ded the throne, the happy
youth saw round him neither competitor to remove, nor enemies to punish.
In this calm, elevated station, it was surely natural that he should
prefer the love of mankind to their detestation, the mild glories of his
five predecessors to the ignominious fate of Nero and Domitian.

[Footnote 6: Commodus was the first Porphyrogenitus, (born since his
father's accession to the throne.) By a new strain of flattery,
the Egyptian medals date by the years of his life; as if they were
synonymous to those of his reign. Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom.
ii. p. 752.]

Yet Commodus was not, as he has been represented, a tiger born with an
insatiate thirst of human blood, and capable, from his infancy, of the
most inhuman actions. [7] Nature had formed him of a weak rather than a
wicked disposition. His simplicity and timidity rendered him the slave
of his attendants, who gradually corrupted his mind. His cruelty, which
at first obeyed the dictates of others, degenerated into habit, and at
length became the ruling passion of his soul. [8]

[Footnote 7: Hist. August. p. 46.]

[Footnote 8: Dion Cassius, l. lxxii. p. 1203.]

Upon the death of his father, Commodus found himself embarrassed with
the command of a great army, and the conduct of a difficult war against
the Quadi and Marcomanni. [9] The servile and profligate youths whom
Marcus had banished, soon regained their station and influence about the
new emperor. They exaggerated the hardships and dangers of a campaign
in the wild countries beyond the Danube; and they assured the indolent
prince that the terror of his name, and the arms of his lieutenants,
would be sufficient to complete the conquest of the dismayed barbarians,
or to impose such conditions as were more advantageous than any
conquest. By a dexterous application to his sensual appetites, they
compared the tranquillity, the splendor, the refined pleasures of Rome,
with the tumult of a Pannonian camp, which afforded neither leisure nor
materials for luxury. [10] Commodus listened to the pleasing advice; but
whilst he hesitated between his own inclination and the awe which he
still retained for his father's counsellors, the summer insensibly
elapsed, and his triumphal entry into the capital was deferred till the
autumn. His graceful person, [11] popular address, and imagined virtues,
attracted the public favor; the honorable peace which he had recently
granted to the barbarians, diffused a