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incestuous relations with four of his five living sisters, all except Lucilla,
who was perhaps the eldest surviving child of Marcus Aurelius. Lucilla
had been married at the age of 14 to Lucius Verus, her father’s coemperor,
and bore three children, only one of whom, a daughter, survived.
Within a year of Verus’ death in ad 169, Lucilla was married off again to
her father’s trusted military advisor, Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, who
was close to thirty years her senior. In the mid-170s she had a son, Aurelius
Commodus Pompeianus, who lived to become a consul in ad 209. Although
her husband was one of Commodus’ loyal advisors and was not
involved in the plot, Lucilla joined a conspiracy to murder the emperor,
but the plot was detected. Along with the other conspirators, Lucilla was
put to death in ad 182. That same year, Commodus divorced his young
wife, Bruttia Crispina, for adultery and had her executed. After a decade
of terror filled with persecution and murderous purges of high-ranking
Romans, Commodus was finally assassinated in ad 192. Sources indicate
the unpopular emperor was strangled by an athlete on the orders of his
mistress, Marcia, while he was drunk in bed (Ward, 43). After his death,
Rome was embroiled in a year-long civil war, as the various leaders of the
Roman army contested for superiority until another imperial dynasty, the
Severans, was founded in ad 193.
The ancient Romans developed three main kinds of public entertainment
where humans and animals were killed for the pleasure of the audience:
beast shows, known as venationes or “hunts,” dramatic executions of
criminals and prisoners of war, and gladiatorial fights. Gladiators were
highly skilled combatants, both professionals and amateurs, who fought
to entertain spectators in the Roman arena. The word gladiator is derived
from gladius, the Latin word for “sword.” Roman magistrates in their
official capacity produced regular shows called ludi, or “games,” but gladiatorial
matches were chiefly organized by wealthy private individuals of
high rank, often to curry popular favor for their political aspirations. The
Latin word for a gladiatorial match is munus (plural munera), or “obligatory
offering,” perhaps reflecting the origin of these games as funerary
offerings to the dead, and the sponsor of gladiatorial games was called the
editor or munerator.
Historians offer several speculations about the origin of gladiatorial
games at Rome (Futrell, 1997, 8–24). The first gladiatorial games were
probably held by the Etruscans, early inhabitants of central and northern
Italy, and were celebrated to mark religious occasions, especially the
funerals of prominent citizens. Gladiatorial contests were assimilated into
Rome as early as the First Punic War (264–241 bc), perhaps to boost the
GLADIATOR (2000) 217