The Fall of the Commodian Empire (
index)
Gaius Livius Metellus, Part 2
An anachronistic depiction of Livius, or his ancestor Messala.
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Downfall of Lucilla
Lucilla and Plautia, her daughter with Lucius Verus, along with Ummidia Cornificia, soon began to plot against Commodus. Lucilla's motivations are generally ascribed to envy of her brother and especially her sister-in-law, Bruttia Crispina; although she retained the title of
Augusta, her public prominence had decreased considerably since her brother's accession. Ummidia Cornificia may have been roped in to the plot for similar reasons, although it appears that Claudius Gordianus, emboldened by his influence over the emperor, had pursued her ceaselessly after their return from Vindobona demanding more of her dowry. Ummidia hence might have wished to remove Claudius Gordianus from her life by killing his patron.
The plan was to get Pompeianus' nephew, Appius Claudius Quintianus, to assassinate Commodus and replace the Emperor with Pompeianus, and hence restore Lucilla to Empress. It failed with Quintianus announced his intentions prematurely by yelling "
This is what the Senate sends you" before even brandishing his blade, and was hence easily subdued by the Emperor's guards. Quintianus and Ummidia's brother, the ex-consul
Marcus Ummidius Quadratus Annianus were executed, and Lucilla, Plautia and Ummidia exiled to the island of Capri.
Livius seems to have been unaware of the coup attempt, only learning about it when Lucilla's sister Annia Cornificia roused him from Ummidia's residence begging him to go to Commodus and plead for mercy on their behalf, which he attempted to do to no avail. The cabal of Claudius Gordianus, Pescennius Niger and Didius Julianus, prevented him from presenting his case to the Emperor, and the three women were executed shortly thereafter. Maximus had escaped a death sentence but reached Capri too late to stop the deaths of Ummidia and their child, and was sold into slavery shortly thereafter when nobody recognised him in his manic state.
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Governor of Noricum
Gaius Livius was then dispatched to Noricum as military governor and head of Legio II
Pia, also absorbing some of Maximus' former duties in Pannonia Inferior, probably as a means of getting him out of Rome by Commodus. There, he was to oversee the integration of the Marcomannic prisoners-of-war into the Empire, mostly by uniting them with their Suebi kinsmen. This project was the brainchild of a freedman and advisor of Marcus Aurelius, Timonides, and was an attempt to end the wars along the Danube front. [1]
He remained there for about a decade, keeping in contact with Annia Cornificia, as he had felt great remorse at his failure to save her sister from exile and execution. Gaius Livius was eventually told to stop by her husband
Marcus Petronius Sura Mamertinus; apparently his scandalaous reputation with Lucilla had sufficiently preceded himself. This cessation of communications may have ironically saved his life during the Palmyrene Revolt.
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Palmyrene Revolt and downfall
Some time in about late 192 Gaius Livius was suddenly stripped of his administrative duties and told to bring the Legio II
Pia to Syria where apparently a mass revolt was brewing and threatening the grain supplies of Egypt, whose profits were being freely sold off by Commodus at the height of his megalomania to fuel his egotistical ambitions.
Following a massive fire in Rome, Commodus had seized the opportunity to rebuild it in his image and even named the city and the people of Rome and its Empire after himself, and all twelve months of the calendar after each of of his twelve names, and indulged in gladiator games where he killed "giants" made out of cripples and convicts bound together and masses of wild animals. [2]
To Gaius Livius' horror, the revolt had been organised by none other than Mamertinus, now the proconsul of Syria, and his wife Annia Cornificia, who had acted to save Rome's grain supply from the wasteful spending of Commodus, and thus revolted against him much like Avidus Cassius had done twenty years ago. Following several inconclusive battles, Gaius Livius rode to Mamertinus' camp, and convinced him to stand his troops down before the inevitable savage reprisals. [3]
However, they were undone by Pescennius Niger, the imperial legate there, and his ally Claudius Gordianus, who was in command of Legio X
Gemina in Pannonia Inferior. Niger intercepted Gaius Livius' letter, and reworded it so that his request for permission to return to Rome became a threat to march there with the Legio II
Pia, accompanied by the Marcomanni, who would invite their unconquered kinsmen to storm the border. Commodus panicked, and ordered Niger to arrest Annia Cornificia and slaughter her family, and Claudius Gordianus to massacre the Marcomanni and arrest Livius.
