A bit before an end came for Commodus, word of some portents was circulating in Rome, reported his main historian, Cassius Dio.* Superstitious forebodings, amplified incessantly, themselves surfeiting the event with impetus, when it did happen, though without deigning to admit the complicity of them who had abided in fateful anticipation: were they neither more nor less than that? Perhaps so, or not; but from the dim sense of likeness of those days of unease to the present’s static swelter (for what further period of time to be an interlude?), and especially from remote sounds that rhyme with some today, a soft hint also comes to the student of history, a suggestion that he put into question the portent as such, an antithetical wink at him, that thereby, here and now, his understanding could – philosophically, historically – profit.
* Roman History, bk. lxxiii, 24
What portent (σημεῖον), or set of portents, did the historian record? First, as though to get the attention of the observant, to underscore that ill was afoot, a flock of eagles seen circling the Capitol, birds whose inopportune appearance seemed weird, strange, ominous – in a word, uncanny, for they were flying, quite literally, far from their lair (ἔξεδροι), and whose awful cries could not be ignored. Secondly, a further harbinger, an owl alighted noisily at that very spot. Then, the stage set, Roman minds focused upon the locus of power, the main sign arrived: a fire commencing at night in a private dwelling soon spread, engulfing several public institutions and then the palace, obliterating much of it, including the wings where the imperial archives were kept. From their destruction in particular the Romans conjectured that the coming evil would encompass not the city alone but the whole realm of the Empire (οἰκουμένη). Though the residents tried mightily to stave it off, and the Emperor himself returned from sojourning at his villa, to encourage the efforts to contain it, the fire could not be halted: this sign too fed their forebodings. Only once it had destroyed everything it seized, wrote Cassius, expressing a general apprehension, did it spend its last force and die away – ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὴ πάντα ὅσα κατέσχε διέφθειρεν, ἐξαναλωθὲν ἐπαύσατο.
Commodus, despite having stood on the side of those attempting to put out the fire, by an obvious association of ideas was taken as that which the portent did appear to signify. Read between the lines, in the account reference was made to his own career, and a presage given of the fate soon to befall him: thus this σημεῖον was commonly understood at the time, in a twofold sense, according to Cassius.
Nor could the possibility have been discountenanced of a conflagration after the imminent deed itself (whether as cause or as occasion, matters little), though to these prospects the historian chose not to allude.
Reflecting upon this last scene in the historian’s book, with our present-day squalor looming in the background (how could it possibly be put out of mind altogether?), a student may infer that the author had not merely recounted the portent, but also himself seemed to lend it credence. If so, his account did not illustrate the period’s great inclination towards credulity, as though impartially from the outside, but (this is quite another proposition) showed itself already entranced by a myth, faithful servant to the latter. Projections of a figment or idea extant in advance, would then have been what his attention met with wherever it was directed.
The precautions that writers, thinkers, historians may need to take, so as to avoid becoming spellbound by a word-image with which they should simply begin, comprise a great theme for reflection; yet this song cannot be rehearsed now. In lieu thereof, I discern, inside the momentous portent with which the book’s presentation concludes (and with which, most likely, its composition was initiated), the working of an older, still more potent myth.
For, the flames which obliterated several loci of power in Rome, thus auguring a next reign in which they might be built anew, would have been less readily taken as being a portent, in the absence of a prevalent mythos of fire: that is, the notion propounded by some of the Stoics of a universal conflagration whose periodic occurrence helps to maintain the cosmos in proper order. This conception I shall not address here in any detail; the main point is that it exemplifies a doctrinal thinking caught in myth: a posture of thought at some remove from the intellectual source out of which it was extrapolated, namely, the finding owed to the first, the paradigmatic scientist, Heraclitus, the observation that of the physical elements fire is primary and the others are its transformations (πυρὸς τροπαὶ).* Granted, this Heraclitean finding was issued in a rather obscure form, hence, so worded, it may itself not be quite free of some mythifying tendency; but into these matters I cannot here delve, either. Instead, to come to the main point: especial force had been lent by this very myth to the fiery portent as the historian described it, whereby the σημεῖον was taken to refer to all of Rome, not to the Emperor alone.
* fragment 31 (Diels)
Fire which consumes everything and dies out only for want of fuel – is an image most aptly applied to Rome’s later dominion over the οἰκουμένη. Such awareness of the image’s major referent, of course, was not voiced by the historian, but it may be just this tacit realisation which renders so fraught his account of the portent that alerted them all to the demise of one of the worst, most tyrannical Emperors. Here the reader should pause in order to imagine Roman trepidation in the face of this herald. For, unspoken in the historian’s book but nonetheless audible is the uneasy suggestion that the complicity of Rome which allowed him to reign as he did, as long as he did, figured amongst the items for which a retribution was, as it were, pre-announced by the σημεῖον. Foreboding must have been heightened whenever the Romans allowed themselves the thought that to the city’s universal role, an end would also come, once the substance it was feasting on had been largely devoured.
