Original subtitles

Commodus becomes the emperor of Rome at a young age, but his rule will be unlike

any other.

He quickly indulges himself. He gets used to the amount of power he has.

While the people need a leader, he disappears, training not to govern, but

fight as a gladiator.

Commodus is obsessed with gladiators.

He's not interested in being a military man, but he is interested in spectacle.

Obsessed with the arena, he abandons the capital to perfect his lethal skills,

leaving the empire adrift.

It produced a lot of discontent among the Romans.

It's a sign of a bad emperor.

On his return to Rome, he stages grand games with a real shock.

is yet to come as Commodus enters the coliseum to perform in gladiatorial

for the entertainment of the masses.

Commodus is unique, the only emperor ever to appear as a gladiator.

For the senate it is humiliating and for the emperor deadly.

192 CE.

The Colosseum has been standing for more than 100 years.

Since its completion, a succession of emperors has focused on expanding the

Roman Empire.

But now, a different kind of emperor reigns.

50 ,000 people have gathered in the coliseum for an extravagant day.

Among them, this is the Emperor Commodus in the coliseum.

The Emperor Commodus has been emperor for about 12 years, and he's decided to

hold some magnificent games to show just what a powerful figure he is.

And these are going to be unlike any games that have ever been held before,

because he himself, is going to be the star attraction.

The emperor appears in his box, dressed as a god.

Commodus wants to show the audience that he as an emperor is so powerful, he is

basically one of the gods.

Everyone can see the emperor.

The emperor is as much the center of attention on these shows as the

down in the arena.

Some people want their emperor to share in the same kind of passions and

entertainment that they do.

And so that's an extra special spectacle for the people to witness.

And for the crowd, one of the big fuzzies they get is that there they are

sharing this hugely expensive entertainment with the emperor himself.

And then the games begin.

First he's going to show off to everyone what a skilled and brilliant hunter of

animals he can be He begins by killing a hundred bears

But he's never in any danger He has a catwalk built above

the coliseum so that he can safely walk above the animals and just pick them off

with his bow and arrow

And he actually kills them so that they line up in rows so that people could

count them easily.

And his audience marveled at his skill. He was in particular a very skilled

archer.

And it's not just terrifying animals that they're killing like lions and

rhinoceroses. They're gentle beasts like giraffes.

It seems that he sees this as an expression of his power.

Commodus calls for a drink.

The crowd shouts out, cheers.

And he raises his glass tube in acknowledgement.

The crowd, thrilled by the action, is eager for more.

But this is just the beginning.

The spectacles succumb.

will astonish the people of rome to make his games really special commodus had

brought in a rhinoceros that's the hardest beast to capture and to

the idea of a rhinoceros in the coliseum it was not new once

every few years maybe once or twice a decade might be introduced but it was

simply too exotic too difficult too expensive

You can't be killing rhinos at a regular rate. All the logistics and all the

economics argue against it.

And they're pretty hard to kill.

A rhinoceros has very tough hide.

They're big, they're powerful.

And yet, Commodus is on his catwalk, repeatedly throwing spears at it, firing

arrows at it, until the poor beast is dead.

As the game continues, Commodus kills countless exotic animals.

The slaughter is witnessed by a Roman senator and historian,

Cassius Dio.

Cassius Dio is making his way up the senatorial ladder at this point, and he

one of our main sources for the imperial period of Roman history.

He writes this huge, multi -volume history of Rome.

but it includes this great story of being at the games.

Commodus, as part of his theatrical spectacle in the Colosseum, cuts off the

head of an ostrich, pulls it up menacingly at the senator,

which they don't take quite

as they should, instead of being terrified by this spectacle of

They are trying desperately to stifle love.

These games are already notorious, but they take a shocking turn.

Commodus is about to cross a line no emperor ever should.

The moment in Rome's history has finally reached its pinnacle when we think

about gladiatorial games.

The crowd is going to witness an emperor fighting as a gladiator.

This is a spectacle no one has ever seen.

