the wives of the sybarites
as marcus aurelius and lucius verus had been equal in imperial power, and both were married, we have one more empress to regard before we pass on to the wives of commodus; and the account we have already given of verus will justify us in relegating her to this distinct chapter. verus had married lucilla, the eldest daughter of marcus and faustina; but the ambiguous repute of her mother will warn us not to expect a painful spectacle of vice in alliance with lofty virtue. lucilla carries a step further the unhappy disposition which we have suspected in her grandmother, and more palpably detected in her mother. by her union with lucius verus vice was once more decked with the imperial purple and justified in the eyes of rome. we may briefly consider lucilla as empress before we follow her lamentable career under the reign of her brother.
lucilla was born in the first year of the married life of marcus and faustina. marcus was then a pale and thin-blooded scholar, faustina in the full warmth and sensuousness of young womanhood, and it was not unnatural that the child should inherit the temper of her mother without the spiritual restraint of her sire. she was educated with the greatest care, and was betrothed to verus in her sixteenth year. presumably by the will of her father, and certainly with the full assent of verus, she remained two further years in the palace, while verus wore out his strength in the dissipations of antioch. marcus heard of180 his conduct, and sent out lucilla to marry him; as if a union with a young woman of seventeen or eighteen would be apt to have a sobering influence on a man of verus’s habits and parentage. verus met her at ephesus, married her there with great pomp, and returned with her to his pleasures at antioch.
they came to rome at the peace of 166, and marcus could not fail to learn in full the character of the man to whom he had entrusted his daughter and half his power. the villa which verus occupied in the clodian way was the most notorious house of debauch in rome. it swarmed with the dancing-girls, boys, eastern slaves, musicians, conjurors, etc., that verus had brought from the east. one room was fitted up as a popular tavern, and we must leave under the veil of a dead language the abominations that were perpetrated there. one can only repeat such comparatively decent details as that verus would have gladiators to fight in his house during dinner, and prolong the carouse until his slaves had to bear away his stupefied form on his couch; or that, on other occasions, he would emulate the early feats of nero, and revel at nights in the wine-shops and brothels of the popular quarter. one night he gave a superbly furnished banquet, and at the close, in a drunken fit, presented to his guests the costly plate, and even the litters, with silver-harnessed mules, in which they were taken home.
marcus made several futile attempts to brace him by a campaign in the north, and must have been sincerely relieved when he at last paid, by a premature death, the price of his excesses. lucilla had then been empress for eleven years. as she is barely noticed in the chronicles, we are left to imagine the effect on her of living through her early womanhood in such a palace as that of verus. probably disgust saved her very largely from the taint. verus’s sister fabia lived with them, and was generally believed to be intimate with her brother. she at least usurped the place of lucilla in authority, and the empress must have been as much relieved as her father when verus died. he181 was rumoured to have been poisoned by lucilla because of his relations with fabia; by faustina, for betraying his relations with her; and by marcus, to rid the empire of his sottishness. but an apoplectic fit would be so natural a crown to such a career that we can dispense with so much poison.
lucilla was then married by marcus to an elderly and worthy senator, claudius pompeianus. she and her mother strongly resented the marriage, and demanded a younger and more attractive husband; but the emperor was unusually firm. unhappily, his firmness was misplaced, for the austerity or age of pompeianus effected what the profligacy of verus had failed to do, and lucilla fell into vicious ways. we may conjecture that this did not happen until after her father’s death. marcus had returned to the war against the marcomanni, and, after three years of great exertion and sacrifice, was within sight of victory when death carried him off. he had not married again, in spite of fabia’s efforts to win him. in the fashion approved even by philosophers, he took a concubine to his bed, and virtuously refused to put a stepmother over his children. at his death a new empress comes upon the scene, and, as lucilla still retained her imperial dignities and privileges, we shall have to consider them in an unamiable conjunction.
