Had not Marcus been so weak, he would hardly have allowed Commodus to
become his successor: he must have seen how coarse and void of all
virtue the youth was, and he should have come to the resolution of
adopting one of his leading generals. The idea of the empire’s being an
heir-loom, was scarcely yet a settled one; but Marcus established it.
Commodus was a handsome and active young man, of great strength and
nimbleness of body; and thus he was led to choose the roughest
amusements, as archery, fencing, and such like. At first, he checked
himself, and matters went on smoothly enough in the track of his father;
but he soon followed his own nature. It was not long before he gave up
the government to the prefect M. Perennis, who ruled in the most
oppressive manner, quite in the Asiatic style. This ended in a sedition,
and Commodus sacrificed his minister and favourite to the mutineers.
Soon afterwards, he was attacked by an assassin, whom his sister Lucilla
is said to have employed against him, but who told him that he had been
set on by the senate; whereupon Commodus began to wreak his vengeance on
that body. His means of ingratiating himself had been his profuse
liberality, especially to the _plebs urbana_ and the soldiers: this, as
we see from the coins, was very often repeated, and thus the treasures
of the empire were completely drained. At the death of Pius, there were
2,700 million of sesterces (135,000,000 dollars of our [Prussian] money)
in the treasury; but this had been spent in the wars of Marcus, who had
even sold the valuable things in his palace, so that he should not be
obliged to lay on new taxes. Commodus now also began to shed blood, that
he might have more money to throw away. His reign is detestable, and it
is impossible to dwell on it. After Perennis was sacrificed, our
interest is excited by the similar fate of Cleander, a freedman: it does
not, however, seem quite credible, that he was _præfectus prætorio_. The
cavalry of the prætorians and the _cohortes urbanæ_ had now already
begun to have brawls with each other; which proves in what a distracted
state things then were. The city cohorts, which took the part of the
town against the prætorians, had the best of it; and Commodus would have
been murdered at Lanuvium,[53] whither he had retired on account of the
plague, had not his sister Fadilla and his concubine Marcia, pointed out
to him the danger in which he was. He only escaped by sacrificing
Cleander.
His tastes were now no longer confined to the sports of the chase; but
it was the pride of his later years to come forth as a gladiator, and he
called himself Hercules. His head which he put on the colossal statue of
the god of the Sun, is undoubtedly still preserved, and it is very
beautiful. His mad decrees are the dreams of a tyrant. When he wanted,
on the Calends of January, to march at the head of the gladiators from
the _ludus gladiatorius_ to the Capitol, and thus take possession of the
consulship without auspices; he was led in his wrath to proscribe Lætus
and Marcia, who had most strongly urged him not to do so. This, however,
was betrayed to them by a dwarf; on which Marcia gave Commodus a cup of
poison, and she also sent a strong wrestler to strangle him. The senate
and people now vented their hatred by cursing and reviling his memory;
but the prætorians grumbled, as they were fond of him for his weakness.
It was spread abroad that he had died of apoplexy.
The _præfectus prætorio_ Lætus now proclaimed old Pertinax, who was
already upwards of sixty, emperor. A worthier man than he, could not
have been chosen: he had distinguished himself as a brave, although not
precisely as a great general; but it was especially for his
administrative talent and his sterling character, that he was known and
respected. He had Marcus’ virtues without his faults, and he would
therefore in time have even excelled him as a ruler; for with all his
heart and soul he threw himself into the business of the state. The
people rejoiced at his election: but only part of the senators did, as
he was not of noble race; and the soldiers tolerated him indeed, but
they did not like him. On the first of January 193, he entered upon the
government; before the end of March in the same year, he was already
murdered.
After his death, as the story goes, the prætorians put up the empire to
the highest bidder. This is most likely a gross exaggeration. It was a
generally received custom for every new ruler to give the prætorians a
_donativum_; and as Sulpician and Didius Julianus were trying at the
same time to get the sovereignty, it is quite natural that the largeness
of the donation turned the scales. Sulpician who was in the camp,
promised twenty thousand sesterces for every prætorian; but Julianus,
who was at the gates of the city, offered twenty-five thousand. The
prætorians opened the gates to the latter, and acknowledged him as
emperor. Julianus here appears still more contemptible than he really
was, as he had quite as good prospects of ascending the throne as any
one else, and he was really innocent of the death of Commodus. He had
not been a bad governor of a province, and there is on the whole, not
much against his personal character: he was a very rich, but at the same
time, a very vain man, and he had, as a governor, distinguished himself
in his campaign against Dalmatia. It was not with his own treasures,
that he bought the empire; but with those of the state: yet the fierce
ill-will which he thus aroused against himself, was owing to his having
so openly applied to the prætorians, thereby letting them know the
secret of their power, and the fact that they were masters of the
government. As Dio here is mutilated, and Herodian was a foreigner, and
a frivolous writer; most of the circumstances are to be gleaned from the
_Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_, who, however, are wretched beyond all
conception. They contain, notwithstanding, many a detail which even
Gibbon has overlooked.
