I blame Gibbon. Commodus was not in any way the disastrous ruler he is commonly made out to be. During his reign there were no major crises in the Empire, with only a few minor disturbances in the British and Danube frontiers. Commodus' major faults were his insane gladiatorial antics and his dependence on the Imperial freedmen, neither of which was a problematic beyond limits of the Imperial household. The only faults of his reign were the increasing sidelining of the Roman city aristocracy and the Senate, and an increasing trend towards military autocracy, which only became problematic during the greater stresses of the third century crisis.