length recoiled on the principal instrument of his cruelty. While
Commodus was immersed in blood and luxury, he devolved the detail of the
public business on Perennis, a servile and ambitious minister, who had
obtained his post by the murder of his predecessor, but who possessed a
considerable share of vigor and ability. By acts of extortion and the
forfeited estates of the nobles sacrificed to his avarice he had
accumulated an immense treasure. The prætorian guards were under his
immediate command; and his son, who already discovered a military
genius, was at the head of the Illyrian legions. Perennis aspired to the
empire; or what, in the eyes of Commodus, amounted to the same crime, he
was capable of aspiring to it, had he not been prevented, surprised, and
put to death.
The fall of a minister is a very trifling incident in the general
history of the empire; but it was hastened by an extraordinary
circumstance, which proved how much the nerves of discipline were
already relaxed. The legions of Britain, discontented with the
administration of Perennis, formed a deputation of fifteen hundred
select men, with instructions to march to Rome and lay their complaints
before the Emperor. These military petitioners, by their own determined
behavior, by inflaming the divisions of the guards, by exaggerating the
strength of the British army, and by alarming the fears of Commodus,
exacted and obtained the minister's death, as the only redress of their
grievances. This presumption of a distant army, and their discovery of
the weakness of government, were a sure presage of the most dreadful
convulsions.
The negligence of the public administration was betrayed, soon
afterward, by a new disorder, which arose from the smallest beginnings.
A spirit of desertion began to prevail among the troops; and the
deserters, instead of seeking their safety in flight or concealment,
infested the highways. Maternus, a private soldier, of a daring boldness
above his station, collected those bands of robbers into a little army,
set open the prisons, invited the slaves to assert their freedom, and
plundered with impunity the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and
Spain. The governors of the provinces, who had long been the spectators,
and perhaps the partners, of his depredations, were at length roused
from their supine indolence by the threatening commands of the Emperor.
Maternus found that he was encompassed, and foresaw that he must be
overpowered. A great effort of despair was his last resource. He ordered
his followers to disperse, to pass the Alps in small parties and various
disguises, and to assemble at Rome, during the licentious tumult of the
festival of Cybele. To murder Commodus, and to ascend the vacant throne,
were the ambition of no vulgar robber. His measures were so ably
concerted that his concealed troops already filled the streets of Rome.
The envy of an accomplice discovered and ruined this singular enterprise
in the moment when it was ripe for execution.
Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind from a vain
persuasion that those who have no dependence, except on their favor,
will have no attachment, except to the person of their benefactor.
Cleander, the successor of Perennis, was a Phrygian by birth; of a
nation over whose stubborn but servile temper blows only could prevail.
He had been sent from his native country to Rome, in the capacity of a
slave. As a slave he entered the imperial palace, rendered himself
useful to his master's passions, and rapidly ascended to the most
exalted station which a subject could enjoy. His influence over the
mind of Commodus was much greater than that of his predecessor; for
Cleander was devoid of any ability or virtue which could inspire the
Emperor with envy or distrust.
Avarice was the reigning passion of his soul and the great principle of
his administration. The rank of consul, of patrician, of senator, was
exposed to public sale; and it would have been considered as
disaffection if anyone had refused to purchase these empty and
disgraceful honors, with the greatest part of his fortune. In the
lucrative provincial employments the minister shared with the governor
the spoils of the people. The execution of the laws was venal and
arbitrary. A wealthy criminal might obtain not only the reversal of the
sentence by which he was justly condemned, but might likewise inflict
whatever punishment he pleased on the accuser, the witnesses, and the
judge.
