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00:02Commodus becomes the Emperor of Rome at a young age.
00:06But his rule will be unlike any other.
00:10He quickly indulges himself.
00:13He gets used to the amount of power he has.
00:16While the people need a leader, he disappears,
00:20training not to govern but to fight as a gladiator.
00:26Commodus is obsessed with gladiators.
00:29He's not interested in being a military man,
00:33but he is interested in spectacle.
00:38Obsessed with the arena,
00:40he abandons the capital to perfect his lethal skills,
00:44leaving the empire adrift.
00:46It's produced a lot of discontent among the Romans.
00:50It's a sign of a bad emperor.
00:53On his return to Rome, he stages grand games
00:57but the real shock is yet to come
01:00as Commodus enters the Colosseum
01:03to perform in gladiatorial combat
01:06for the entertainment of the masses.
01:09Commodus is unique.
01:11The only emperor ever to appear as a gladiator.
01:14For the Senate, it is humiliating.
01:17And for the emperor, deadly.
01:41The Colosseum
01:42The Colosseum has been standing for more than a hundred years.
01:48Since its completion, a succession of emperors
01:52has focused on expanding the Roman Empire.
02:00But now, a different kind of emperor reigns.
02:0850,000 people have gathered in the Colosseum
02:10for an extravagant day amongst them.
02:14They see the emperor Commodus in the Colosseum.
02:17The emperor Commodus has been emperor for about 12 years.
02:21And he's decided to hold some magnificent games
02:25to show just what a powerful figure he is.
02:30And these are going to be unlike any games
02:32that have ever been held before.
02:36Because he himself is going to be the star attraction.
02:43The emperor appears in his box, dressed as a god.
02:49Commodus wants to show the audience
02:51that he as an emperor is so powerful,
02:54he is basically one of the gods.
02:59Everyone can see the emperor.
03:01The emperor is as much the centre of attention
03:03on these shows as the spectacle down in the arena.
03:08The people want their emperor to share
03:10in the same kind of passions and entertainment that they do.
03:13And so that's an extra special spectacle
03:15for the people to witness.
03:18And for the crowd,
03:20one of the big buzzes they get
03:22is that there they are
03:23sharing this hugely expensive entertainment
03:25with the emperor himself.
03:28And then the games begin.
03:38First, he's going to show off to everyone
03:41what a skilled and brilliant hunter of animals he can be.
03:46He begins by killing 100 bears.
03:51But he's never in any danger.
03:54He has a catwalk built above the Coliseum
03:57so that he can safely walk above the animals
03:59and just pick them off with his bow and arrow.
04:03And he actually kills them so that they line up in rows
04:06so that people could count them easily.
04:11And his audience marveled at his skill.
04:14He was, in particular, a very skilled archer.
04:18And it's not just terrifying animals that they're killing,
04:22like lions and rhinoceroses.
04:24They're gentle beasts, like giraffes.
04:30It seems that he sees this as an expression of his power.
04:38Commodus calls for a drink.
04:40The crowd shout out cheers.
04:43And he raises his glass to them in acknowledgement.
04:52The crowd, thrilled by the action, is eager for more.
04:56But this is just the beginning.
04:59The spectacles to come will astonish the people of Rome.
05:03To make his games really special,
05:06Commodus had brought in a rhinoceros.
05:08Perhaps the hardest beast to capture and to transport.
05:13The idea of a rhinoceros in the Coliseum, it was not new.
05:18Once every few years, maybe once or twice a decade,
05:22might be introduced.
05:23But it was just simply too exotic, too difficult, too expensive.
05:28You can't be killing rhinos at a regular rate.
05:31All the logistics and all the economics argue against it.
05:35And they're pretty hard to kill.
05:37A rhinoceros has very tough hide.
05:41They're big, they're powerful.
05:44And yet, Commodus is on his catwalk,
05:47repeatedly throwing spears at it, firing arrows at it.
05:53Until the poor beast is dead.
05:59As the games continue, Commodus kills countless exotic animals.
06:06The slaughter is witnessed by a Roman senator and historian,
06:10Cassius Dio.
