preview

Summary : ' Emperor Commodus '

Better Essays

Roman Emperor Commodus HIEU 322-B01 Joel Leviten October 6, 2016

Emperor Commodus By all accounts was a handsome man, with curly blonde hair. But he appeared to possess a weak character and was easily influenced by others. But so too was he prone to cruelty and excessive behavior. To an extent his behavior was still held in check, when his father was still alive, although then too some believed to detect the signs of a new Nero in the young heir. Cassius ' earlier rebellion, when he mistakenly thought Marcus Aurelius had died, might well have been inspired by a fear of what was to come if Commodus came to the throne. Commodus was a crazed power lunatic who thought he was a God and fought in the Gladiator events thinking he could not die. Commodus was in fact a terrible one. Cruelty, vanity, power and fear formed into a terrifyingly dangerous mix of bloodlust, suspicion and megalomania. Commodus should be remembered as a monster, a tyrant who renamed months in his own honor, and who slaughtered his way through the circuses in ludicrous displays of 'manliness '.

Lucius Aurelius Commodus was born on 31 August AD 161 at Lanuvium, roughly 14 miles south east of Rome. Of the fourteen children of Marcus Aurelius

Get Access