By these means Cleander, in the space of three years, had accumulated
more wealth than had ever yet been possessed by any freedman. Commodus
was perfectly satisfied with the magnificent presents which the artful
courtier laid at his feet in the most seasonable moments. To divert the
public envy, Cleander, under the Emperor's name, erected baths,
porticoes, and places of exercise for the use of the people. He
flattered himself that the Romans, dazzled and amused by this apparent
liberality, would be less affected by the bloody scenes which were daily
exhibited; that they would forget the death of Byrrhus, a senator to
whose superior merit the late Emperor had granted one of his daughters;
and that they would forgive the execution of Arrius Antoninus, the last
representative of the name and virtues of the Antonines. The former,
with more integrity than prudence, had attempted to disclose, to his
brother-in-law, the true character of Cleander. An equitable sentence
pronounced by the latter, when proconsul of Asia, against a worthless
creature of the favorite proved fatal to him. After the fall of
Perennis, the terrors of Commodus had for a short time assumed the
appearance of a return to virtue. He repealed the most odious of his
acts, loaded his memory with the public execration, and ascribed to the
pernicious counsels of that wicked minister all the errors of his
inexperienced youth. But his repentance lasted only thirty days; and,
under Cleander's tyranny, the administration of Perennis was often
regretted.
Pestilence and famine contributed to fill up the measure of the
calamities of Rome. The first could be only imputed to the just
indignation of the gods; but a monopoly of corn, supported by the riches
and power of the minister, was considered as the immediate cause of the
second. The popular discontent, after it had long circulated in
whispers, broke out in the assembled Circus. The people quitted their
favorite amusements for the more delicious pleasure of revenge, rushed
in crowds toward a palace in the suburbs, one of the Emperor's
retirements, and demanded, with angry clamors, the head of the public
enemy. Cleander, who commanded the prætorian guards, ordered a body of
cavalry to sally forth and disperse the seditious multitude. The
multitude fled with precipitation toward the city; several were slain,
and many more were trampled to death; but when the cavalry entered the
streets their pursuit was checked by a shower of stones and darts from
the roofs and windows of the houses.
The foot-guards, who had been long jealous of the prerogatives and
insolence of the prætorian cavalry, embraced the party of the people.
The tumult became a regular engagement, and threatened a general
massacre. The prætorians at length gave way, oppressed with numbers; and
the tide of popular fury returned with redoubled violence against the
gates of the palace, where Commodus lay, dissolved in luxury, and alone
unconscious of the civil war. It was death to approach his person with
the unwelcome news. He would have perished in this supine security had
not two women, his eldest sister Fadilla, and Marcia, the most favored
of his concubines, ventured to break into his presence. Bathed in tears,
and with dishevelled hair, they threw themselves at his feet, and, with
all the pressing eloquence of fear, discovered to the affrighted Emperor
the crimes of the minister, the rage of the people, and the impending
ruin which, in a few minutes, would burst over his palace and person.
Commodus started from his dream of pleasure and commanded that the head
of Cleander should be thrown out to the people. The desired spectacle
instantly appeased the tumult; and the son of Marcus might even yet have
regained the affection and confidence of his subjects.
But every sentiment of virtue and humanity was extinct in the mind of
Commodus. While he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these unworthy
favorites, he valued nothing in sovereign power except the unbounded
license of indulging his sensual appetites. The influence of a polite
age and the labor of an attentive education had never been able to
infuse into his rude and brutish mind the least tincture of learning;
and he was the first of the Roman emperors totally devoid of taste for
the pleasures of the understanding. Nero himself excelled, or affected
to excel, in the elegant arts of music and poetry; nor should we despise
his pursuits, had he not converted the pleasing relaxation of a leisure
hour into the serious business and ambition of his life. But Commodus,
from his earliest infancy, discovered an aversion to whatever was
rational or liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the
populace; the sports of the Circus and Amphitheatre, the combats of
gladiators, and the hunting of wild beasts. The masters in every branch
of learning, whom Marcus provided for his son, were heard with
inattention and disgust, while the Moors and Parthians, who taught him
to dart the javelin and to shoot with the bow, found a disciple who
delighted in his application, and soon equalled the most skilful of his
instructors in the steadiness of the eye and the dexterity of the hand.
