Chapter IV: The cruelty, follies and murder of Commodus [with added Pertinax]

[nwhyte]

Available here, here or here.

1) Good quotes

After an introductory couple of paras about Commodus' father and mother, Gibbon moves from historical scene-setting to moral scene-setting: Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society, are produced by the restraints which the necessary but unequal laws of property have imposed on

Comments

[treize64]

I'm not sure how much evidence of this is from the text and how much I'm simply inferring by whatever baggage I'm bringing into it, but I think part of the reason Gibbon bears Commodus such rank animosity, as opposed to Caligula (who in my mind is much more infamous for his wrongdoings) is that Commodus had for a father whose only defect, as Gibbon states, was his mildness

[nwhyte]

It's always tempting to read parental neuroses into these things. I've just come across Peter Medawar's brilliant demolition of the idea that Darwin's chronic illness was caused by his hatred of his own father: These deep and terrible feelings found outward expression in Darwin's touching reverence towards his father and his father's memory, and in his describing his father as the kindest and wisest man he ever knew: clear evidence, if evidence were needed, of how deply his true inner sentiments had been repressed.
Gibbon writes thus of his reunion with his own father after he had been in Europe for almost five years: It was not without some awe and apprehension that I approached the presence of my father. My infancy, to speak the truth, had been neglected at home; the severity of his look and language at our last parting still dwelt on my memory; nor could I form any notion of his character, or my probable reception. They were both more agreeable than I could expect. The domestic discipline of our ancestors has been relaxed by the

[treize64]

I'm greatly tempted to track down the Gibbon autobiography after reading that passage.

[strange_complex]

I was away over the weekend, and thus unable to comment here on Saturday, but I did read this chapter while on the plane. I don't have much to say about it myself, but will pick up and expand upon a couple of things nwhyte has said.

1. Gibbon's attitudes towards both Commodus and Pertinax appear to me to be strongly coloured by Dio's accounts of their reigns. He had lived through both personally, and more importantly was writing about them under emperors (the Severans) who based their legitimacy in part on links to Pertinax. Their official line was that they had come to power as a result of civil wars prompted by the need to avenge his murder - and so of course he had to be painted as whiter than white in order to emphasise the severity of the Praetorians' crime and the necessity for engaging in civil war in order to right it (and not, of course, because they wanted power themselves - oh no, guv, honest!). Meanwhile, Commodus's character needed to be blackened in order to justify his murder and Pertinax's original accession to the throne

[swisstone]

Commodus's character needed to be blackened in order to justify his murder and Pertinax's original accession to the throne

Yes, but this needs to be at least qualified with the information that Septimius Severus, having adopted himself into the family of Marcus Aurelius, then identified Commodus as his brother, reversed the damnatio memoriae, and had him deified.

With rare exceptions, it's clear that Gibbon doesn't really think in terms of identifying the biases and agendas of his sources in this way

Having now got as far as Chapter XIV, I don't think this is entirely fair. He's not hot on the biases of the sources for the second century, but he's rather better on those for the third and fourth (especially when dealing with Christian sources).

[swisstone]

what is the extra damage done by Commodus' reign to the system which makes the decline start here?

I think Gibbon's thesis is that the underlying problems that will lead to the decline and fall have been building through the previous century, but the rectitude and competence of the emperors from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius have kept a lid on them. But everything will go wrong as soon as an emperor who lacks either rectitude or competence comes to the throne.