We've had emperors appear on the stage before in chariot races.

but we've never had an emperor actually appear as a gladiator.

I think for the ordinary Romans they see this as the emperor showing that he's

one of them.

He's prepared to get his hands dirty and

do things that will impress the ordinary people.

But for people like the senators who are watching this, this is just absolutely

unacceptable.

The emperor, the person who's meant to be at the top of Roman society, mixed

with those who are at the very bottom.

In general, the senate disapproved of showmen, and so Commodus was hardly

to endure himself to the senatorial class by performing as a gladiator, an

unheard -of disgrace.

You can hear the hearts of Roman men breaking as they watch their emperor put

himself into this position.

Because whilst they might all enjoy the game, certainly by that stage their

standards were such that you were not meant to participate in them if you were

from the upper classes.

What does it mean to take the position of imperial power and to colour

it? with all of the negative connotations that get associated with

combat.

Their bodies being slightly sullied by the way that they are forced to fight.

They are not achieving things on the battlefield.

This is just a display.

What does this say about an emperor that they would do this?

The Senate would have seen it as unbecoming of the most powerful man.

An individual is supposed to represent all the pomp and circumstance and

ceremony associated with the upper classes of Rome's society to fight in

Colosseum.

But, of course, Commodus, I don't think particularly cared much for the opinion

of that.

Commodus entering the arena may have shocked Rome and its senators, but it's

culmination of an obsession.

Commodus is an emperor gladiator, and he was particularly interested in

gladiatorial combat from very early in his life.

Commodus was born to a ruling emperor, the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

one of the famous good emperors of the second century CE.

As you would expect of someone who was born into the imperial family, Commodus

had a very good education.

Commodus was very fortunate.

One of his tutors was a spectacular doctor who had previously cared for

gladiators, Galen.

Galen was perhaps the greatest doctor from antiquity.

and becomes Marcus Aurelius' own personal physician, who then he succeeds

becomes Commodus' doctor as well.

So he came with an absolute wealth of medical knowledge and also knowledge

gladiators, and that may have inspired Commodus' own interest in gladiators.

It's not perhaps completely out of the question that Commodus would be

some training from gladiators as a young man.

We know that from as far back as 105 BCE that Roman soldiers are receiving

training from gladiators.

His father was trying to train him.

Marcus Aurelius is generally remembered by later historians as an intelligent

philosopher, emperor, so to speak.

He's not really interested in gladiators. For him, they're populist,

unintellectual.

And who says that he didn't like the amphitheatre because it was boring?

Marcus can see is that you don't want to waste a lot of good fighting men in

gladiatorial combat when they should be out fighting for the empire.

So he puts limits on how much people can spend on gladiators.

Marcus Aurelius tried to limit the violence of gladiatorial combat

insisting that gladiatorial parrots fight with wooden swords.

But of course it was very difficult, if not impossible, to enforce these rules.

So while he personally may have had reservations about the role of

matches in society, they certainly still took place during his reign.

Marcus Aurelius had spent almost all of his reign fighting in what is now

Germany and the area north of the Danube.

And he had started to bring this area under Roman control.

While fighting for Roman dominance, Marcus Aurelius spends years on the

battlefield and sends for his son Commodus to join him.

So Commodus goes out with his father on a military campaign.

He and his father seem to have had a fairly close relationship.

He seems to have quite liked his son.

Marcus Aurelius' intent was for his son to succeed him.

By 180 CE, Marcus Aurelius has secured major victories,

but he falls ill and dies while on campaign.

His son Commodus ascends to the throne.

Commodus is the sole emperor of Rome.

At only 18.

It's the first time you've actually had an emperor have a male heir succeed him

since the first century CE.

And since then there have been a series of good emperors where they have been

appointed on merit.

So you have a line of good emperors and then suddenly you get Commodus.

Commodus comes to lots of diplomatic arrangements with the groups that Marcus

Aurelius has been fighting.

Commodus just wasn't really interested in actual fighting.

He's not interested in being a military man.

So what he does is he makes peace with these tribes.