06:14Cassius Dio is making his way up the senatorial ladder at this point.
06:19And he is one of our main sources for the imperial period of Roman history.
06:25He writes this huge, multi-volume history of Rome.
06:29But it includes this great story of being at the games.
06:35Commodus, as part of his theatrical spectacle in the Coliseum,
06:40cuts off the head of an Austrian,
06:43holds it up menacingly at the senators.
06:51Which they don't take quite as they should.
06:54Instead of being terrified by this spectacle of brutality,
06:58they are trying desperately to stifle laughs.
07:08These games are already notorious, but they take a shocking turn.
07:15Commodus is about to cross a line no emperor ever should.
07:21The moment in Rome's history has finally reached its pinnacle when we think about gladiatorial games.
07:29The crowd is going to witness an emperor fighting as a gladiator.
07:36This is a spectacle no one has ever seen.
07:41We've had emperors appear on the stage before, in chariot races.
07:47But we've never had an emperor actually appear as a gladiator.
07:55I think for the ordinary Romans, they see this as the emperor showing that he's one of them.
08:04He's prepared to get his hands dirty...
08:10..and do things that will impress the ordinary people.
08:23But for people like the senators who are watching this, this is just absolutely unacceptable.
08:30The emperor, the person who's meant to be at the top of Roman society,
08:34mixed with those who are at the very bottom.
08:37In general, the senate disapproved of showmen.
08:42And so Commodus was hardly likely to endure himself to the senatorial class
08:46by performing as a gladiator.
08:49An unheard of disgrace.
08:53You can hear the hearts of Roman men breaking as they watch their emperor put himself into this position.
09:01Because whilst they might all enjoy the games,
09:05certainly by that stage their standards were such that you were not meant to participate in them
09:11if you were from the upper classes.
09:14What does it mean to take the position of imperial power
09:20and to colour it with all of the negative connotations that get associated with gladiatorial combat?
09:27Their bodies being slightly sullied by the way that they are forced to fight.
09:33They are not achieving things on the battlefield.
09:37This is just a display.
09:40What does this say about an emperor that they would do this?
09:45The senate would have seen it as unbecoming of the most powerful man an individual was supposed to represent,
09:53or the pomp and circumstance and ceremony associated with the upper classes of Roman society to fight in the Colosseum.
10:04But of course, Commodus, I don't think particularly care much for the opinion of the senate.
10:12Commodus entering the arena may have shocked Rome and its senators,
10:17but it's the culmination of an obsession that started many years before.
10:31Commodus is an emperor gladiator, and he was particularly interested in gladiatorial combat from very early in his life.
10:42Commodus was born to a ruling emperor, the emperor Marcus Aurelius.
10:48One of the famous good emperors of the second century CE.
10:53As you would expect of someone who was born into the imperial family, Commodus had a very good education.
11:00Commodus was very fortunate.
11:03One of his tutors was a spectacular doctor who had previously cared for gladiators.
11:10Galen.
11:11Galen was perhaps the greatest doctor from antiquity,
11:14and becomes Marcus Aurelius' own personal physician,
11:19who then he succeeds and becomes Commodus' doctor as well.
11:24So he came with an absolute wealth of medical knowledge, and also knowledge about gladiators,
11:30and that may have inspired Commodus' own interests in gladiators.
11:35It's not perhaps completely out of the question that Commodus would be receiving some training from gladiators as a young
11:41man.
11:42We know that from as far back as 105 BCE, that Roman soldiers are receiving training from gladiators.
11:51His father was trying to train him.
12:04Marcus Aurelius is generally remembered by later historians as an intelligent philosopher emperor, so to speak.
12:15He's not really interested in gladiators.
12:18For him, they're populist, they're unintellectual.
12:23And who says that he didn't like the amphitheatre because it was boring?
12:29Marcus can see is that you don't want to waste a lot of good fighting men in gladiatorial combat
12:36when they should be out fighting for the empire.
12:40So he puts limits on how much people can spend on gladiators.
