One evening, as the emperor was returning to the palace, through a dark and narrow portico in the amphitheatre,* an assassin, who waited his passage, rushed upon him with a drawn sword, loudly exclaiming, "The senate sends you this." The menace prevented the deed; the assassin was seized by the guards, and immediately revealed the authors of the conspiracy. It had been formed not in the State, but within the walls of the palace. Lucilla, the emperor's sister, and widow of Lucius Verus, impatient of the second rank, and jealous of the reigning empress, had armed the murderer against her brother's life. She had not ventured to communicate the black design to her second husband, Claudius Pompeianus, a senator or distinguished merit and unshaken loyalty; but among the crowd of her lovers (for she imitated the manners of Faustina) she found men of desperate fortunes and wild ambition, who were prepared to serve her more violent as well as her tender passions. conspirators experienced the rigour of justice, and the abandoned princess was punished, first with exile, and afterwards with death.t

The

But the words of the assassin sunk deep into the mind of Commodus, and left an indelible impression of fear and hatred against the whole body of the senate. Those whom he had dreaded as importunate ministers, he now suspected as secret enemies. The Delators, a race of men discouraged, and almost extinguished, under the former reigns, again became formidable, as soon as they discovered that the emperor was desirous of finding disaffection and treason in the senate. That assembly, whom Marcus had ever considered as the great council of the nation, was composed of the most distinguished of the Romans; and distinction of every kind soon became criminal. The possession of wealth stimulated the diligence of the informers; rigid virtue

concealed several years. The emperor nobly relieved the public anxiety by refusing to see him, and burning his papers without opening them. Dion Cassius, 1. 72, p. 1209. See Maffei degli Amphitheatri, p. 126. [It is most probable that this occurred as the emperor was going into the amphitheatre, the construction of which must be borne in mind. The assassin had taken his staud in the dark entrance.WENCK.] + Dion, 1. 72, p. 1205. Herodian, 1. 1, p. 16. Hist, August. p. 46. [The conspirators were senators, and Quintianus, who was to have struck the fatal blow, was himself one. Herodian.. lib. 1, c. 8.-WENCK.]

implied a tacit censure of the irregularities of Commodus; important services implied a dangerous superiority of merit; and the friendship of the father always ensured the aversion of the son. Suspicion was equivalent to proof; trial to condemnation. The execution of a considerable senator was attended with the death of all who might lament or revenge his fate; and when Commodus had once tasted human blood, he became incapable of pity or remorse.

Of these innocent victims of tyranny, none died more lamented than the two brothers of the Quintilian family, Maximus and Condianus, whose fraternal love has saved their names from oblivion, and endeared their memory to posterity. Their studies and their occupations, their pursuits and their pleasures, were still the same. In the enjoyment of a great estate they never admitted the idea of a separate interest; some fragments are now extant of a treaties which they composed in common; and in every action of life it was observed that their two bodies were animated by one soul. The Antonines, who valued their virtues and delighted in their union, raised them, in the same year, to the consulship; and Marcus afterward entrusted to their joint care the civil administration of Greece, and a great military command, in which they obtained a signal victory over the Germans. The kind cruelty of Commodus united them in death.*

The tyrant's rage, after having shed the noblest blood of the senate, at length recoiled on the principal instrument of his cruelty. Whilst Commodus was immersed in blood and luxury, he devolved the detail of the public business on Perennis, a servile and ambitious minister, who had obtained his post by the murder of his predecessor, but who possessed a considerable share of vigour and ability. By acts of extortion, and the forfeited estates of the nobles sacrificed to his avarice, he had accumulated an immense treasure. The prætorian guards were under his immediate

* In a note upon the Augustan History, Casaubon has collected a number of particulars concerning these celebrated brothers. See p. 96 of his learned commentary. [The subject of their treatise was agriculture, and it has often been referred to by subsequent writers. See P. Needham, Prolegomena ad Geoponica, 8vo. Cambridge, 1704, p. 17, seq.-WENCK.] [Philostratus, in his Life of the Sophist Herodes, says that the Quintiliani were not ancient Roman citizens, but of Trojan origin. See Casaubon, as above quoted....GUIZOT.]

command; and his son, who already discovered a military genius, was at the head of the Illyrian legions. Perennis aspired to the empire; or what, in the eyes of Commodus, amounted to the same crime, he was capable of aspiring to it, had he not been prevented, surprised, and put to death. The fall of a minister is a very trifling incident in the general history of the empire; but it was hastened by an extraordinary circumstance, which proved how much the nerves of discipline were already relaxed. The legions of Britain, discontented with the administration of Perennis, formed a deputation of fifteen hundred select men, with instructions to march to Rome, and lay their complaints before the emperor. These military petitioners, by their own determined behaviour, by inflaming the divisions of the guards, by exaggerating the strength of the British army, and by alarming the fears of Commodus, exacted and obtained the minister's death, as the only redress of their grievances.* This presumption of a distant army, and their