Which means that he doesn't have to stay out on those borders anymore but can

come back to Rome.

For Commodus to relinquish all his father's territorial gains hardly

could have gone down well with the Roman Senate.

Marcus Aurelius saw that as his greatest legacy.

This is perceived as being an act of cowardice, that he should have carried

wars that had largely been going Rome's way and consolidated his father's gains.

People back home thought that this was throwing in the towel prematurely.

With Commodus now on the throne,

There is hope the new emperor will govern wisely, like his father before

Homer is strikingly different from his father, Marcus Aurelius.

He's not interested in doing things the philosophical way.

He's not interested in the running of the Roman Empire.

It's a bunch of paperwork.

It's a bunch of grumpy senators.

Being in charge might be the most boring part of being a Roman emperor.

The emperors were expected to make sure that things run as they should, making

sure that the people have things that meet their basic needs.

And the idea is that the emperor will talk to the Senate and they'll negotiate

together to find the best way forward.

He should be passing laws. He should be mixing with the powerful men who run the

city and make policy.

So that's part of the role of being an emperor.

But that doesn't happen.

He entrusted major tasks to individuals that didn't show any particular aptitude

for the jobs that they were entrusted.

He quickly indulges himself.

He gets used to the amount of power he has.

wanting to follow his own interests and his own pursuit.

He spends a lot of money putting on shows.

And he needs to get the money from somewhere.

And the easiest way to do it is just to condemn rich men and then just

confiscate all their property.

So it means that the emperor can just appropriate their assets.

So many, many senators have this happen to them.

Now, obviously, that does not endear him to the senatorial class as a whole.

And so we get this tension between the emperor and the senate.

The senate is outraged by the emperor's actions.

Plots against Commodus slowly form.

And soon, his life will be placed in grave danger.

By 182 CE, Commodus has been in power for two years.

He has taken money from the wealthy elite of the city to indulge his own

pleasures. The Senate's dissatisfaction with his dangerous ruler grows deeper.

He's still judged with his character, prone to displays of great

extravagance.

It was very unclear in which way his reign was taking not just the city but

empire.

It seems like Commodus is doing things that don't accord with a number of

of Rome.

Not being able to control kind of his own indulgences, as it were, and the

effect that that then has on the imperial treasury.

And so a conspiracy is formulated.

that also involves his sister.

His sister Lucilla didn't see a way that Rome could continue to function under

this sort of emperor.

She must have had powerful backers.

People like the senators, they get a sense that Commodus has gone too far.

The conspiracy itself is to stab Commodus.

The assassination attempt is made as Commodus approaches the amphitheater,

flanked by his bodyguards.

From the shadows, the attack is launched.

A man produces this dagger and says, the Senate sends you this.

So they're unsuccessful.

And at first, Commodus doesn't seem to overreact.

It makes the Emperor think, well, perhaps the Senate are out to get me.

It's framed in terms of these political implications of what Commodus is doing

to the state.

But then there seems to be more investigation.

Some of the people involved in the initial attempt were trying to cover up

had happened and their involvement in it.

And that's when we start to see more accusations coming out.

When you have these sort of big conspiracies, there are often leaks.

Lucilla had a lover.

She was talking about getting rid of Commodus with this lover.

And then that maybe came to the fore.

When Commodus learns the identities of the assassins, he is enraged.

The conspirators are executed, including his own sister, Lucilla.

Commodus realizes the threat of conspiracy and decides to leave Rome.

That means leaving someone in charge, and he leaves one of his imperial

attendants, Cleander.

And that is seen as sort of wholly unsuitable as a person to be in charge

functionally of running the empire.

Commodus leaves Rome, goes to hang out in Lanuvia, tucked away in his palace,

and he's just enjoying himself.

He's investing all of his energy in doing exactly what he loves.

Commodus is endlessly practising all his gladiatorial skills.

One of the people that Commodus is training with during this period when

Lanuvium is a wrestler named Narcissus.

He teaches him all of these different moves.

Practising throwing his spears, firing his bows and arrows.