the last and most fatal blunder of marcus aurelius was to leave the empire in the very uncertain hands of his son commodus. war had drained the treasury; plague, famine, and sloth had thinned and weakened the population; vice had again been enthroned for all to admire and imitate; the lusty barbarians were thundering at its gates. a new vespasian or trajan was needed to restore its vigour, if such a restoration were possible. yet marcus persuaded himself that the pretty youth, with bright eyes and curly golden hair, who played at soldiering in his suite in germany, could bear this enormous burden. herodian, whose history of the emperors now opens for us, tells us that marcus was really concerned on the matter as he lay182 in his last illness. there were disquieting stories about the character of commodus. it was said that in his twelfth year he had, at centumcell? (civita vecchia), ordered the bath-attendant to be thrown into the furnace because the water was not hot enough. on another occasion marcus had driven away certain corrupting attendants, but had recalled them at the petulant tears of his son. they were with him in pannonia. we may at least assume that even the fond eye of a father must have discerned the weakness of character which, in the course of a year or two, would let commodus sink to indescribable depths. marcus, however, trustful to the end in the sublime truths of his philosophy, was content to summon commodus to his tent, make a pretty speech to him in the presence of his counsellors, and hand over to him the reins of government.
for a time commodus remained in the camp, and let the elders govern. before long the lighter courtiers hint that it is more comfortable in rome, and he talks of going. the elders frown, and pompeianus lectures him. he bows submissively, but it is not long before he decides to go. numbers of officers discover a similar call to the capital, and a gay cavalcade sets out. rome is enchanted, and goes out miles along the road to meet commodus, and strews flowers and laurel in his path, and enthuses over his handsome face and the curly hair that shines like gold in the sun. it was the coming of caligula and nero over again. the roman people—quantum mutatus ab illo!—had come to appreciate a pretty face, and a prospect of endless games, immeasurably more than the security of the frontier.
when commodus had set out with his father for germany, he had been married—“hastily married,” the chronicle says—to a lady as young and thoughtless as himself. crispina was a very beautiful girl, and of distinguished family. her father, bruttius pr?sens, was a senator of great merit. it seems that she accompanied commodus to the camp, and returned with him to rome.183 in his train were the evil counsellors whom marcus had banished and recalled. their hour had come.
for three years commodus enjoyed the pleasures which they provided or invented for him, and left the administration in the capable hands of his father’s servants. possibly this was the highest virtue marcus had expected of him. but the ambition of his confidants steadily grew, and a bitter feud in the palace now came to a head and gave them an opportunity. crispina and lucilla were violently opposed to each other. the imperial title of lucilla paled beside that of the wife of the ruling emperor. the fire which had been borne before her when she went abroad now passed to crispina, and she had to yield precedence in the palace and the theatre. crispina, on the other hand, resented the familiarity of commodus with his sister, and would hardly be ignorant of the interpretation that was generally put on it. the adherents of the palace were thus divided into two parties, and the empresses fought for the monopoly of commodus’s favour. at last lucilla despaired of gaining her end through commodus, and resolved to have him murdered.
there is no room for doubt that the daughter of faustina and marcus aurelius was an abandoned woman. dio declares that she was “no better than commodus.” we may trust that this is an exaggeration, but the other authorities speak of the looseness of her conduct, and are emphatically agreed that she inspired the plot to murder her brother. no one doubts that her purpose was to recover supreme power. the inferences and impressions we draw from imperial portraits are not very substantial, but it is interesting that the statue of lucilla, which we have, suggests just the type of woman that the historians represent her to have been. it is the figure of a full-bodied woman, of strong and imperious temper, sensual to the limit of grossness. in her the beauty of her mother, instead of being enhanced by the purity of her father, is blighted by a general expression of coarseness and self-assertion.