The servile crowd, whose fortune depended on their master's vices,
applauded these ignoble pursuits. The perfidious voice of flattery
reminded him that by exploits of the same nature, by the defeat of the
Nemæan lion, and the slaughter of the wild boar of Erymanthus, the
Grecian Hercules had acquired a place among the gods and an immortal
memory among men. They only forgot to observe that in the first ages of
society, when the fiercer animals often dispute with man the possession
of an unsettled country, a successful war against those savages is one
of the most innocent and beneficial labors of heroism. In the civilized
state of the Roman Empire the wild beasts had long since retired from
the face of man and the neighborhood of populous cities. To surprise
them in their solitary haunts and to transport them to Rome that they
might be slain in pomp by the hand of an emperor was an enterprise
equally ridiculous for the prince and oppressive for the people.
Ignorant of these distinctions, Commodus eagerly embraced the glorious
resemblance and styled himself (as we still read on his medals) the
Roman Hercules. The club and the lion's hide were placed by the side of
the throne, among the ensigns of sovereignty, and statues were erected
in which Commodus was represented in the character and with the
attributes of the god whose valor and dexterity he endeavored to emulate
in the daily course of his ferocious amusements.
Elated with these praises, which gradually extinguished the innate sense
of shame, Commodus resolved to exhibit before the eyes of the Roman
people those exercises which till then he had decently confined within
the walls of his palace and to the presence of a few favorites. On the
appointed day the various motives of flattery, fear, and curiosity
attracted to the Amphitheatre an innumerable multitude of spectators;
and some degree of applause was deservedly bestowed on the uncommon
skill of the imperial performer. Whether he aimed at the head or heart
of the animal, the wound was alike certain and mortal. With arrows whose
point was shaped into the form of a crescent Commodus often intercepted
the rapid career and cut asunder the long, bony neck of the ostrich.
A panther was let loose, and the archer waited till he had leaped upon a
trembling malefactor. In the same instant the shaft flew, the beast
dropped dead, and the man remained unhurt. The dens of the Amphitheatre
disgorged at once a hundred lions: a hundred darts from the unerring
hand of Commodus laid them dead as they ran raging round the arena.
Neither the huge bulk of the elephant nor the scaly hide of the
rhinoceros could defend them from his stroke. Æthiopia and India yielded
their most extraordinary productions; and several animals were slain in
the Amphitheatre which had been seen only in the representations of art
or perhaps of fancy. In all these exhibitions the securest precautions
were used to protect the person of the Roman Hercules from the desperate
spring of any savage, who might possibly disregard the dignity of the
Emperor and the sanctity of the god.
But the meanest of the populace were affected with shame and indignation
when they beheld their sovereign enter the lists as a gladiator, and
glory in a profession which the laws and manners of the Romans had
branded with the justest note of infamy.[48] He chose the habit and arms
of the _secutor_, whose combat with the _retiarius_ formed one of the
most lively scenes in the bloody sports of the Amphitheatre. The secutor
was armed with a helmet, sword, and buckler; his naked antagonist had
only a large net and a trident; with the one he endeavored to entangle,
with the other to despatch his enemy. If he missed the first throw, he
was obliged to fly from the pursuit of the secutor till he had prepared
his net for a second cast.
The Emperor fought in this character seven hundred and thirty-five
several times. These glorious achievements were carefully recorded in
the public acts of the empire; and that he might omit no circumstance of
infamy, he received from the common fund of gladiators a stipend so
exorbitant that it became a new and most ignominious tax upon the Roman
people. It may be easily supposed that in these engagements the master
of the world was always successful; in the Amphitheatre his victories
were not often sanguinary; but when he exercised his skill in the school
of gladiators or his own palace, his wretched antagonists were
frequently honored with a mortal wound from the hand of Commodus, and
obliged to seal their flattery with their blood.