Even before this, Clodius Albinus, who commanded in Britain, had been on
bad terms with Commodus. The offer which the latter had once made him of
taking the title of Cæsar, in case any accident should happen to
himself, he had declined; and, on the other hand, he seems, even before
the death of the tyrant, to have shielded himself by means of his army
against any of his attempts. As for Pertinax, he had neither
acknowledged nor rejected him. After the death of Pertinax, the British
and Gallic legions proclaimed Albinus; the German and Pannonian ones,
Septimius Severus; and those of the East, Pescennius Niger. The senate,
on the whole, was for Albinus; the people, and some of the senators, for
Pescennius Niger; whilst Severus had in Rome a comparatively small
number of partisans, and Julianus had every one against him: the senate
could not abide him, because he had made himself dependent on the
prætorians. Pescennius could not advance, as Severus was blocking up his
way. The latter acted with indefatigable energy: three months after the
death of Pertinax, he was at Terni. No one raised his hand to uphold
Julianus, and the prætorians themselves scarcely made an attempt to
defend their own creature: for they were now as cowardly and mutinous as
the Janissaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries down to the
time of their destruction. The senate swore fealty to Severus, who
entered Rome with his army: the populace was panic-struck; Julianus was
put to death; and the prætorians were disarmed, and disbanded in
disgrace. Upon this, Severus immediately turned himself towards the
East.
Septimius Severus was a most remarkable man: he came from Leptis, an old
Punic colony in which a Roman _conventus_ had settled. There is no doubt
but that the Septimius Severus to whom Statius addressed a poem (the
_Leptitani_), was an ancestor of his. He was thoroughly Punic, and
indeed his sister, when she came to Rome, spoke nothing but broken
Latin: these places in Africa had so completely retained their foreign
character, that Punic was the prevailing language, even in the towns:
Severus, however, both in Greek and Latin was a good writer. We have of
his only one undoubted letter, which, although he wrote it in a passion,
is very well written: he also composed memoirs, which unfortunately have
been lost.—He was then in his forty-seventh year, and in every
department, whether of administration or of military command, he had
greatly distinguished himself. A marked feature in his character was his
leaning towards foreign religions, astrology, and soothsaying: these
things, on the whole, were now getting more and more into vogue, thus
paving the way for the Christian religion. Many took this up as they
would any other theurgy, as the Orphic or such like; and therefore it
also now begins to emerge from obscurity. Severus’ reign was exceedingly
favourable to Christianity, with which his empress, Julia, a Syrian
woman, was particularly struck. Unction being at that time often applied
as a remedy, Severus also had received it in a violent illness; and as
he thought himself to have been cured by it, he gave protection to
Christianity in the instructions issued to his lieutenants. He was an
uncommonly handsome man; his countenance was so dignified and noble,
that it prepossessed all who beheld it. The great charge brought against
him, is that of cruelty, which showed itself after the downfall of
Albinus: forty-one senators had to atone with their blood for their
connexion with the latter, and Spartianus also mentions women and
children. This wretched writer cannot, however, be relied on: he is so
careless as to make Caracalla the son of Severus by his first wife.
The war of Pescennius Niger is of a peculiar character. If we call to
mind how Avidius Cassius in his time met with such favour in the East,
and how widely the eastern and western world were kept apart by
difference of language; we are led to believe that the East wished even
then to sever itself from the West. Niger had in the days of Aurelius
gained much renown as a general, being indeed highly thought of as a
strict disciplinarian. Notwithstanding this, he was a kindhearted man,
quite different from Severus, and generally respected. Severus crossed
the Hellespont, and overcame a general of Pescennius near Cyzicus; then
he followed up his victory, and defeated Pescennius himself at Issus,
where the latter was slain. The whole of the East submitted. Byzantium
alone stoutly held out in quite an unaccountable manner, and was
completely destroyed after a siege of three years. Perhaps the
Byzantines had so grievously offended the emperor, that they were afraid
of some severe punishment; or, perhaps, being conscious of the
importance of the site of their city, they wanted it at that time
already to become the capital of the world.