12:46Marcus Aurelius tried to limit the violence of gladiatorial combat uniquely,
12:54insisting that gladiatorial pairs fight with wooden swords.
12:58But of course, it was very difficult, if not impossible, to enforce these rules.
13:03So while he personally may have had reservations about the role of gladiatorial matches in society,
13:10they certainly still took place during his reign.
13:23Marcus Aurelius had spent almost all of his reign fighting in what is now Germany and the area north of
13:29the Danube.
13:31And he had started to bring this area under Roman control.
13:37While fighting for Roman dominance, Marcus Aurelius spends years on the battlefield
13:44and sends for his son Commodus to join him.
13:49So Commodus goes out with his father on a military campaign.
13:53He and his father seem to have had a fairly close relationship.
13:58He seems to have quite liked his son.
14:02Marcus Aurelius' intent was for his son to succeed him.
14:08By 180 CE, Marcus Aurelius has secured major victories.
14:15But he falls ill and dies while on campaign.
14:21His son Commodus ascends to the throne.
14:27Commodus is the sole emperor of Rome at only 18.
14:34It's the first time you've actually had an emperor have a male heir succeed him since the first century CE.
14:40And since then there have been a series of good emperors where they have been appointed on merit.
14:47So you have a line of good emperors and then suddenly you get Commodus.
14:55Commodus comes to lots of diplomatic arrangements with the groups that Marcus Aurelius has been fighting.
15:01Commodus just wasn't really interested in actual fighting.
15:05He's not interested in being a military man.
15:10So what he does is he makes peace with these tribes.
15:14Which means that he doesn't have to stay out on those borders anymore but can come back to Rome.
15:21For Commodus to relinquish all his father's territorial gains hardly could have gone down well with the Roman Senate.
15:30Marcus Aurelius saw that as his greatest legacy.
15:33This is perceived as being an act of cowardice.
15:37That he should have carried on wars that had largely been going Rome's way and consolidated his father's gains.
15:46People back home thought that this was throwing in the towel prematurely.
15:54With Commodus now on the throne there is hope the new emperor will govern wisely like his father before him.
16:05Commodus is strikingly different from his father Marcus Aurelius.
16:10He's not interested in doing things the philosophical way.
16:16He's not interested in the running of the Roman Empire.
16:21It's a bunch of paperwork, it's a bunch of grumpy senators.
16:25Being in charge might be the most boring part of being a Roman emperor.
16:31The emperors were expected to make sure that things run as they should.
16:35Making sure that the people have things that meet their basic needs.
16:40And the idea is that the emperor will talk to the Senate and they'll negotiate together to find the best
16:46way forward.
16:48He should be passing laws, he should be mixing with the powerful men who run the city and make policy.
16:54So that's part of the role of being an emperor.
16:58But that doesn't happen.
17:00He entrusted major tasks to individuals that didn't show any particular aptitude for the jobs that they were entrusted.
17:09He quickly indulges himself.
17:12He gets used to the amount of power he has.
17:16Wanting to follow his own interests and his own pursuits.
17:21He spends a lot of money putting on shows.
17:26And he needs to get the money from somewhere.
17:29And the easiest way to do it is just to condemn rich men and then just confiscate all their property.
17:37So it means that the emperor can just appropriate their assets.
17:41So many, many senators have this happen to them.
17:44Now, obviously, that does not endear him to the senatorial class as a whole.
17:49And so we get this tension between the emperor and the Senate.
17:55The Senate is outraged by the emperor's actions.
17:59Plots against Commodus slowly form.
18:02And soon, his life will be placed in grave danger.
18:13By 182 CE, Commodus has been in power for two years.
18:20He has taken money from the wealthy elite of the city to indulge his own pleasures.
18:26The Senate's dissatisfaction with his dangerous ruler grows deeper.
18:32He's still judged with his character, prone to displays of great extravagance.
18:41It was very unclear in which way his reign was taking not just the city but the empire.
18:48It seems like Commodus is doing things that don't accord with a number of people of Rome.
18:55Not being able to control kind of his own indulgences, as it were, and the effect that that then has
19:00on the imperial treasury.