He now disdained the appellation of Hercules. The name of Paulus, a
celebrated secutor, was the only one which delighted his ear. It was
inscribed on his colossal statues and repeated in the redoubled
acclamations of the mournful and applauding senate. Claudius Pompeianus,
the virtuous husband of Lucilla, was the only senator who asserted the
honor of his rank. As a father, he permitted his sons to consult their
safety by attending the Amphitheatre. As a Roman he declared that his
own life was in the Emperor's hands, but that he would never behold the
son of Marcus prostituting his person and dignity. Notwithstanding his
manly resolution, Pompeianus escaped the resentment of the tyrant, and,
with his honor, had the good fortune to preserve his life.
Commodus had now attained the summit of vice and infamy. Amid the
acclamations of a flattering court he was unable to disguise from
himself that he had deserved the contempt and hatred of every man of
sense and virtue in his empire. His ferocious spirit was irritated by
the consciousness of that hatred, by the envy of every kind of merit, by
the just apprehension of danger, and by the habit of slaughter which he
contracted in his daily amusements. History has preserved a long list of
consular senators sacrificed to his wanton suspicion, which sought out,
with peculiar anxiety, those unfortunate persons connected, however
remotely, with the family of the Antonines, without sparing even the
ministers of his crimes or pleasures.
His cruelty proved at last fatal to himself. He had shed with impunity
the noblest blood of Rome: he perished as soon as he was dreaded by his
own domestics. Marcia, his favorite concubine, Eclectus, his
chamberlain, and Lætus, his prætorian prefect, alarmed by the fate of
their companions and predecessors, resolved to prevent the destruction
which every hour hung over their heads, either from the mad caprice of
the tyrant or the sudden indignation of the people. Marcia seized the
occasion of presenting a draught of wine to her lover, after he had
fatigued himself with hunting some wild beasts. Commodus retired to
sleep; but while he was laboring with the effects of poison and
drunkenness, a robust youth, by profession a wrestler, entered his
chamber and strangled him without resistance. The body was secretly
conveyed out of the palace, before the least suspicion was entertained
in the city, or even in the court, of the Emperor's death. Such was the
fate of the son of Marcus, and so easy was it to destroy a hated tyrant,
who, by the artificial powers of government, had oppressed, during
thirteen years, so many millions of subjects, each of whom was equal to
their master in personal strength and personal abilities.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] His brother by adoption, and his colleague, L. Verus. Marcus
Aurelius had no other brother.
[47] Manilius, the confidential secretary of Avidius Cassius, was
discovered after he had lain concealed several years. The Emperor nobly
relieved the public anxiety by refusing to see him, and burning his
papers without opening them.
[48] The virtuous and even the wise princes forbade the senators and
knights to embrace this scandalous profession, under pain of infamy, or,
what was more dreaded by those profligate wretches, of exile. The
tyrants allured them to dishonor by threats and rewards. Nero once
produced in the arena forty senators and sixty knights.
EVENTFUL REIGN OF SAPOR I, KING OF PERSIA
A.D. 240
GEORGE RAWLINSON
Under Mithradates I the Parthian empire rose to great power, and
that monarch, about B.C. 163, began to make conquests toward the
west. By B.C. 150 he had added to his possessions Media Magna,
Susiana, Babylonia, Assyria proper, and Persia. The Persians appear
to have yielded without resistance to his rule, and he governed
them with a fair degree of moderation, allowing them, as was the
Parthian policy toward subject peoples, a large measure of
self-government under their hereditary native kings, the "King of
Kings" exacting little from them besides regular tribute and the
required number of men for his armies.
The Parthian empire was in turn overthrown by Ardashir or
Artaxerxes, who about B.C. 226 defeated and killed Ardavan, the
last Parthian king, and became the chief founder of the Sassanian
dynasty, which ruled Persia until the Mahometan invasion.
