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The Emperor Commodus: God and Gladiator, by John S McHugh
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Commodus is synonymous with debauchery and megalomania, best remembered for fighting as a gladiator. Ridiculed and maligned by historians since his own time, modern popular culture knows him as the patricidal villain in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Much of his infamy is clearly based on fact, but is this the full story?
John McHugh reviews the ancient evidence to present the first full-length biography of Commodus in English. His twelve-year reign is set in its historical context, showing that the ‘kingdom of gold’ he supposedly inherited was actually an empire devastated by plague and war. Openly autocratic, Commodus compromised the privileges and vested interests of the senatorial clique, who therefore plotted to murder him. Surviving repeated conspiracies only convinced Commodus that he was under divine protection, increasingly identifying himself as Hercules reincarnate. This and his antics in the arena allowed his senatorial enemies to present Commodus as a mad tyrant to justify his murder, which they finally succeeded in arranging by having him strangled by a wrestler.
- Sales Rank: #292707 in Books
- Published on: 2015-11-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.75" h x 6.75" w x 1.00" l, 1.50 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
About the Author
John S McHugh has a BA and MA in Ancient History. His love of the ancient world has led him to travel to many classical sites. He is currently an Assistant Headmaster at a secondary school in Bolton. He is the co-author of a text book on Bolton's connections with the slave trade and is currently assisting Bolton Museum with a project to record the oral history of the local populace with the aim of promoting understanding between people of different generations or ethnic and social backgrounds.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Character assassination – Roman style
By JPS
This is an interesting and fascinating book on the life of a much maligned Emperor – Commodus, the son and successor of Marcus-Aurelius, and his twelve year reign as Emperor. Despite some glitches in both form and substance, it is very much worth reading for anyone interested in the Roman Empire in general, and, perhaps more specifically, in the way in which it functioned. I can think of at least four main reasons for reading this book.
The first is to learn about Commodus himself, that is, who the real Commodus was likely to have been, as opposed to the caricature of the “bad emperor” that the senatorial enemies that survived him made him out to be. This book is not quite the only existing one on this emperor. There are others in other languages. There are also other books on certain aspects of Commodus’ life, and on his reign in particular. However, it does seem to be the only full biography in English, and the examination of what little is known of his younger years, which his often missing from some of the other books, helps to cast a light on this outstanding (for better or for worse) character and his qualities. This is not to say that he was “all sweetness and light”. Had he been that, he would not have survived the numerous plots against his life for so long. However, there was more to him that the debauched monster and megalomaniac that he has been portrayed to be, and this is what John McHugh shows so well.
The second reason for reading this book is that it shows to what extent the Empire was in trouble when Marcus-Aurelius died. In other words, as the book’s summary mentioned so aptly, the supposedly “Kingdom of gold” that Commodus inherited from his father was “actually an empire devastated by plague and war”. The latter has lasted more than a decade while the plague, brought back from the East and the Parthian Empire by Verus and the victorious eastern legions, came back in devastating and debilitating bouts over more than twenty years and most of Commodus’ reign. Finally, and what this summary does not mention but which is well shown in the book, was the impact of these disruptions on the Roman economy and society, and on the imperial treasury and state, chronically short of money and obliged to debase the currency to make ends meet.
The third great quality of this book is to show, through a careful analysis of the sources, how biased these are and to what extent they have managed to achieve an extremely negative portrait of Commodus, to the extent that he is generally compared to Caligula and Nero. For me, it seemed like his autocratic tendencies, the senatorial opposition and plots that he had to face, and his demise were more similar to those exhibited and experienced by Domitian a century before. In particular, this analysis shows to what extent this image reflects a very successful character assassination campaign which resulted from and was to some extent encapsulated in the Roman damnatio memoriae. Although the author at times present assumptions and personal theories as facts, the analysis showing that Commodus has been skilfully and very much blackened by the senatorial written sources is mostly convincing. Also convincing is the huge difference of treatment by these sources between Marcus Aurelius who in fact ruled thanks to a compromise with the Senate, and his more autocratic son who was has to deal with a more unstable situation and took harsher measures to address it.
The fourth strongpoint of this point is that it describes and illustrate rather well the growing issues and difficulties that the Empire was confronted with, and the fact that he was becoming harder to rule. A point that has been made time and again is that of the growing pressure on the frontiers, although this does not necessarily mean that the army’s importance increased since its role and backing had always been crucial to obtain and keep the imperial throne. The other parts of the equation - the mob at Rome and the senatorial class - are perhaps less often made and the huge concentration of richness of the latter, and its ability to evade taxes and refuse to provide manpower to the Emperor, have at times been underestimated. It is against them that Commodus, and some of his predecessors (Domitian for instance) or successors (Septimius Severus) fought, with one senatorial faction or another plotting the Emperor’s murder and the Emperor purging the Senate both as retaliation and to secure through spoliation and confiscation the wherewithal to keep the Empire running. Unsurprisingly, paranoia tended to be – or to become – part of the “job requirements” and, as well shown by the author, this is also what happened to Commodus, especially since his mother, his sister, some of his freedmen and some his “friends” turned out to be among the plotters.
A related point here is that the author also shows rather well that Commodus’ antics, including fighting as a gladiator and posing as a new Hercules, were not devoid of political calculations and were not the acts of a mad tyrant.
Having mentioned all these strongpoints, there are however a few glitches and setbacks. One is that the author, times, tries too hard to convince his readers and, in his eagerness to do so, tends to present as “facts” elements that are only his considered opinion and assumptions. Another is that there are many repetitions. These can become somewhat “counter-productive”, assuming that they are meant to summarise or reemphasise points, or even tedious. Finally, the presentation of the text, with long and compact paragraphs with little space in between, as if the author had crammed in as much as he could within the limited space that he was afforded, does not exactly improve the book’s readability. Four strong stars.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By Amazon Customer
This was a very thorough rendering of one of history's most interesting figures.
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