Conflagration, as a myth, exerted an attraction on these later Romans, it appealed to them as a fitting image for their city’s condition. Since its aptness had long been pondered, once a great fire broke out, the occurrence would readily be taken as a portent, signifying that the time had arrived at which acts earlier meditated should be undertaken, opportunely: by dint of its mythic power, deeds were prompted. – Around what then was catalysed, in this telling, there wafts an odour of theatre, while in the account by Ælius Lampridius, the peculiar sense of play-acting becomes even more patent, and markedly so after the resolution was reached that the tyrant’s predations no longer were tolerable and he was at last dealt with.
Observed on the smallest to the largest scale, the various alloys and interplays of the human temperaments, a quartet as per the physiognomic ideas widely adopted in classical antiquity, comprise not the least instructive of the aspects under which the long course of Rome’s eras can be read again today, ears open for the rhymes; indications of a definite ascent to predominance of one of them after another, perhaps even suggestions of the reality of a cyclical sequence whereby each of the four would take its turn at the top, may lead students to invoke the other old theme of the πυρὸς τροπαὶ, by way of grasping better how it did happen when or if, in a procession through history of the temperaments, priority was taken by the fiery: evidently however one should not venture too carelessly into the zone of myth, lest upon turning back to the comprehension of Roman history, in its various episodes all that one still could aim to discern are the admixtures of fate, dispensed by that idée fixe par excellence, “fire.” By just such an embrace of a finality at the outset, one would beg every relevant question that might be put to the historical record, thereby soon undermining its credibility and the sense of the inquiry altogether.
Proceeding with caution, accordingly, is advisable when one moves back and forth between this or that age of history and the four temperaments; and in any case, the best exemplifications of the predominance of at least two of them do take one quite far away from Rome in its different periods. Moreover, since I addressed the subject with some care in another essay, here I won’t add anything more about the temperaments, regarded as aggregate forces operative on a grand scale in history.
Yet, more specifically, as principles of explanation each of the four temperaments might well prove helpful if the student of Roman history seeks to understand how the SPQR came to tolerate the reign of Commodus for as long as they did. Can the eventual tyrannicide be fully imagined without attending to the temperaments’ variegated shares in all of it, beforehand, during, and afterwards? A properly impartial understanding may require their inclusion as a relevant factor.
After the tyrant had been killed, a damnatio memoriæ was proposed.* Not only his misdeeds, carefully to be blotted out lest they turn into an example successors might heed and augment in times to come, but also, reading between the lines, the fact that his reign had been allowed to continue for a long period, was felt to affix a mark of shame upon Rome. Should one not pause here to think about the interplay of temperaments behind both that common sentiment and the theatrical manner in which it was given expression?
* Ælius Lampridius. “Commodus Antoninus,” xix–xx
Cassius, for his part, did not simply record the history, but also had participated in it, as a Senator. His share in the general acceptance which permitted the tyrant’s reign to last nearly thirteen years, was amongst the items he sought to account for, with reticence. Hence these passages venture delicately towards self-criticism, and not solely of his own person; much goes unspoken, but is intimated, unobtrusively, in accord with raison d’état and its pragmatic requirements. Snares may well have been set, literary, rhetorical, or of other kinds, to divert and to catch the inquisitive attention of his readers . . . Who, on their side, may better elude the traps, while reading through the account, by remembering the temperaments and their alloys, where these interlayerings are protagonists, even guides in stories within the story.
Soon after the Emperor’s death, soon enough to bring a reader to consider whether there might have been some close connection, to the Senator came the impetus for what would become his extensive work of history – occasioned by a portent.*
* Roman History, bk. lxxiii, 23
Sordid incidents abounded throughout the tyrant’s reign, not excluding the complicity of the Senate in it, and so to give some words of explanation was incumbent upon Cassius.* These, however, should be taken cum grano salis. Exactitude of statement was requisite, according to him, so as to give a full account of what he himself witnessed, and was degraded and demeaned by having participated in, without sparing his own faults; so the whole history was to be handed down for the edification of posterity, thus heeding the claims of tradition (in the sense given to the term within the structure of Roman principles: traditio, religio, auctoritas): but by this definition of the historian’s purpose, the setting of the boundaries of his writing’s veracity would have been granted implicitly to the Empire’s raison d’état. Thus, even were truthfulness accepted in practice by the historian as an ideal, his acknowledgement is encompassed by a fence of unspoken provisos.
* bk. lxxiii, 18
Putting aside that broad question, and the salt, the historian’s inclusion of details that dishonour his own person, is suggestive in a particular way: his readiness, indeed his capacity to do so, could indicate a willing adoption by him of a type of training (ἄσκησις) whereby he raised himself above the sentiment usually attached to disrepute, namely, a feeling of shame. In antiquity, at times such a commitment was drawn from the example Diogenes did set, and so one might hear echoes of Cynicism in the account of himself offered by Cassius. His variation upon Cynical practice (if it can be attributed plausibly to him) would have had a pointed motive: to put into sharper relief the other shamelessness, the type which was not sought but simply accrued to Commodus by dint of his indulgences and atrocities. And yet it could hardly have been easy to elevate oneself above the sense of dishonour, in the squalor of the Empire, even were one a Cynic, let alone a Senator. A student of philosophy, history, or politics must wonder, after all, how near their goal the practitioners of this ἄσκησις could advance, forthrightly and freely, then or now.