And how to wrestle effectively.

He's having hundreds of mock fights against people.

He actually has genuine skill.

He's repeated to have had almost 1 ,000 fights in private in his own purpose

-built amphitheatre in Linuvium.

Even though these are not proper fights, fighting the emperor could be dangerous

for the gladiators.

He may cut off the tips of their ears or the tip of their nose.

On one occasion, the gladiator offered to fight him with no weapon, but he took

this as an insult, fearing that the gladiator would seize his own sword and

him with it.

And so he immediately has the gladiator executed.

It appears that Commodus is engaging in all sorts of debauchery, leading a

dissolute. The sources even describe him at this point as dressing up as a god.

He starts dressing as the god Hercules.

So he would wear a lion -skin shawl and carry this club around.

Hercules is a really popular demigod for gladiators in the ancient world.

Hercules is known for the incredible feats of strength that he performs.

That's part of his mythology.

Gladiators could identify with him.

He's a god of labour, who through his hard work and his skill, who acquires

divine status.

Makes him quite a good model for people who fight for a living.

So, you know, the imagery of Hercules as this mythological hero.

carries the potential to display this sort of powerful image, but again also

one that connects them to a deeply heroic and mythologized past.

That is what Commodus wants to underline, that he is an emperor who is

skillful, so powerful, that he has become a living god.

Commodus has abandoned his responsibilities as emperor to play at

gladiator, and the empire starts to feel the consequences.

Back in Rome, the empire is not doing very well.

The emperor is away from Rome, they've left someone else in charge, and that,

definition, is a problem.

Cleander is pretty much in control in Rome.

He's not particularly well set up for political life.

He's corrupt.

He's very unpopular with the senatorial class.

Cleander's corruption reaches a point where he is seen as a symbol of imperial

mismanagement by the Senate.

And at one point there's a food shortage, a famine, and the people are

for someone to blame.

Cleander falls out of favour with different elements of Roman society, by

people as well as by the Senate, and his position becomes untenable.

He's hated by the Roman people.

He's hated by the senators.

The people turn on him, hurling insults at him, threatening him and wanting

Commodus back.

They call for his head and Commodus gives it to them.

Cleander's head is displayed through the city on a pole.

And it's after this that Commodus then comes back to Rome.

Commodus reluctantly returns to Rome, but his extravagance and self

-indulgence continue.

Commodus believes that he is a new kind of emperor for a new kind of age.

And in some respect, he's right, because he is nothing like his dad.

Marcus Aurelius was wise and a good ruler, whereas Commodus is the absolute

opposite of that.

The emperor gets bigger and bigger ideas about himself.

His megalomania seems really quite pronounced by this stage.

He goes about refashioning Rome in his own image.

Commodus has a colossal statue changed so that it is a statue of himself

as the god Hercules.

Coins were remade depicting Hercules.

And this would be too much to believe unless we had the coins that actually

it. Commodus' obsession with Hercules and the refashioning of Rome.

are matched only by his continuing love for gladiatorial combat.

Commodus is training in the Ludus Magnus.

The training barracks for gladiators right next door to the Colosseum.

And it has a training arena inside it with seating, so clearly people were

to be watching when the gladiators were training.

Maybe the public was allowed to come in, like attending a dress rehearsal.

He has his own personal passageway underground.

The tunnel attaches it to the Colosseum. So that he can have private access to

the imperial box in the Colosseum. Go backwards and forwards without going

the open.

From the Senate's point of view, he's just abandoning his real job of being

emperor.

This must have been reminiscent to what people's great -grandparents must have

said about Nero's reign. The emperor should be above a profession that's

associated with the enslaved class.

In 191 CE, a fire breaks out in Rome and

this gives Commodus the opportunity, because of the destruction, to rebuild

city.

much like Nero had done after the fire of 64.

But also he decides to take this opportunity to rename the city after

Commodus renamed Rome Commodania in an attempt to quite literally emulate

Alexander the Great by naming the great city of the Roman Empire after himself.