The victories of Artaxerxes had fatal results for the Roman power
in the East, for the new head of the Persian monarchy was no sooner
established on his throne than he sent an embassy to the Roman
Emperor, Alexander Severus, to demand from him the surrender of all
Asia and the withdrawal of Roman arms and authority to the western
shores of the Ægean Sea and of the Propontis, as the Sea of Marmora
was anciently called. From this began a series of wars which
continued at intervals for four centuries, and which ended only
with the Mahometan conquests that overwhelmed Roman and Persian
power alike. The first campaigns of the Romans against Artaxerxes
were indecisive, but the renewal of the war in the reign of his
son, Sapor I, was followed by disasters to the Roman arms which
Rawlinson describes in his most lucid and vigorous manner, together
with the other feats of this remarkable man.
Artaxerxes appears to have died in A.D. 240. He was succeeded by his son
Shahpuhri, or Sapor, the first Sassanian prince of that name. According
to the Persian historians, the mother of Sapor was a daughter of the
last Parthian king, Artabanus, whom Artaxerxes had taken to wife after
his conquest of her father. But the facts known of Sapor throw doubt on
this story, which has too many parallels in oriental romance to claim
implicit credence. Nothing authentic has come down to us respecting
Sapor during his father's lifetime, but from the moment that he mounted
the throne we find him engaged in a series of wars, which show him to
have been of a most active and energetic character.
Armenia, which Artaxerxes had subjected, attempted, it would seem, to
regain its independence at the commencement of the reign; but Sapor
easily crushed the nascent insurrection, and the Armenians made no
further effort to free themselves till several years after his death.
Contemporaneously with this revolt in the mountain region of the North a
danger showed itself in the plains country of the South, where Manizen,
king of Hatra, or El Hadhr, not only declared himself independent, but
assumed dominion over the entire tract between the Euphrates and the
Tigris, the Jezireh of the Arabian geographers.
The strength of Hatra was great, as had been proved by Trajan and
Severus; its thick walls and valiant inhabitants would probably have
defied every attempt of the Persian prince to make himself master of it
by force. He, therefore, resorted to stratagem. Manizen had a daughter
who cherished ambitious views. On obtaining a promise from Sapor that if
she gave Hatra into his power he would make her his queen, this
unnatural child turned against her father, betrayed him into Sapor's
hands, and thus brought the war to an end. Sapor recovered his lost
territory; but he did not fulfil his bargain. Instead of marrying the
traitoress, he handed her over to an executioner, to receive the death
that she had deserved, though scarcely at his hands.
Encouraged by his success in these two lesser contests, Sapor resolved
(apparently in A.D. 241) to resume the bold projects of his father, and
engage in a great war with Rome. The confusion and troubles which
afflicted the Roman Empire at this time were such as might well give him
hopes of obtaining a decided advantage. Alexander, his father's
adversary, had been murdered in A.D. 235 by Maximin, who from the
condition of a Thracian peasant had risen into the higher ranks of the
army. The upstart had ruled like the savage that he was, and after three
years of misery the whole Roman world had risen against him. Two
emperors had been proclaimed in Africa. On their fall two others had
been elected by the senate; a third, a mere boy, had been added at the
demand of the Roman populace. All the pretenders except the last had met
with violent deaths; and after the shocks of a year, unparalleled since
A.D. 69, the administration of the greatest kingdom in the world was in
the hands of a youth of fifteen. Sapor, no doubt, thought he saw in this
condition of things an opportunity that he ought not to miss, and
rapidly matured his plans lest the favorable moment should pass away.
Crossing the middle Tigris into Mesopotamia, the bands of Sapor first
attacked the important city of Nisibis. Nisibis, at the time a Roman
colony, was strongly situated on the outskirts of the mountain range
which traverses Northern Mesopotamia between the thirty-seventh and
thirty-eighth parallels. The place was well fortified and well defended;
it offered a prolonged resistance; but the walls were breached and it
was forced to yield itself. The advance was then made along the southern
flank of the mountains by Carrhæ (Harran) and Edessa to the Euphrates,
which was probably reached in the neighborhood of Birehjik. The hordes
then poured into Syria, and, spreading themselves over that fertile
region, surprised and took the metropolis of the Roman East, the rich
and luxurious city of Antioch. But meantime the Romans had shown a
spirit which had not been expected from them.