ns
of the senate and armies; and when he ascended 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.

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. 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.

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. 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. 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, popular address, and imagined virtues, attracted
the public favor; the honorable peace which he had recently granted to
the barbarians, diffused a universal joy; his impatience to revisit Rome
was fondly ascribed to the love of his country; and his dissolute course
of amusements was faintly condemned in a prince of nineteen years of
age.

During the three first years of his reign, the forms, and even the
spirit, of the old administration, were maintained by those faithful
counsellors, to