184 her criminal design was gradually imparted to her lovers. among these was a young noble named quadratus, whom she soon fired with a sense of her grievances, and a conspiracy was framed. the actual assassination was undertaken by her stepson, claudius pompeianus. herodian says that his name was quintianus, and he may have had this name in addition. dio gives a confused and contradictory account—he describes pompeianus as married to lucilla’s daughter, whereas lucilla was married to his father, and he says that she was intimate with him, yet hated him and wished to destroy him—but, as he lived in rome at the time, we must accept the substance of his story. the young senator pompeianus was an intimate friend of commodus, and only an infatuation for lucilla could have drawn him into the plot. he spoiled it, and ruined the conspirators, by his melodramatic display. as commodus entered the amphitheatre, he rushed upon him with a drawn sword. but he announced his purpose by crying out: “the senate sends thee this sword,” and the guards arrested him.
the plot gave commodus an opportunity to make a bloody clearance of those who hampered his plans, and caused him to regard the senate with dark suspicion. the male conspirators were executed, and lucilla was banished to capre?. but crispina had no triumph by the removal of her rival. she had herself been tainted in that atmosphere of vice, and was detected in one of her liaisons by commodus. she was banished to capre?, and there both she and lucilla were put to death.
lucilla
bust in the national museum, rome
the conspiracy took place in the year 182, the third year of commodus’s reign. the remaining ten years of his life it would be more agreeable to leave in the untranslatable language of the chroniclers, but he virtually shared his throne with a woman of a singular and interesting type, and we must include her in the gallery of wives of the emperors. among the property of the wealthy young conspirator, quadratus, which was at once confiscated, was a very handsome and engaging concubine185 of the name of marcia. the concubinatus was, as i have said, a legal and recognized union in rome, and we must not regard these women, who enter our chronicle in that capacity, in quite the same light as the mistresses of later christian princes. they were sometimes of moderately good family, though they seem generally to have belonged to the class of emancipated slaves, and were included in the man’s property. marcia was of the latter class. probably an orphan at an early age, she was brought up by a eunuch, and sold by him to quadratus. at the dispersal of his property, or even during his life, she attracted the notice of commodus, and was transferred to the populous harem of his three hundred concubines.
a few years later (185) an event occurred that greatly increased her growing power over the emperor. the chief favourite of commodus was a low-born and despicable courtier named perennis, who encouraged the emperor to pursue his morbid sensual impulses, while he himself accumulated wealth and power. he flattered and indulged every fancy of his besotted master, and controlled all the resources of the state in his own interest. he was commander of the guards, and seems to have at length conceived an ambition to displace commodus. one day, when commodus presided at the games, which he very liberally provided, before an immense crowd, a mild-looking man—said to be a philosopher—rushed into the centre of the stage and roared out a warning to the emperor that perennis was acquiring wealth and aiming at the throne. the prefect had him burned alive, and escaped the emperor’s suspicion; but the end was nearer than he expected. a regiment of fifteen hundred men from the legions of britain marched into rome, demanded the head of perennis, and forced commodus to recognize and punish the faults of his minister.
from that time marcia occupies the place of prima inter pares in the harem of commodus. a good deal of research has been expended on this leading concubine of the emperor, because there was a tradition in early christian186 literature that she favoured and protected, if she did not herself belong to, the new religion.14 it was said that she sent the eunuch, who had reared her, to liberate the repressed christians of sardinia, and the peace which they enjoyed at rome during the reign of commodus is attributed to her influence. but if marcia had ever belonged to the austere sect of the early christians, we must, for its credit, entirely dissociate her from it in her imperial days. she seems to have been to the brutal commodus what c?sonia had been to the equally licentious caligula. she dressed willingly as an amazon, and is actually represented on the coins, with commodus, in the helmet of a female warrior. if we may put any trust in that meagre portrait of her, she seems to have been of much the same type as c?sonia: a handsome, strong, vulgar woman, owing her influence to her masculine robustness.
