COMMODUS, LUCIUS AELIUS AURELIUS (161-192), also called Marcus Antoninus, emperor of Rome, son of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina, was born at Lanuvium on the 31st of August 161. In spite of a careful education he soon showed a fondness for low society and amusement. At the age of fifteen he was associated by his father in the government. On the death of Aurelius, whom he had accompanied in the war against the Quadi and Marcomanni, he hastily concluded peace and hurried back to Rome (180). The first years of his reign were uneventful, but in 183 be was attacked by an assassin at the instigation of his sister Lucilla and many members of the senate, which felt deeply insulted by the contemptuous manner in which Commodus treated it. From this time he became tyrannical. Many distinguished Romans were put to death as implicated in the conspiracy, and others were executed for no reason at all. The treasury was exhausted by lavish expenditure on gladiatorial and wild beast combats and on the soldiery, and the property of the wealthy was confiscated. At the same time Commodus, proud of his bodily strength and dexterity, exhibited himself in the arena, slew wild animals and fought with gladiators, and commanded that he should be worshipped as the Roman Hercules. Plots against his life naturally began to spring up. That of his favourite Perennis, praefect of the praetorian guard, was discovered in time. The next danger was from the people, who were infuriated by the dearth of corn. The mob repelled the praetorian guard, but the execution of the hated minister Cleander quieted the tumult. The attempt also of the daring highwayman Maternus to seize the empire was betrayed; but at last Eclectus the emperor’s chamberlain, Laetus the praefect of the praetorians, and his mistress Marcia, finding their names on the list of those doomed to death, united to destroy him. He was poisoned, and then strangled by a wrestler named Narcissus, on the 31st of December 192. During his reign unimportant wars were successfully carried on by his generals Clodius Albinus, Pescennius Niger and Ulpius Marcellus. The frontier of Dacia was successfully defended against the Scythians and Sarmatians, and a tract of territory reconquered in north Britain. In 1874 a statue of Commodus was dug up at Rome, in which he is represented as Hercules—a lion’s skin on his head, a club in his right and the apples of the Hesperides in his left hand.
See Aelius Lampridius, Herodian, and fragments in Dio Cassius; H. Schiller, Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit; J. Zürcher, “Commodus” (1868, in Büdinger’s Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte, a criticism of Herodian’s account); Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, ii. 2464 ff. (von Rohden); Heer, “Der historische Wert des Vita Commodi” (Philologus, Supplementband ix.).
COMMON LAW, like “civil law,” a phrase with many shades of meaning, and probably best defined with reference to the various things to which it is opposed. It is contrasted with statute law, as law not promulgated by the sovereign body; with equity, as the law prevailing between man and man, unless when the court of chancery assumed jurisdiction; and with local or customary law, as the general law for the whole realm, tolerating variations in certain districts and under certain conditions. It is also sometimes contrasted with civil, or canon, or international law, which are foreign systems recognized in certain special courts only and within limits defined by the common law. As against all these contrasted kinds of law, it may be described broadly as the universal law of the realm, which applies wherever they have not been introduced, and which is supposed to have a principle for every possible case. Occasionally, it would appear to be used in a sense which would exclude the law developed by at all events the more modern decisions of the courts.
Blackstone divides the civil law of England into lex scripta or statute law, and lex non scripta or common law. The latter, he says, consists of (1) general customs, which are the common law strictly so called, (2) particular customs prevailing in certain districts, and (3) laws used in particular courts. The first is the law by which “proceedings and determinations in the king’s ordinary courts of justice are guided and directed.” That the eldest son alone is heir to his ancestor, that a deed is of no validity unless sealed and delivered, that wills shall be construed more favourably and deeds more strictly, are examples of common law doctrines, “not set down in any written statute or ordinance, but depending on immemorial usage for their support.” The validity of these usages is to be determined by the judges—“the depositaries of the law, the living oracles who must decide in all cases of doubt, and who are bound by an oath to decide according to the law of the land.” Their judgments are preserved as records, and “it is an established rule to abide by former precedents where the same points come again in litigation.” The extraordinary deference paid to precedents is the source of the most striking peculiarities of the English common law. There can be little doubt that it was the rigid adherence of the common law courts to established precedent which caused the rise of an independent tribunal administering justice on more equitable principles—the tribunal of the chancellor, the court of chancery. And the old common law courts—the king’s bench, common pleas and exchequer—were always, as compared with the court of chancery, distinguished for a certain narrowness and technicality of reasoning. At the same time the common law was never a fixed or rigid system. In the application of old precedents to the changing circumstances of society, and in the development of new principles to meet new cases, the common law courts displayed an immense amount of subtlety and ingenuity, and a great deal of sound sense. The continuity of the system was not less remarkable than its elasticity. Two great defects of form long disfigured the English law. One was the separation of common law and equity. The Judicature Act of 1873 remedied this by merging the jurisdiction of all the courts in one supreme court, and causing equitable principles to prevail over those of the common law where they differ. The other is the overwhelming mass of precedents in which the law is embedded. This can only be removed by some well-conceived scheme of the nature of a code or digest; to some extent this difficulty has been overcome by such acts as the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, the Partnership Act 1890 and the Sale of Goods Act 1893.