* Dion, 1. 72, p. 1210; Herodian, 1. 1, p. 22; Hist. August. p. 48. Dion gives a much less odious character of Perennis, than the other historians. His moderation is almost a pledge of his veracity. [Gibbon praises the moderation with which Dion speaks of Perennis, and nevertheless follows the narrative of Herodian and Lampridius. The tone of Dion, when speaking of Perennis, is more than moderate, it expresses admiration. He represents him as a great man, whose life was disinterestedly and virtuously devoted to the public_good, and who died innocent. The character which Herodian and Lampridius give him, seems to be most suitable to the minister of a Commodus, and accords best with what followed. Dion, who became a senator about that time, may have been indebted to the favourite for the commencement of his good fortune, and expected further favours from him. He may have been as partial in his praises of a bad minister, who possibly was his benefactor, as he was in his censures of such truly great men as Cicero and Seneca, his opinion of whom expresses the jealousy with which a Greek regarded literary merit in a Roman. But it is remarkable that Gibbon, after having adopted the opinion of Herodian and Lampridius, with regard to the minister, should copy Dion's improbable account of his death. It is scarcely credible that fifteen hundred men should have passed through Gaul and Italy, or their way to Rome, without any private understanding with the Prætorian guards, without the knowledge of Perennis, who was their præfect, and without meeting any resistance. Such armed embassies can be sent only to the Rome of the present day, and by such monarchs as Louis XIV. Gibbon, aware perhaps of this difficulty, added, that "these military petitioners inflamed the divisions of the guards, and exaggerated the strength of the British army," the actual numbers of which must have been known to the government. Yet Dion says expressly, that

discovery of the weakness of government, was a sure presage of the most dreadful convulsions.

The negligence of the public administration was betrayed soon afterwards, by a new disorder, which arose from the smallest beginnings. A spirit of desertion began to prevail among the troops; and the deserters, instead of seeking their safety in flight or concealment, infested the highways. Maternus, a private soldier, of a daring boldness above his station, collected these bands of robbers into a little army, set open the prisons, invited the slaves to assert their freedom, and plundered with impunity the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and Spain. The governors of the provinces, who had long been the spectators, and perhaps the partners, of his depredations, were at length roused from their supine indolence by the threatening commands of the emperor. Maternus found that he was encompassed, and foresaw that be must be overpowered. A great effort of despair was his last resource. He ordered his followers to disperse, to pass the Alps in small parties and various disguises, and to assemble at Rome, during the licentious tumult of the festival of Cybele.* To murder Commodus, and to ascend they did not get so far as Rome, and blames the emperor for going out to meet them, instead of overwhelming them by the superior forces of the Prætorians. Herodian relates, that Commodus apprised by a soldier of ambitious designs entertained by Perennis and his son, who commanded the legions of Illyrium, ordered them to be seized during the night and put to death.-WENCK.] Where historians differ so widely, their means of information ought to be considered. Dion Cassius was in the full vigour of life when these events took place. When he composed his history of them, no expected favours could induce him to flatter the memory of the long-departed Perennis, whose former patronage, too, is altogether conjectural. His character for probity stood so high, that the excellent Pertinax, who for a few months succeeded Commodus on the throne, employed him in an important office, in which other emperors retained him. This, no doubt, gave him also access to documents, from which he could gather facts not publicly known. Herodian did not write till fifty years later, and if, as he says, he has related nothing of which he was not an eyewitness, (by which, of course, he means, what occurred in his days) he must, at least, have been very young at the fall of Perennis. Lampridius was still later by a century, and a very second-rate authority.-ED.] * During the second Punic war, the Romans imported from Asia the worship of the mother of the gods. Her festival, the Megalesia, began on the 4th of April, and lasted six days. The streets were crowded with mad processions, the theatres with spectators, and the public tables with unbidden guests. Order and police were suspended, and

the vacant throne, was the ambition of no vulgar robber. His measures were so ably concerted that his concealed troops already filled the streets of Rome. The envy of an accomplice discovered and ruined this singular enterprise, in the moment when it was ripe for execution.*

Suspicious princes often promote the lowest of mankind, from a vain persuasion that those who have no dependence, except on their favour, will have no attachment, except to the person of their benefactor. Cleander, the successor of Perennis, was a Phrygian by birth; of a nation over whose stubborn, but servile temper, blows only could prevail.† He had been sent from his native country to Rome in the capacity of a slave. As a slave he entered the imperial palace, rendered himself useful to his master's passions, and rapidly ascended to the most exalted station which a subject could enjoy. His influence over the mind of Commodus was much greater than that of his predecessor; for Cleander was devoid of any ability or virtue which could inspire the emperor with envy or distrust. Avarice was the reigning passion of his soul, and the great principle of his administration. The rank of consul, of patrician, of senator, was exposed to public sale; and it would have been considered as disaffection, if any one had refused to purchase these empty and disgraceful honours with the greatest part of his fortune. In the lucrative provincial employments, the minister shared with the governor the spoils of the people. The execution of the laws was venal and arbitrary. A wealthy criminal might obtain, not only the reversal of the sentence by which he was justly condemned, but might likewise inflict whatever punishment he pleased on the accuser, the witnesses, and the judge.

By these means, Cleander, in the space of three years, had accumulated more wealth than had ever yet been possessed by any freedman.§ Commodus was perfectly satisfied with the magnificent presents which the artful courtier laid at his feet in the most seasonable moments. To divert the pleasure was the only serious business of the city. See Ovid. de Fastis, 1 4, 189, &c. * Herodian, 1. 1, p. 23, 28. + Cicero pro Flacco c. 27. One of these dear-bought promotions occasioned a current bon mot, that Julius Solon was banished into the senate. (1. 72, p. 12, 13) observes, that no freedman had possessed riches equal to those of Cleander. The fortune of Pallas amounted, however, to upwards of 2,500,000l.; ter millies.

§ Dion