19:05And so a conspiracy is formulated that also involves his sister.
19:12His sister Lucilla didn't see a way that Rome could continue to function under this sort of emperor.
19:19And she must have had powerful backers.
19:22People like the senators, they get a sense that Commodus has gone too far.
19:33The conspiracy itself is to stab Commodus.
19:37The assassination attempt is made as Commodus approaches the amphitheater, flanked by his bodyguards.
19:45From the shadows, the attack is launched.
19:51A man produces this dagger and says, the Senate sends you this.
20:02So they're unsuccessful.
20:04And at first, Commodus doesn't seem to overreact.
20:09It makes the emperor think, well, perhaps the Senate are out to get me.
20:14It's framed in terms of these political implications of what Commodus is doing to the state.
20:21But then there seems to be more investigation.
20:24Some of the people involved in the initial attempt were trying to cover up what had happened and their involvement
20:31in it.
20:32And that's when we start to see more accusations coming out.
20:37When you have these sort of big conspiracies, there are often leaks.
20:42Lucilla had a lover.
20:44She was talking about getting rid of Commodus with this lover.
20:49And then that maybe came to the fore.
20:54When Commodus learns the identities of the assassins, he is enraged.
21:01The conspirators are executed.
21:05Including his own sister, Lucilla.
21:12Commodus realizes the threat of conspiracy and decides to leave Rome.
21:19That means leaving someone in charge and he leaves one of his imperial attendants.
21:25Cleander.
21:27And that is seen as sort of wholly unsuitable as a person to be in charge functionally of running the
21:33empire.
21:35Commodus leaves Rome.
21:37Goes to hang out in La Nuvia.
21:39Tucked away in his palace.
21:41And he's just enjoying himself.
21:43He's investing all of his energy in doing exactly what he loves.
21:48Commodus is endlessly practicing all his gladiatorial skills.
21:53One of the people that Commodus is training with during this period when he's in La Nuvia is a wrestler
21:59named Narcissus.
22:01He teaches him all of these different moves.
22:07Practicing throwing his spears.
22:10Hiring his bows and arrows.
22:14And how to wrestle effectively.
22:17He's having hundreds of mock fights against people.
22:21He actually has genuine skill.
22:24He's repeated to have had almost a thousand fights in private in his own purpose-built amphitheatre in La Nuvia.
22:38Even though these are not proper fights, fighting the emperor could be dangerous for the gladiators.
22:45He may cut off the tips of their ears or the tip of their nose.
22:50On one occasion, the gladiator offered to fight him with no weapon.
22:54But he took this as an insult, fearing that the gladiator would seize his own sword and kill him with
23:00it.
23:01And so he immediately has the gladiator executed.
23:11It appears that Commodus is engaging in all sorts of debauchery, leading a dissolute life.
23:17The sources even describe him at this point as dressing up as a god.
23:24He starts dressing as the god Hercules.
23:29So he would wear a lion-skin shawl and carry this club around.
23:36Hercules is a really popular demigod for gladiators in the ancient world.
23:43Hercules is known for the incredible feats of strength that he performs.
23:47That's part of his mythology.
23:50Gladiators could identify with him.
23:53He's a god of labor, who through his hard work and his skill, who acquires divine status.
24:01Makes him quite a good model for people who fight for a living.
24:06So, you know, the imagery of Hercules as his mythological hero carries the potential to display this sort of powerful
24:14image.
24:17But again, also one that connects them to a deeply heroic and mythologized past.
24:25That is what Commodus wants to underline.
24:28That he is an emperor who is so skillful, so powerful, that he has become a living god.
24:44Commodus has abandoned his responsibilities as emperor to play at being a gladiator.
24:51And the empire starts to feel the consequences.
24:55Back in Rome, the empire is not doing very well.
25:00The emperor is away from Rome, they've left someone else in charge, and that by definition is a problem.
25:09Cleander is pretty much in control in Rome.
25:13He's not particularly well set up for political life.
25:18He's corrupt.
25:19He's very unpopular with the senatorial class.