for seven years she occupied, without a quarrel, the chief place in a palace in which all the orgies of caligula, nero, and verus were concentrated. at her persuasion commodus changed the name of rome to “the colony of commodus.” one might almost suspect her of genial irony in thus removing the venerable name from the imperial city during the years when it was degraded by commodus. evil as the practices of caligula and nero had been, they were surpassed by the insanities and obscenities of the son of marcus aurelius. we must leave the veil over the life that was witnessed in the palace during those ten years; but the crimes of commodus were not confined to the wild indulgence of his unbridled appetites. the company of gladiators and the daily pleasure of killing degraded him to the character of a mere butcher. he forced the priests of orgiastic eastern cults to perform on themselves the mutilations which their ritual described; he beat them with the emblem of anubis which he carried in their processions. on one occasion he had all the citizens of rome with some infirmity of the feet gathered in one place, and more or less dressed as dragons. then187 the roman hercules—as commodus loved to be called—fell upon them with a club, and killed numbers of them. this and other stories of his indescribable lust and cruelty are told by an historian who saw commodus daily.
in the year 189 marcia obtained even greater power over her insane lover. the place of perennis had been at once occupied by another of the emperor’s despicable courtiers, cleander, a phrygian slave who had risen, by base means, to be the first minister of the empire. like his predecessor, he encouraged commodus to wallow in his vices, while he took advantage of his insanity to enrich himself. the highest positions in the state were sold by him, and men could even purchase from him the right to take vengeance on their enemies, or the privilege not to be executed for their wealth. the treasury was again diminishing, and noble blood poured out freely to refresh it. a great pestilence swept over italy, exacting thousands of victims daily in rome alone. a terrible famine succeeded it. the people, observing that the avaricious minister was endeavouring to make a corner in corn, now broke into rebellion and pressed to the palace of the emperor.
commodus was enjoying himself at the beautiful palace of the quintilians in the suburbs, which he had obtained by murder, when the crowd surged up to the gates. cleander turned the cavalry upon the people, but the infantry sided with them, and they returned in a storm of anger to the palace. none of his ministers dare approach the room in which commodus wantoned with his companions, but his sister fadilla and marcia broke in with the news that his life was in danger. some writers say that it was fadilla who informed him, some that it was marcia. we may suppose that both of them endeavoured to awake him. the voluptuous coward at once sacrificed cleander to the crowd, and returned to his vices.
marcia had now the leading influence over commodus, and rome sank lower and lower. the butcheries of the188 amphitheatre were his chief concern. he consorted daily with the gladiators, killed vast numbers of beasts in the arena, and even fought with men who had meekly to submit to be slain by him. numbers of distinguished or wealthy romans were put to death on the most frivolous pretexts, yet the senators were compelled to view and applaud his daily slaughters with such cries as: “thou conquerest the world, o brave amazonian.” dio, who sat among the senators, tells us that one day commodus made a grotesque attempt to intimidate them. he had just killed an ostrich, and came toward them with the head in one hand and the bloody sword in the other. he grinned and wagged his head, without saying a word, as he approached them, as if intimating that it would be their turn next. dio says that his appearance was so ludicrous that he had hastily to pluck a leaf of laurel, and chew it, to prevent him from laughing. we nearly missed the writing of one of the most valuable histories of the period.
the “golden age,” as the senate was compelled to describe this appalling decade, came to a close through a fresh excess on the part of commodus pius, as he was now styled. they had reached the last day of the year 192, and were preparing for the great festivities of the morrow. commodus informed marcia that he would spend the night in the house of the gladiators, and issue from it on the morrow at their head. he ordered his chamberlain eclectus and his commander of the guard l?tus to make the necessary preparation. marcia and the officers were horrified at his proposal, and besought him to abandon it. after reading the disgusting details of his career in the “historia augusta”—even if we make allowance for exaggeration—one has some difficulty in realizing their indignation. apparently, however, this proposal to identify himself so intimately with the degraded caste of public gladiators was regarded by them as something of an entirely different nature from the filth and obscenity of his practices in the palace, and they189 boldly opposed him. he angrily shook them off, and put their names on his condemned list. the “augustan history,” recalling a story we have heard before, introduces an element of romance into the adventure. it makes commodus tie the tablet to his bed, and go to sleep, when the tablet is playfully removed by one of his jewel-decked boys, and delivered accidentally into the hands of marcia.