One peculiar incident may be introduced in this connection.* During one of his gladiatorial performances, we read of Commodus acting the clown, deliberately as it seems, intending by this to get the Senators to laugh at him, despite their usual cautiousness, thereby furnishing a pretext to enact the plan he already meditated of killing them off. From this trap they were all saved by Cassius; but by the small stratagem he inadvertently manœuvred all of them into another, one in its way as fateful: the insuperable disgrace of having “humoured” a tyrant. – At times his lot do put even Cynics before an impossible choice of bad alternatives.
* bk. lxxiii, 21
Burrowing into the records of antiquity and unearthing from its history (not taken for myth but rather parsed as poem) some rhymes of then and now – historians as keen auditors – how distant from, dissonant with the reality is this idea of their task? Perhaps not very. Accordingly, an aural caution would itself number amongst the items to be studied, and especially so whenever sonic parallels become too obvious in their approaches to the ears, even if acoustic similarities do differ from the visual in their varieties of self-evidence.
Rhymes from Roman history put into sharper relief the squalor of today, as panics and circuses play out amidst the remnants of our political arenas. Those who once would have been citizens, are subsumed (and even consumed) by an overweening imperial structure, nearly as inmates of its household or as its private property: this is one major likeness. The sound of these subsumptions again is there for the listening; resemblances such as these do offer a key which comparative inquiry could heed, not least for the sake of posing better questions, with a finer skill.
Amidst the conditions of the Empire, a “life of pleasure” (according to some Aristotelians, the third consummate way of life, a peer of the contemplative and the political) could quickly degenerate into an unequal pursuit of first place, and in this depraved form it took the throne, in the person of Commodus. His desire for supremacy led him to great cruelties and perversions, and soon the innumerable honours he bestowed on himself threw him into the madness of the superlative.* The details of it may be omitted, a paraphrase of the historian’s judgement suffices: thereby the wretch did excel superlatively in one respect, a raging self-abandonment – οὕτω καθ’ ὑπερβολὴν ἐμεμήνει τὸ κάθαρμα.
* bk. lxxiii, 15
Raison d’état in Rome did not object seriously to the titular rule of Commodus, given that his attentions were mainly directly elsewhere than to the duties of office, and having him in place did serve to distract the public scrutiny to an extent from the host of underlying iniquities. Perhaps this function goes some way towards clarifying the longer length of his reign, also explaining why its end did arrive; being mainly a figurehead he must have outlived his usefulness, and was then disposed of like a wretched piece of trash. Pause for just a moment to savour Cassius’ last word for him, “τὸ κάθαρμα” . . . An epithet for many capitals today.
Possessed as he was by the idea of the arena, Commodus was probably quite susceptible to the sentiment of rivalry, and so a student of his reign may wonder whether one of his motives was to outdo his predecessors, especially the other tyrants amongst their ranks. A comparison with Domitian, in particular, might prove revealing: not on account of personal details, but in order to observe how far the craft of tyranny was refined over the course of time. (On this point too, I think about Roman history also in terms of rhyme. No lack of rhymes in Rome!)
Cassius relates of the earlier tyrant that he always feigned to harbour affection for those whom he most wanted to slay.* Moreover, he made a special point of killing those who sought his favour in the role of accomplices: fully familiar with the expedient of sacrificing these in order to deflect opprobrium from himself. Especially ill-fated were slaves who proposed to inform on (συκοφαντεῖν) their masters to him. While he remained wary of the class of masters, he also did not want the slave class to receive encouragement, for then it might proceed to the most open forms of revolt. Measures taken in this regard had almost necessarily to remain in the shadows; the precarious arrangement of the classes made recourse to the practice unavoidable, but the administration of the Empire had to utilise the various grades of συκοφάνται cautiously, without seeming to instigate them: this apparent distance from their activities Domitian had to maintain. An Emperor, he proclaimed, who fails to punish informers, himself has prompted them, indeed made them, and hence is liable to some degree for their misdeeds.
* bk. lxvii, 1
To the extent that he attended seriously to the administration of the Empire, Commodus did seem to heed the example of his predecessor’s stratagems.
There is a last point to mention. During the reign of Domitian, a strange episode transpired: a murderous secret society, well-organised and widespread, engaged in a killing spree in Rome itself and throughout the Empire, possibly as a mercenary undertaking, possibly not, but in any event slaughtering many. These homicides were carried out by means of inconspicuous instruments: small poisoned needles.* Entirely anonymous the assassins were not, however, for informers did identify some of them, according to the historian. Severe punishment was their lot, and evidently the murders left an impression in the public’s memory. – Decades later, under the reign of Commodus, a comparable outbreak of deliberate poisoning took place, conducted this time openly as a business proposition, with evidently a considerably larger number throughout the Roman realms falling victim to it.** And in the historian’s recounting, one reads nothing of apprehensions of the guilty, nor was much notice taken of the crimes, which passed by with hardly a word. – Tyranny had stifled them all.
* bk. lxvii, 11 ** bk. lxxiii, 14
As for us: our squalor abounds in rhymes, when history is still heard.