25:25Cleander's corruption reaches a point where he is seen as a symbol of imperial mismanagement by the Senate.
25:33And at one point there's a food shortage, a famine, and the people are looking for someone to blame.
25:41Cleander falls out of favor with different elements of Roman society, by the people as well as by the Senate.
25:48And his position becomes untenable.
25:51He's hated by the Roman people.
25:54He's hated by the senators.
25:56The people turn on him, hurling insults at him, threatening him, and wanting Commodus back.
26:04They call for his head, and Commodus gives it to them.
26:12Cleander's head is displayed through the city on a pole.
26:22And it's after this that Commodus then comes back to Rome.
26:28Commodus reluctantly returns to Rome, but his extravagance and self-indulgence continue.
26:38Commodus believes that he is a new kind of emperor for a new kind of age.
26:44And in some respects he's right, because he is nothing like his dad.
26:49Marcus Aurelius was wise and a good ruler, whereas Commodus is the absolute opposite of that.
26:58The emperor gets bigger and bigger ideas about himself.
27:02His megalomania seems really quite pronounced by this stage.
27:10He goes about refashioning Rome in his own image.
27:17Commodus has a colossal statue changed so that it is a statue of himself, dressed as the gold Hercules.
27:26Coins were remade, depicting Hercules.
27:29And this would be too much to believe unless we had the coins that actually show it.
27:34Commodus' obsession with Hercules and the refashioning of Rome
27:38are matched only by his continuing love for gladiatorial combat.
27:45Commodus' training in the Ludus Magnus.
27:48The training barracks for gladiators right next door to the Colosseum.
27:53And it has a training arena inside it, with seating, so clearly people were meant to be watching when the
27:59gladiators were training.
28:01Maybe the public was allowed to come in, like attending a dress rehearsal.
28:07He has his own personal passageway underground.
28:11The tunnels attaches it to the Colosseum.
28:15So that he can have private access to the imperial box in the Colosseum.
28:21Go backwards and forwards without going into the open.
28:29From the Senate's point of view, he's just abandoning his real job of being emperor.
28:35This must have been reminiscent to what people's great grandparents must have said about Nero's reign.
28:41The emperor should be above a profession that's associated with the enslaved class.
28:50In 191 CE, a fire breaks out in Rome.
28:56And this gives Commodus the opportunity, because of the destruction, to rebuild the city.
29:03Much like Nero had done after the fire of 64.
29:07But also, he decides to take this opportunity to rename the city after himself.
29:15Commodus renamed Rome, Commodania, an attempt to quite literally emulate Alexander the Great by naming the great city of the
29:23Roman Empire after himself.
29:25Which I think more than anything else speaks to sheer megalomaniac ego that sits at the heart of who he
29:32is as a human being.
29:34He believes himself to be the representative of what Roman-ness now is.
29:42And for him, that is tied up directly with this idea of the spectacle.
29:46So it's about the chariot racing.
29:48It's about the beast fighting.
29:50It's about gladiatorial combat.
29:52It's about the show of Roman power in the centre.
29:56So he sees Rome as a new place that he is building through his own interests.
30:04So he does see it as a re-founding.
30:09To celebrate the rebuilding of Rome, Commodus announces 14 days of spectacular games.
30:17People flood into the capital from across the empire.
30:21And Commodus has another shocking revelation.
30:26After a life spent training in private, for the first time ever, he will publicly step into the arena.
30:34Not as emperor, but as a gladiator.
30:44November 192 CE.
30:46The Colosseum is filled to capacity for 14 days of lavish games.
30:53And the debut of Emperor Commodus as a gladiator.
30:58The Colosseum was always packed.
31:00But when you've got the Emperor appearing, it would have been tough to get a ticket.
31:04You'll have had to have used your contacts.
31:07If you knew people who knew the emperor, you know, you would have to source a ticket for yourself.
31:12So it wouldn't have been easy to get in at all.
31:17The games were free to locals.
31:21And visitors from out of town had to pay.
31:25This is really an insult to the population who should be getting the spectacle free in the first place.
