaway kingdoms, instability, and fracture.
One can certainly argue that the long road from Rome’s height toward decline begins here.
Perhaps that’s slightly unfair. Empires rarely collapse because of one man. Still, the fact that the argument can even be made says something.
Marcus Aurelius spent years writing about self-control, duty, restraint, and mastering one’s own nature. Then history handed Rome Commodus.
For an empire at its height, that was astonishingly bad luck.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my article about Rome’s worst emperor. You may enjoy the other Roman histories:
- History of the Rise and Fall of Rome
- History of the Roman Emperors
- Historical Facts about Rome
- History of Augustus
- History of Nero
- History of Caligula
- History of Julius Caesar
- History of Hadrian
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