it is better to follow the version of dio, who was in rome at the time. the two officers and marcia, realizing that they had incurred his anger, discussed the matter, and decided to assassinate him. marcia was directed to poison him. she put the poison in the meat he ate, but its effect was spoiled by the quantity of wine he had drunk, and it caused him to vomit. he became suspicious and threatening, and went to the bath. they then hastily took into their confidence his powerful and athletic bath-attendant, narcissus, and he entered and strangled the emperor.
one reads with something like amazement that the successful conspirators, instead of gladly announcing that they had rid rome of such a brute and tyrant, deliberated anxiously how they should proceed. so blind was the attachment of the troops to their paymaster, and of the common citizens to any generous provider of games, that they concealed the deed. commodus had himself fought 735 times in the public amphitheatre, and on those performances alone had spent 200,000,000 drachmas. the temper of the demoralized people and soldiers was uncertain, and they decided to put the empire at once in the hands of a strong soldier.
in the romantic story of the accession of the various empresses of rome there are few cases so dramatic as that which introduces the next empress in the series. there was living in rome at the time an experienced commander, in his sixtieth year, of the name of pertinax. his father had kept a kind of tavern in a village of liguria. the son had obtained some education, and190 rapidly climbed the ladder of promotion. he had married flavia titiana, the accomplished daughter of a very wealthy and distinguished senator. himself enamoured of cornificia, the sister of marcus aurelius, he had overlooked the vivacity of his wife, and she had at one time attracted comment by her open regard for a musician. at the time of the murder of commodus, pertinax was prefect of rome. he retired to bed on that last night of the year 192 with no suspicion of the great events that were happening in the domus vectiliana, to which, it seems, commodus had gone.
in the middle of the night he was awakened with the message that the captain of the pr?torian guards wished to see him. he calmly said that he had for some time expected to be executed by commodus, and he continued to lie, in quiet dignity, when l?tus entered to tell him that they offered him the empire. he begged l?tus to abandon his unseemly joke, and carry out his orders. he was at last convinced that commodus was dead, and, through the darkness of the stormy winter night, they made their way to the camp. they announced to the guards that commodus had died of apoplexy, and that pertinax was submitted to be chosen by them as emperor. the soldiers listened with no enthusiasm. under the license of the reign of commodus they had been permitted to take the most extraordinary liberties, and they dreaded the accession of a commander. the news had, however, spread by this time through the city. people crowded into the torch-lit streets, and poured out toward the camp, hailing the name of pertinax and execrating that of commodus. a promise of 3,000 denarii to each man overcame the last opposition of the guards, and they coldly consented to the choice. in the senate, too, there was hesitation. “we see behind you,” said the consul falco, “the ministers of commodus’s crimes, l?tus and marcia.” pertinax himself, indeed, was still very reluctant; but the senate urged the imperial power upon him, and the new year dawned at rome upon a people angrily191 scattering the statues and memorials of commodus, and expressing a wild rejoicing over the advent of its new ruler.