31:36Commodus also doesn't just appear for fun.
31:39He decides that he should be paid for his actions.
31:43Commodus charges the Senate a million sister seats for every gladiatorial combat he puts on.
31:50Enough money that could make you a senator.
31:52So not only to be charging people to attend his spectacles, but charging the Senators to attend his spectacles would
32:00really heap insults upon the Senators' heads,
32:03who would have despised him for appearing there in the first place.
32:08As parts of these games, he kills a variety of beasts.
32:15But the real star attraction is when he acts as a gladiator.
32:20He likes to enter the arena from the gladiatorial school as if he somehow belongs there and is like a
32:27real gladiator.
32:29Kind of part of the spectacle that he's enjoying as much as anything.
32:39Commodus steps into the Colosseo to engage in combat.
32:44Commodus liked to fight as a sacutal.
32:47As a gladiator, he fights with the sword and the shield.
32:51This is where Commodus really excelled.
32:56The fact he was so good at it is something that really won the admiration of his contemporaries.
33:02The Romans love seeing an amazing fight, a technical fight.
33:08But of course this isn't really combat.
33:10His opponent for the day is armed with a wooden stick.
33:14He fights a gladiator who has been told not to harm the Emperor in any way.
33:20He's going to make sure he's not in any danger himself.
33:25It is clear enough that whatever Commodus' pretensions to being a gladiator,
33:31this is not a fight he will allow himself to lose.
33:37It is a bizarre sight to see Emperor Commodus fight as a gladiator.
33:44But more strange spectacles await.
33:48At one point a group of gladiators refused to fight.
33:52So he has them chained together and made to fight to the death.
33:58He rounds up people with disabilities to slaughter them.
34:03He's trying to mimic one of Hercules' mythical fights against giants.
34:07He wants to show he is as skilled a fighter as Hercules was.
34:12That his level of skill is so high that it raises him up to the level of a deity.
34:20It does become a bit of a bloodbath for the sake of it.
34:23As far as the audience is concerned, there would have been a fair amount of trepidation.
34:28Because Commodus clearly was not well.
34:31It's a bizarre form of entertainment that presumably he thought people would find interesting.
34:37But I think for those watching was just beyond anything normal.
34:43People worry that he's even intending to kill sections of the crowd.
34:48Given how unpredictable Commodus was,
34:51there was a good reason for the average Roman spectator to fear for his or her life.
34:56For 14 days, Commodus lives out his strange desires.
35:02But after the games have drawn to a close, he makes a grand announcement.
35:08The final straw is when Commodus announces that he's going to celebrate the new year by becoming a gladiator.
35:17Being a full-time gladiator versus practicing like a gladiator or appearing as a gladiator,
35:25that was a real commitment, a real decision.
35:29He has mixed one of the highest officers of state with an occupation of low repute.
35:38He has blurred the lines beyond his predecessors.
35:44For an emperor to become a gladiator really bucks the whole system of the Roman belief in dignity and the
35:52pecking order in society.
35:54The senatorial class start to freak out, really.
35:58They think he really has lost it this time.
36:01The emperor's advisers urge him to reconsider.
36:05But Commodus sees this as betrayal.
36:10Some other senators find themselves on a list of people who will be put to death in the new year.
36:17At that point, they realise that they need to do something.
36:23It seems that Commodus ends up facing turmoil from within his own household.
36:33The imperial palace at this point in time, there are a lot of positions that are filled by freedmen.
36:39So people who used to be enslaved, but are now freed so that they can be in the employ of
36:46the emperor.
36:49And Commodus has this situation going on in his household as well.
36:54And these freedmen see everything that is going on.
36:58And when they decide that things are going too far, that's when the talk starts to happen.
37:06The discussion is that perhaps they can poison him.
37:11So Marcia is a woman who lives with Commodus.
37:14She's not his wife, but we might think of her as a concubine.
37:18And she can dispense the poison.
37:21She's like, I've got this. Don't you worry.
37:28Sensing an opportunity, Marcia mixes poison into Commodus' wine.
37:35She hands him the chalice.
