He Did Not Finish His Father’s Projects! Commodus’ Sudden and Unfruitful End

Historia Augusta: Commodus Antoninus 17.1-8

“Compelled by these things, but still too late, the prefect of the guard, Quintus Aemilius Laetus, and his concubine, Marcia initiated a conspiracy for killing [Commodus]. First, they poisoned him. When this did not work out, they had him strangled to death by an athlete he used to exercise with.

Commodus had a decent body with a vacant expression, as is often the case for drunkards. His speech was not sophisticated, his hair was always dyed and shining thanks to gold dust—and thanks to a fear of the barber, he used to shorten his hair by singeing it.

The senate and the people requested that his body be dragged by hook and then put into the Tiber. But, later, thanks to the command of Pertinax, it was installed in Hadrian’s Mausoleum.

No public buildings remain from his time apart from the bath which Cleander built in his name. And the senate erased the name he had inscribed on the works of others. He did not even complete his father’s projects.”

His incitati, licet nimis sero, Quintus Aemilius Laetus praef.et Marcia concubina eius inierunt coniurationem ad occidendum eum. 2 Primumque ei venenum dederunt; quod cum minus operaretur, per athletam, cum quo exerceri solebat, eum strangularunt. 3 Fuit forma quidem corporis iusta, vultu insubido, ut ebriosi solent, et sermone incondito, capillo semper fucato et auri ramentis inluminato, adurens comam et barbam timore tonsoris. 4 Corpus eius ut unco traheretur atque in Tiberim mitteretur, senatus et populus postulavit, sed postea iussu Pertinacis in monumentum Hadriani translatum est. 5 Opera eius praeter Iavacrum, quod Cleander nomine ipsius fecerat, nulla exstant. 6 Sed nomen eius alienis operibus incisum senatus erasit. 7 Nec patris autem sui opera perfecit.

Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius and inspiration for the mad emperor in Gladiator, was actually a roman emperor who reigned from 180-191 CE.

Here’s a statue made during his lifetime depicting him as Herakles: