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 of 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. He 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 lay in his last illness.
There were disquieting stories about the character of Commodus. It was
said that in his twelfth year he had, at Centumcellæ (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 Præsens, was a Senator of
great merit. It seems that she accompanied Commodus to the camp, and
returned with him to Rome. 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.
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 Capreæ. 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
Capreæ, and there both she and Lucilla were put to death.
[Illustration: 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
concubine 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 Christian 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 Cæsonia 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 Cæsonia: 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. Then 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 the 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 Lætus 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 they 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, and 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 Prætorian 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 Lætus entered to tell him that
they offered him the Empire. He begged Lætus 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, Lætus 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 angrily 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 Cæsar 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 soldiers 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 him 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 Augustæ 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, Lætus, Narcissus, and Marcia,
and put them to death.