37:42The emperor drinks deep.
37:45The fate of the empire now hangs in the balance.
37:54Commodus has drunk from Marcia's poison chalice.
37:58The conspirators wait for the effects to take hold.
38:03This gave them hope that was going to be the end of the emperor.
38:08Unfortunately for her, and indeed everybody involved in this plot,
38:13Commodus has managed to get himself out of trouble.
38:17He's eating a lot and drinking a lot, which means he's not feeling great.
38:24He vomits up the poison.
38:26Then instead of it taking full effect,
38:29so they have to be quick on their feet, find another method.
38:32This leads to a secondary plan.
38:37They send in Narcissus, his former wrestling partner,
38:42to smother him to death.
38:54Narcissus could see that Commodus was on the way out.
38:58And he wanted to show that he was no longer just Commodus' right-hand man.
39:03It was a way of keeping him safe under the next dynasty.
39:10Commodus, the guy who wants to be a gladiator so badly,
39:15dying at the hands of an equally impressive athlete,
39:19is kind of a full circle moment for Commodus' life.
39:30Commodus is dead.
39:32The Senate give a collective shout of joy.
39:37The Senate declare him a public enemy,
39:40and they engage in various memory sanctions.
39:44What is often termed damnatio memoriae,
39:47the damnation of memory.
39:48Not in fact a Roman term,
39:50but it is a series of memory-fashioning practices.
39:57So Commodus is this figure that is disliked.
40:02And ends up having to be removed from the record in particular ways.
40:09The Senate changed the name of Commodinia back to Rome.
40:13They find images of Commodus on coins, on statues,
40:18and they destroy them.
40:20His name is taken out of inscriptions.
40:23The idea wasn't to completely render someone invisible,
40:28but to show the terrible behaviour of that individual.
40:33You don't forget him, but rather you remember him badly.
40:47And what we see after the assassination of Commodus is that Rome really starts to turn in on itself.
40:55There are a lot of political players that are interested in filling that power vacuum.
40:59And unfortunately Commodus hasn't had a chance to set up who might come next.
41:06Commodus doesn't leave an heir.
41:08He is the last of the Antonine dynasty, as we call it.
41:12So we get into a situation where we enter the third century of Imperial Rome and it's chaos.
41:22Political upheaval and quite a lot of turmoil.
41:25This institutes a cycle of emperors from the Empire clashing in the attempt to get the top job.
41:33We have five emperors in that one year.
41:36The historians mark this point as the end of the golden age of the Roman Empire.
41:50It's a bit difficult to know what to make of Commodus.
41:53On the one hand, our sources are very clear he is a terrible, terrible emperor.
41:58Cassius Dio perhaps tries to be balanced maybe by saying he doesn't think that Commodus is naturally wicked,
42:05but rather that he had a weak character and therefore was sort of influenced by the luxury and decadence of
42:11Empire
42:11and became worse and worse as things went on.
42:14He describes him as being guileless, but just a bit kind of easily led and a bit stupid really.
42:25It should be said that unlike many of his predecessors, he didn't engage in widespread genocide.
42:32Arguably, him making peace with some of the enemies on the frontier allows Rome to stabilise itself.
42:39So in fact, we just have an emperor who is slightly peculiar in terms of his interest in the arena,
42:45but not perhaps the worst of all time.
42:48But he ended up being the son of a man who is remembered as one of the greatest emperors that
42:52Rome ever had, Marcus Aurelius.
42:55So Commodus, no matter what he was like personally,
42:58was always going to be facing the problem that Marcus Aurelius was a really tough act to follow.
43:05And Commodus probably squandered more of an inheritance than any human being had before or since,
43:14to fight as a gladiator himself.
43:19The association of the highest office in the land with the spectacle and blood and thunder of gladiatorial combat
43:27is reinvented under the rule of Commodus.
43:34He's the first emperor to appear as a gladiator.
43:38And he's the last emperor to do so.
43:40Calverongs.
43:42Calvarylink
43:43Calvarylink
43:43Calvarylink
43:44targets
43:46Calvaryock
43:47He had
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