ened a general
massacre. The praetorians at length gave way, oppressed with numbers; and
the tide of popular fury returned with redoubled violence against the
gates of the palace, where Commodus lay, dissolved in luxury, and alone
unconscious of the civil war. It was death to approach his person with
the unwelcome news. He would have perished in this supine security had
not two women, his eldest sister Fadilla, and Marcia, the most favored
of his concubines, ventured to break into his presence. Bathed in tears,
and with dishevelled hair, they threw themselves at his feet, and, with
all the pressing eloquence of fear, discovered to the affrighted Emperor
the crimes of the minister, the rage of the people, and the impending
ruin which, in a few minutes, would burst over his palace and person.
Commodus started from his dream of pleasure and commanded that the head
of Cleander should be thrown out to the people. The desired spectacle
instantly appeased the tumult; and the son of Marcus might even yet have
regained the affection and confidence of his subjects.

But every sentiment of virtue and humanity was extinct in the mind of
Commodus. While he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these unworthy
favorites, he valued nothing in sovereign power except the unbounded
license of indulging his sensual appetites. The influence of a polite
age and the labor of an attentive education had never been able to
infuse into his rude and brutish mind the least tincture of learning;
and he was the first of the Roman emperors totally devoid of taste for
the pleasures of the understanding. Nero himself excelled, or affected
to excel, in the elegant arts of music and poetry; nor should we despise
his pursuits, had he not converted the pleasing relaxation of a leisure
hour into the serious business and ambition of his life. But Commodus,
from his earliest infancy, discovered an aversion to whatever was
rational or liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the
populace; the sports of the Circus and Amphitheatre, the combats of
gladiators, and the hunting of wild beasts. The masters in every branch
of learning, whom Marcus provided for his son, were heard with
inattention and disgust, while the Moors and Parthians, who taught him
to dart the javelin and to shoot with the bow, found a disciple who
delighted in his application, and soon equalled the most skilful of his
instructors in the steadiness of the eye and the dexterity of the h