Works and Other Worthy Writings (Aldine Edition)

...with all favorable acclamations and the scattering of crowns and flowers. But after he entered the city and first greeted the temples of Jupiter and the other gods, and gave thanks to the entire Senate and the Praetorian guards for the loyalty they had kept toward him, he retreated to the Palatine palace. For a few years, therefore, he showed nothing but honor to his father’s friends and kept them in his counsel for all affairs. Then, having delegated the care of the whole empire to others, he appointed Perennis, an Italian man most skilled in military discipline, as prefect of the Praetorians. He, abusing the youth’s penchant for delights, allowed him to be corrupted by gluttony, and having taken up all cares and labors, he managed the entire empire entirely. There was in the man an unquenchable thirst for riches, as he valued nothing he had acquired, but gaped insatiably for new profits. This man began both to oppress the paternal friends of Commodus with slanders and to bring into suspicion every person who was very wealthy and noble, so that with the youth terrified and those men put to death, he himself might have the cause and power to invade their goods and fortunes. However, for some time, both the memory of his father and the reverence for his friends restrained the youth. Then, as if some malignant and envious fortune, it subverted his character, which was still upright and moderate. For the matter happened thus: Lucilla was the eldest sister of Commodus. She had previously married the emperor L. Verus, whom Marcus had joined to himself as a partner in the empire, and by placing his sister in marriage, he had bound him with the strongest tie of affinity. But after L. had completed his fate, while the honors of the principate remained with Lucilla, her father betrothed her to Pompeianus. Nevertheless, Commodus left her the former honor to enjoy. For he allowed her to sit on the imperial seat in the theater and to have fire carried before her according to custom. But afterwards, when Commodus took Crispina as his wife, and it was necessary for the prince’s wife to take precedence, Lucilla, bearing this with an uneasy mind and turning that honor into an insult to herself—since she knew that Commodus was beloved by her husband, Pompeianus—did not dare to suggest anything to him about seizing the empire. But having tempted the mind of Quadratus, a most noble and wealthy youth, with whom she was also thought to have a custom of lewdness, and having complained most heavily to him about the injury received, she gradually led the youth to plot most perniciously against him and the entire Senate. Indeed, among the other members of the senatorial order who conspired with her in that crime, she also joined to herself a certain young man named Quintianus, of a ready and bold mind, and persuaded him to take the dagger in his bosom, to choose a time and place, and by making a sudden attack, to kill Commodus, promising that she would take care of the rest by distributing money. He, stopping at the entrance of the Amphitheater (since, being a dark place...