The English common law may be described as a pre-eminently national system. Based on Saxon customs, moulded by Norman lawyers, and jealous of foreign systems, it is, as Bacon says, as mixed as the English language and as truly national. And like the language, it has been taken into other English-speaking countries, and is the foundation of the law in the United States.
COMMON LODGING-HOUSE, “a house, or part of a house, where persons of the poorer classes are received for gain, and in which they use one or more rooms in common with the rest of the inmates, who are not members of one family, whether for eating or sleeping” (Langdon v. Broadbent, 1877, 37 L.T. 434; Booth v. Ferrett, 1890, 25 Q.B.D. 87). There is no statutory definition of the class of houses in England intended to be included in the expression “common lodging-house,” but the above definition is very generally accepted as embracing those houses which, under the Public Health and other Acts, must be registered and inspected. The provisions of the Public Health Act 1875 are that every urban and rural district council must keep registers showing the names and residences of the keepers of all common lodging-houses in their districts, the situation of every such house, and the number of lodgers authorized by them to be received therein. They may require the keeper to affix and keep undefaced and legible a notice with the words “registered common lodging-house” in some conspicuous place on the outside of the house, and may make by-laws fixing the number of lodgers, for the separation of the sexes, for promoting cleanliness and ventilation, for the giving of notices and the taking of precautions in case of any infectious disease, and generally for the well ordering of such houses. The keeper of a common lodging-house is required to limewash the walls and ceilings twice a year—in April and October—and to provide a proper water-supply. The whole of the house must be open at all times to the inspection of any officer of a council. The county of London (except the city) is under the Common Lodging Houses Acts 1851 and 1853, with the Sanitary Act 1866 and the Sanitary Law Amendment Act 1874. The administration of these acts was, from 1851 to 1894, in the hands of the chief commissioner of police, when it was transferred to the London County Council.
COMMON ORDER, BOOK OF, sometimes called The Order of Geneva or Knox’s Liturgy, a directory for public worship in the Reformed Church in Scotland. In 1557 the Scottish Protestant lords in council enjoined the use of the English Common Prayer, i.e. the Second Book of Edward VI. Meanwhile, at Frankfort, among British Protestant refugees, a controversy was going on between the upholders of the English liturgy and the French Reformed Order of Worship respectively. By way of compromise John Knox and other ministers drew up a new liturgy based upon earlier Continental Reformed Services, which was not deemed satisfactory, but which on his removal to Geneva he published in 1556 for the use of the English congregations in that city. The Geneva book made its way to Scotland, and was used here and there by Reformed congregations. Knox’s return in 1559 strengthened its position, and in 1562 the General Assembly enjoined the uniform use of it as the “Book of Our Common Order” in “the administration of the Sacraments and solemnization of marriages and burials of the dead.” In 1564 a new and enlarged edition was printed in Edinburgh, and the Assembly ordered that “every Minister, exhorter and reader” should have a copy and use the Order contained therein not only for marriage and the sacraments but also “in Prayer,” thus ousting the hitherto permissible use of the Second Book of Edward VI. at ordinary service. “The rubrics as retained from the Book of Geneva made provision for an extempore prayer before the sermon, and allowed the minister some latitude in the other two prayers. The forms for the special services were more strictly imposed, but liberty was also given to vary some of the prayers in them. The rubrics of the Scottish portion of the book are somewhat stricter, and, indeed, one or two of the Geneva rubrics were made more absolute in the Scottish emendations; but no doubt the ‘Book of Common Order’ is best described as a discretionary liturgy.”