Livius had not even returned to Noricum before Claudius Gordianus intercepted him, whereupon he was forced to walk through the ruins of the Marcomanni-Suebi settlements and look upon the casualties of the massacre, including Timonides, who had died trying to defend the settlement from the Romans. Livius and Annia Cornificia were brought to Rome by a proconsul in Italy,
Quintus Pompeius Sosinus Falco, [4] an ally of Niger and Claudius desperate to regain the trust of Emperor. They were conveyed not as prisoners but under the guise of honoured guests; the twisted mind of Commodus intended a singular fate for the duo.
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Death of Commodus
By this point Commodus was so far in his delusions that he was convinced that he was the reincarnation of Hercules, and that he could summon the power of his divine father Jupiter; when Annia Conrnificia angrily insinuated that his love of gladiatorial bloodsport marked him as heir neither to Jupiter nor Marcus Aurelius, but a random gladiatorial manager standing in the same room, he threatened to breed a new line of emperors with her in incestuous union. [5] By total coincidence, the gladiatorial manager,
Proximo, happened to be the owner of Maximus, who was due to perform in the Games with which Commodus intended to open 193 as both consul and gladiator.
Commodus had facetiously nominated Gaius Livius as his co-consul but intended to either incinerate him along with Annia Cornificia and several leading Marcomanni with a specially designed viewing booth or kill him in the ring, proving the primacy of his rule. It is at this point that a cabal including
Quintus Aemilius Laetus, Commodus' praetorian prefect,
Marcia, his mistress, and
Lucius Sempronius Gracchus, an old ex-consul, approached Gaius Livius and Annia Cornificia, proposing to assassinate Commodus and give the imperial honours to Gaius Livius.
The plan failed when Commodus threw up his poisoned food, and his personal trainer Narcissus could not be induced to kill his master. Marcia and Gracchus were arrested, but by Quintus Laetus, whose complicity was as yet unknown. In the meantime, Proximo, on Annia Cornificia's urgings, brought Maximus to Gaius Livius' quarters, where the two men met for the first time in eleven years. Accounts differ as to the content of their conversation: Caledonius insists that it is there that Gaius Livius suggested to Maximus that he could avenge his family by substituting for Narcissus during a staged combat, a role suggested by the title of
Liberator granted by Gaius Livius and Annia Cornificia after Maximus' death.
Hence, it was at a restaging of the Battle of Zama, with Commodus "playing" Scipio Africanus and either Gaius Livius (as intended) or Maximus (substituting for Narcissus) as Hannibal Barca, that Commodus was slain in single combat after being denied aid by Quintus Laetus, with his dying orders the incineration of Annia Cornificia (and Gaius Livius, according to Caledonius). However, the crowd broke through the burning stands and saved their lives, whereupon the crowds stormed out of the Colosseum in a frenzy, tearing down statues of Commodus and condemning his memory.
Quintus offered the imperial honours to Gaius Livius, but Gaius Livius refused them, stating that Rome was too far gone for him to save. In the end, it was
Pertinax, the city prefect and Commodus' co-consul in the previous year who was appointed Emperor by the praetorians.
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Death and legacy
Gaius Livius sent Pertinax his resignation, and married Annia Cornificia later that year. The couple publicly honoured Maximus' sacrifice as he had died shortly after Commodus, interring his remains in the
Catacombs of Rome along with Ummidia's and their son's.
However, their marriage proved to be short-lived as Gaius Livius found himself caught up in the turmoil following Pertinax's and then Didius Julianus' assassinations known as the Year of the Five Emperors, and was killed in the civil wars prior to
Septimus Severus slaying the last of his challengers and becoming Emperor.
Annia Cornificia would remarry, to the notable senator Lucius Didius Marinus, but even this union could not save her from the purges of Caracalla, heir to Septimius Severus, who ordered her to commit suicide, thus ending the line of Marcus Aurelius. [6]
[1] This is a major plot thread in
Fall of the Roman Empire (
FotRE), with a lengthy moral debate on Romanising the conquered Marcomanni.
[2] All OTL events if you believe the ancient sources.
[3] Lucilla in
FotRE teams up with her husband there, the King of Armenia, to raise the entire East in revolt against Commodus, and
Gladiator explicitly mentions that Commodus is selling the grain stores to fund his Games. Here's my compromise between the two of them.
[4] The bad guy senator from
Gladiator, a late addition on my part.
[5] In
FotRE, the revelation is made that Commodus isn't even Marcus Aurelius' son, and drives him to self-destructive mania; right before the final match in
Gladiator he threatens this on Lucilla.
[6] All OTL events, sadly enough.
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One more infobox to go for Annia Cornificia (or as I like to think of her in this series,
ersatz Lucilla)!
I think.
