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The audience, I among them, stared, awe-struck and fascinated, at Commodus laying a bloody hand on his own head; we shuddered: I saw many look back and forth from Palus in the arena to the figure on the Imperial throne.
Then let Pertinax make new laws and restore the ancient liberties. I will die happy." "O youth insolence of youth!" said Galen, smiling. He resumed his mixing of the powders, adding new ingredients. "I was young once young and insolent. I dared to try to tutor Commodus! But never in my long life was I insolent enough to claim all virtue for myself and bid my elders go and hide!
Laetus, the ringleader in the assassination of Commodus, had been at that time the praetorian prefect an office which a German writer considers as best represented to modern ideas by the Turkish post of grand vizier.
He is one of three men who would fight for the throne if somebody slew Commodus, although he would not run the risk of slaying him himself, and he would betray us if we should take him into confidence. I know him well. He is a lawyer and a Carthaginian. He would never ask for the nomination; he is too crafty.
But, excepting this violent eruption of military licence, the two centuries from Augustus to Commodus passed away unstained with civil blood and undisturbed by revolution.
The Roman had already bent his knee for long years to the divinity of the emperors, and yet the statues of the gods stood erect; the temples retained their sanctity for the eye long after the gods had become a theme for mockery, and the noble architecture of the palaces that shielded the infamies of Nero and of Commodus were a protest against them.
Wise tyrants, like Peter and Frederic the Great, will be endured, from their devotion to public interests; but unwise tyrants, ruling for self-interest or pleasure, will be hurled from power, or assassinated like Nero or Commodus, as the only way to get rid of the miseries they inflict. Now of the class of wise and enlightened tyrants was Richelieu.
The merits of Aurelius procured Commodus an easy accession to the throne. He was acknowledged emperor by the army, by the senate and people, and afterwards by all the provinces. But his whole reign was a tissue of wantonness and folly, cruelty and injustice, rapacity and corruption.
Upon the death of his father, Commodus found himself embarrassed with the command of a great army, and the conduct of a difficult war against the Quadi and Marcomanni. The servile and profligate youths whom Marcus had banished, soon regained their station and influence about the new emperor.
No mention whatever is made of Athenagoras either by Eusebius or Jerome, though he appears to have been an author of a certain importance, two of whose works, an Apology addressed to Marcus Aurelius and Commodus and a treatise on the Resurrection, are still extant. The genuineness of neither of these works is doubted.
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