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Time Line
AD 161
Lucius Aurelius Commodus was born on 31 August AD 161 at Lanuvium, roughly 14 miles south-east of Rome.
AD 177
Commodus was made coruler and heir to his father.
AD 178
AD 178
Led the troops in the wars on the Danube together with his father, Marcus Aurelius.
AD 180
AD 180
Death of Marcus Aurelius. Commodus becomes sole ruler.
AD 182
AD 182
In 182 Commodus’s sister Lucilla conspired with a group of senators to assassinate him. The plot failed, and Commodus executed a number of leading senators. Thereafter his rule became increasingly arbitrary and vicious.
AD 186
AD 186
Commodus had his chief minister executed in order to appease the army
AD 189
Commodus allowed the minister’s successor to be killed by a rioting crowd. Political influence then passed to the emperor’s mistress and two advisers.
AD 192
By this time Commodus was going crazy. Gave Rome a new name, Colonia Commodiana (Colony of Commodus). He also entered the arena to fight as a gladiator to kill lions and physically disabled people with a bow and arrow. He imagined that he was the god Hercules. On 192 AD, his advisors had him strangled by a champion wrestler following his announcement the day before that he would assume the consulship, dressed as a gladiator.
The Sentae proclaimed a new emperor Publius Helvius Pertinax, but Rome slipped into a civial war very quickly.
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