The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

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.