Which I think more than anything else speaks to sheer megalomaniac ego that

at the heart of who he is as a human being.

He believes himself to be the representative of what Romanists now...

And for him, that is tied up directly with this idea of the spectacle.

So it's about the chariot racing. It's about the beast fighting. It's about

gladiatorial combat. It's about the show of Roman power in the center.

So he sees Rome as a new place that he is building through his own interests.

So he does see it as a refounding.

To celebrate the rebuilding of Rome, Commodus announces 14 days of

games. People flood into the capital from across the empire.

And Commodus has another shocking revelation.

After a life spent training in private, for the first time ever, he will

publicly step into the arena.

Not as emperor.

but as a gladiator.

November 192 CE.

The Colosseum is filled to capacity for 14 days of lavish games and the

debut of Emperor Commodus as a gladiator.

The Colosseum was always packed, but when you've got the Emperor appearing,

would have been tough to get a ticket.

You'll have had to have used your contact. If you knew people who knew the

emperor, you know, you would have to source a ticket for yourself. So it

wouldn't have been easy to get in at all.

The games were free to locals and visitors from out of town had to pay.

This is really an insult to the population who should be getting the

free in the first place.

Commodus also doesn't just appear for fun. He decides that he should be paid

his actions.

Commodus charges the Senate a million thirties for every gladiatorial combat

puts on.

Enough money that could make you a senator.

So not only to be charging people to attend his spectacles, but charging the

senators to attend his spectacles would really heap insult upon the senators'

heads. who would have despised him for appearing there in the first place.

As parts of his games, he kills a variety of beasts.

But the real star attraction is when he acts as a gladiator.

He likes to enter the arena from the gladiatorial school as if he somehow

belongs there and is like a real gladiator.

kind of part of the spectacle that he's enjoying as much as anything.

Commodus stepped into Colosseum to engage in combat.

Commodus liked to fight as a secutio, the gladiator who fights with a sword

shield.

This is where Commodus really excelled.

The fact he was so good at it is something that really won the admiration

contemporaries.

The Romans loved seeing an amazing fight, a technical fight.

The court didn't really combat his opponent for the day on with a wooden

He fights a gladiator who has been told not to harm the emperor in any way.

He's going to make sure he's not in any danger himself.

It is clear enough that whatever Commodus' pretensions to being a

is not a fight he will allow himself to lose.

It is a bizarre sight to see Emperor Commodus fight as a gladiator.

But more strange spectacles await.

At one point, a group of gladiators refused to fight, so he has them chained

together and made to fight for death.

He rounds up people with disabilities to slaughter them.

He's trying to mimic one of Hercules' mythical fights against giants.

He wants to show he is as skilled a fighter as Hercules was.

that his level of skill is so high that it raises him up to the level of a

deity.

It does become a bit of a bloodbath for the sake of it.

As far as the audience is concerned, there would have been a fair amount of

trepidation because Commodus clearly was not well.

It's a bizarre form of entertainment that presumably he thought people would

find interesting, but I think for those watching, was just beyond anything

normal.

People worry that he's even intending to kill sections of the crowd.

Given how unpredictable Commodus was, there was a good reason for the average

Roman spectator to fear for his or her life.

For 14 days, Commodus lives out his strange desires.

But after the games have drawn to a close, he makes a grand announcement.

The final straw is when Commodus announces that he's going to celebrate

year by becoming a gladiator.

Being a full -time gladiator versus practicing like a gladiator or appearing

as a gladiator, that was a real commitment, a real decision.

He has mixed one of the highest officers of state with an occupation of low

repute.

He has blurred the lines beyond his predecessors.

For an emperor to become a gladiator really bucks the whole system of the

belief in dignity and the pecking order in society.

The senatorial class start to freak out, really. They think he really has lost

it this time.

The emperor's advisors urge him to reconsider.

But Commodus...

sees this as betrayal.

Some other senators find themselves on a list of people who will be put to death

in the new year.

At that point they realise that they need to do something.