titiana never bore the title of augusta, and we may dismiss very briefly her few months of residence in the palace. the senate offered the title of augusta to titiana, and that of c?sar to their son, but pertinax refused both. “let the boy earn it,” he said of his son; and dio says that he kept the title from his wife, either because of the insecurity of his position, or “because he would not let his lascivious consort stain the name of augusta.” titiana was evidently not the kind of woman to co-operate with pertinax in his reforms, and she probably shared the disdain with which her friends regarded his ways. although he at once began to undo the evil wrought by commodus—to banish the informers, regulate the taxes, and purify the administration of justice—he alienated the romans by passing to an extreme of sobriety. the palace he purified in very summary fashion. he had the whole apparatus of commodus’s luxury sold by auction, and rome looked on with delight as the three hundred pretty boys and three hundred choice concubines, the gold and silver plate, the precious vases and silks and chariots and wonderful machines of the sybarite were exposed to their view. but pertinax carried his economy too far. patricians told with contempt that he would put half a lettuce on the imperial board, and would make a hare last three days; the people missed the unceasing stimulation of the amphitheatre; the soldiers chafed at the discipline he sought to enforce. within three months of his remarkable accession to power pertinax was assassinated by the guards, and titiana fell back into the obscurity from which she had momentarily emerged.
another empress of a day, and one that came to the throne under no less romantic circumstances, claims our attention for a moment before we pass on to a more imposing figure.
it was on the 28th of march, 193, that the soldiers192 brutally assassinated pertinax. on the rumour of trouble pertinax had sent his father-in-law, sulpicianus, to secure tranquillity in the camp. as he lingered there the soldiers returned with the dripping head of the emperor, and he recognized that the throne was vacant. with a callousness that is almost incredible, but is fully attested, he at once made an offer of money to the soldiers for the imperial power. it occurred to some of the soldiers that a higher bid might be secured, and they announced from the rampart of their camp, in which they had enclosed themselves, that the throne was, virtually, on sale. in particular, they sent word to one of the wealthiest citizens, didius julianus, and invited him to make an offer. whether or no it be true that he yielded to the vanity of his wife and daughter—he does not seem to have needed pressure—julianus went to the camp, and made a higher offer than that of sulpicianus.
it was the early evening, and a crowd had gathered to witness the appalling spectacle of the sale of the empire. julianus pointed out that his rival was the father-in-law of the man they had killed, and might be expected to have some design of revenge. the soldiers admitted julianus by a ladder, and the two senators made bids against each other, the soldiers on the wall announcing their offers. at length julianus made an offer equal to more than ￡200 to each soldier, and he was greeted as emperor. under the close guard of the soldiers he was conducted, amid an angry people, to the senate, and forced upon the senators. they then concluded their bargain by conducting him to the palace, and the vain old man had time to reflect on the extraordinary situation he had suddenly reached. his wife, manlia scantilla, and daughter, didia clara, joined him “in fear and concern” (the “historia augusta” says), and he finished the day with a prolonged entertainment.
his wife and daughter were decorated with the title of augusta on the morrow, but they soon found that julianus had squandered his comfortable wealth on a dangerous bauble. not only did the roman people jeer at him193 whenever he appeared, but the news soon came that the distant legions were aflame with anger, and were about to march on rome to wrest the empire from him. presently he heard that the commander of the troops in pannonia had begun his march at the head of a formidable army. julianus first had him declared a public enemy, and sent men to assassinate him; then he offered to share the empire with him. severus and his hardened troops passed relentlessly over the alps, and proceeded along the plains of italy. julianus stung the demoralized soldiers who had sold him the empire into some pretence of resistance, threw up earthworks in the suburbs, endeavoured to train his elephants for the fight, and, as a last resort, fortified the palace. but his effeminate troops quailed before the seasoned legions from germany, and, when severus reached rome, julianus found himself deserted. the senate decreed his death, and he was beheaded in the palace which he had enjoyed, at the price of his fortune and his life, for sixty-six days. and the two broken-hearted august? laid down their dignity, and bore the body of didius julianus to the tomb of his ancestors.
marcia, too, had ended her semi-imperial career with a violent death. after the assassination of commodus she had married the chamberlain eclectus, with whom she had long been intimate. eclectus became the chamberlain of pertinax, and perished, not ignobly, with his master. marcia did not long survive her husband, however. julianus had promised the soldiers that he would avenge the murder of commodus, and he sought the remaining members of the conspiracy, l?tus, narcissus, and marcia, and put them to death.