During this war, Severus had gained over Albinus. The latter, a man
without any sort of talent, was also an African, but made pretensions to
being sprung from the Postumii: Severus, however, in a letter which has
been preserved by Spartianus, taxes him with having merely assumed this
name, saying that he was not even of Italian extraction. This commander
was indeed a most insignificant person, and Severus very easily
overreached him by offering him the dignity of Cæsar: he let himself be
won over by this gross deception, and he flattered himself with the hope
that Severus, although he had children of his own, would bequeath him
the empire after his death. When Pescennius had fallen, Severus changed
his tone; and an attempt to murder him, either actually made or only
intended, moved him to declare war against Albinus. Britain, Gaul, and
Spain, must have been united under Albinus, who went over to Gaul:
Severus, after having narrowly escaped defeat, with the utmost
difficulty gained a victory near Lyons, where Albinus was mortally
wounded, and soon afterwards breathed his last. This victory, Severus
followed up with the greatest cruelty. The rashness of the senators with
regard to Albinus is quite extraordinary: they must have believed in the
chances of his success, and they had now to pay dearly for it. In Spain
and Gaul also, the men of rank who had let themselves be gained over by
Albinus, were punished with death. After this slaughter, Severus’ reign
was not only glorious and brilliant, but also mild and gentle.
The German tribes had somehow or other been kept quiet since the time of
Marcus; but with the Parthians there was twice war. Once the emperor led
his army against Adiabene, the country east of the Tigris, and Arabia,
which, like Osroëne, Media, and others, were distinct vassal kingdoms
under Persian supremacy: this campaign, Severus conducted without being
at war with the Parthians themselves. The second time, however, he
directly attacked the Parthians; and then was the flourishing city of
Ctesiphon, which the Parthians had built over against Seleucia to humble
it, taken and sacked by Severus: it is strange that he did not make this
country a province. He made peace, and gave back Babylon; but kept
Adiabene, and more especially Mesopotamia, subject to his supremacy:
under Marcus the Euphrates had been the boundary river. The Roman
emperors had always to wage war, owing to the very immensity of the
empire which otherwise would have sunk into utter effeminacy. He had
afterwards another war besides in Britain, and it is surprising that he
should have thought it necessary to bring such vast forces of imperial
Rome against the weak Caledonian barbarians on the Scottish border. In
this war, he took with him his two sons, the elder of whom, Caracalla,
was at that time twenty-two years old, while Geta was several years
younger: the former was with him as his colleague, the other as Cæsar
(he is the first who is mentioned on inscriptions with the title of
_nobilissimus_). Before his death, he also raised both of them to be
_Augusti_, and made them heirs of the empire.
Severus had by his own power caused himself to be adopted as the son of
M. Aurelius, without meaning thereby to deceive any one, except perhaps
the lowest of the people; it being merely a fiction by which he wanted
to designate himself as the lawful possessor of the empire, calling
himself _M. Antonini filius, T. Pii nepos_, and so on as high up as
Nerva: he therefore gave his eldest son, M. Bassianus, the name of M.
Antoninus. This name, or _Divus Antoninus, Imperator noster Antoninus,
Antoninus Magnus_, is in the Pandects always to be understood of this
Caracalla. That last appellation is in fact so generally bestowed on him
only by the moderns: in the _Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_ it is met with
only once, and that in the form Caracallus, which is a popular nickname:
I am very loth to use it. Both of the young princes were the sons of
Julia Domna, a Syrian woman whom Severus is said to have married because
she was recommended to him by the astrologers, as her horoscope pointed
out that she was destined to be a princess.[54] Julia was a remarkable
person: she was a woman of great cleverness, but of very lax morals. She
has, however, atoned for her faults by her misfortunes.
It is a great pity, that we know so little about the measures of
Severus. That he made great changes, especially in the administration of
Italy, is quite evident. It must have been he who placed _correctores_
over each of the regions; or it may be, one _corrector_ over several
united regions. Probably they had the jurisdiction in their own
districts. What was the nature of the jurisdiction in Italy after the
_Lex Julia_, is shrouded in the greatest darkness: something, however,
must have been done to get rid of the inconveniences which had arisen.
The whole of this matter is still to be investigated: inscriptions and
laws might indeed throw some light on it. Yet what were the functions of
these _correctores_ on the whole, is difficult to make out. Even as
early as under the emperors who came immediately before Hadrian, traces
are met with of commissions by virtue of which the jurisdiction of Italy
was given by districts to people of rank. The _Præfectus Urbi_ had even
since Hadrian’s days (though not before) a district of a hundred Italian
miles round Rome: this is, however, as yet, but a conjecture of mine.
Hadrian appointed consulars to them in due form. Antoninus Pius also
kept them up for some time: afterwards, they were again abolished. From
the reign of Severus, we regularly meet with the _correctores_ in Italy.