It seems that Commodus ends up facing turmoil from within his own

household.

The imperial palace at this point in time There are a lot of positions that

filled by freedmen, so people who used to be enslaved but are now freed so that

they can be in the employ of the emperor.

And Commodus has this situation going on in his household as well.

And these freedmen see everything that is going on.

And when they decide that things are going too far, that's when the talk

to happen.

The discussion is that perhaps they can poison him.

So Marcia is a woman who lives with Commodus.

She's not his wife, but we might think of her as a concubine.

And she can dispense the poison.

She's like, I've got this. Don't you worry.

Sensing an opportunity, Marcia mixes poison into Commodus' wine.

She hands him the chalice.

The Emperor drinks deep.

The fate of the Empire now hangs in the balance.

Commodus has drunk from Marcia's poisoned chalice.

The conspirators wait for the effects to take hold.

This gave them hope.

That was going to be the end of the emperor.

Unfortunately for her, and indeed everybody involved in this plot,

Commodus has managed to get himself out of trouble.

He's eating a lot and drinking a lot, which means he's not feeling great.

He vomits up the poison, and instead of it taking full effect, so they have to

be quick on their feet, find another method.

This leads to a secondary plan.

They send in Narcissus, his former wrestling partner to smother him to

Narcissus could see that Commodus was on the way out.

And he wanted to show that he was no longer just Commodus' right -hand man.

It was a way of keeping him safe under the next dynasty.

Commodus, the guy who wants to be a gladiator so badly, dying at the hands

equally impressive athlete, is kind of a full -circle moment for Commodus' life.

Commodus is dead.

The Senate give a collective shout of joy.

The Senate declare him a public enemy, and they engage in various memory

sanctions.

What is often termed damnatio memoriae, the damnation of memory, not in fact a

Roman term, but it is a series of memory fashioning practices.

disliked and ends up having to be removed from the record in particular

The Senate changed the name of Commodenia back to Rome.

They find images of Commodus on coins, on statues, and they destroy them.

His name is taken out of inscriptions.

The idea wasn't to completely render someone invisible.

but to show the terrible behaviour of that individual.

You don't forget him, but rather you remember him badly.

And what we see after the assassination of Commodus is that Rome really starts

to turn in on itself.

There are a lot of political players that are interested in filling that

vacuum, and unfortunately Commodus hasn't had a chance to set up who might

next.

Commodus doesn't leave an heir. He is the last of the Antonine dynasty, as we

call it.

So we get into a situation where we enter the third century of...

Imperial Rome.

And it's chaos.

Political upheaval and quite a lot of turmoil.

This institutes a cycle of emperors from the empires clashing in the attempt all

to get to top jobs.

We have five emperors in that one year.

The stories mark this point at the end of the golden age of the Roman Empire.

It's a bit difficult to know what to make of Commodus.

On the one hand, our thoughts are very clear. He is a terrible, terrible

emperor.

Cassius Dio perhaps tries to be balanced, maybe, by saying he doesn't

Commodus is naturally wicked, but rather that he had a weak character and

therefore was sort of influenced by the luxury and decadence of empire and

became worse and worse as things went on.

He describes him as being guileless.

but just a bit kind of easily led and a bit stupid, really.

It should be said that, unlike many of his predecessors, he didn't engage in

widespread genocide.

Arguably, him making peace with some of the enemies on the frontier allows room

to stabilise itself.

So, in fact, we just have an emperor who is slightly peculiar in terms of his

interest in the arena, but not perhaps the worst of all time.

But he ended up being the son of a man who is remembered as one of the greatest

emperors that Rome ever had, Marcus Aurelius. So Commodus, no matter what he

like personally, was always going to be facing the problem that Marcus Aurelius

was a really tough act to follow.

And Commodus probably squandered more of an inheritance than any human being

had before or since to fight as a gladiator himself.

The association of the highest office in the land with the spectacle and blood

and thunder of gladiatorial combat is reinvented under the rule of Commodus.

He's the first emperor to appear as a gladiator and he's the last emperor to

so.