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Updated: June 28, 2025
Agathemer, who knew the former slaves and present freedwomen of the Palace far better than I, whispered that the others were the sister and wife of Perennis and the wife of Cleander, like him a former slave and pampered freedman, and for long his rival.
He instanced the rebellion of Maternus as a result of the incompetence and venality of Perennis. Worse than this, he said, Perennis was plotting the Emperor's assassination and the elevation to the Principate of one of his two sons. This project of his, which he was furthering by astute secret machinations, had come to the knowledge of a loyal member of the Emperor's retinue.
Our promotion from the mills to the kitchen took place early in March of the year when Manius Acilius Glabrio, after an interval of thirty-four years since his first consulship, was consul for the second time and had as nominal associate Commodus, preening himself, for the fifth time, on the highest office in the Republic, which he had done little to deserve, and while he held it, did less to justify himself in possessing, since he left most of the duties of the consulship to Glabrio, as he left most of the Principate to Perennis, his Prefect of the Praetorium.
One of the sergeants made a speech to us, explaining our liberation and their presence in Placentia. He called us "comrades" and began his harangue with a long and virulent denunciation of Perennis, the Prefect of the Palace.
I shall now state your charges, that the accused man may hear them now for the first time from my own lips and may here and now make his defence to you and to me." He paused. My eyes had been on Commodus and now shifted to Perennis. Perennis was a handsome man, but in spite of, rather than because of, his build and features.
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.
Perennis, certainly, gathered himself together promptly, got himself under full control, had all his wits about him and made a perfectly conceived, finely delivered, coherent, logical, telling speech in his own defence.
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.
Most likely the separation from their fellows of the veteran mutineers was all his own idea; Perennis was not the man to carry out so bold a stroke nor so much as to conceive of it. Indubitably, after dark, the eighteen veteran sergeants were secretly called to a meeting with Cleander. The fellow must have possessed superhuman powers of persuasion.
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.
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