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Authors: Rodney Castleden
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began to imagine assassination plots everywhere. The pattern of behaviour we saw with Domitian set in. Executions became commonplace, and these predictably increased the number of real assassination conspiracies. Commodus compiled a death list of those he believed were his enemies. Those named on the list realized they had nothing to lose and conspired to assassinate Commodus. In the end, just as in Domitian’s case, it was members of his own household, fearing for their own lives, who decided to do away with him.
His favourite concubine, Marcia, conspired with the imperial chamberlain and the praetorian commander to kill him. It was on New Year’s Eve in the year 192 that Marcia fed Commodus a drink laced with poison, hoping that this would look like a natural death. Unfortunately the poison made Commodus vomit. Marcia then had to call in a young athlete, a wrestler named Narcissus who was probably Marcia’s lover, to kill Commodus. Narcissus strangled the emperor.
The death by strangling was far more difficult to pass off as natural. But Marcia and her co-conspirators tried anyway. They wrapped his body in a blanket and ordered two slaves to carry it past the guards, who had the diplomacy not to notice what was going on. But it seemed that everyone was relieved to be rid of this very inadequate emperor. Rome was told that Commodus had died of apoplexy, and Rome rejoiced. In the senate, Commodus was described as ‘More savage than Domitian, more foul than Nero. As he did unto others, let it be done unto him.’ They ordered the emperor’s body to be dragged through the streets of Rome.
The death of Commodus left a power vacuum. No one else claimed the throne, so the senate chose one of its own members as emperor, as indeed it had expected to do after the assassination of Caligula. Their candidate was Pertinax, a 65-year-old former adviser of Marcus Aurelius and a senator with an excellent reputation. He was cautious, modest and tried to restore the kind of good government that had existed under Marcus Aurelius, blotting out the bad memory of the aberrant reign of Commodus.
Assassinations In The Medieval And Renaissance World
William Ii Of England
1100
The son and successor of William the Conqueror, William Rufus, the first Norman king of England, is by comparison a shadowy and elusive figure. The main thing we remember William Rufus for is his mysterious death while hunting in the New Forest, and this has left us with an iconic rustic image of him on horseback in dappled light beneath the forest oaks, felled without warning by a chance and unexpected arrow during the chase. He has become a figure that recedes into a mythic past, a pagan realm where horned gods ruled the forests and perhaps unworthy kings met their end in a kind of sacrifice.
In fact, history has a lot to say about William Rufus. He was deeply unpopular as a man, and even more unpopular as a king. He was in many ways like his father, and that may explain why he was the Conqueror’s favourite son. It is not known exactly when he was born, but it was certainly before his father conquered England, and he was a boy at the time of the conquest. He was probably born between 1056 and 1060.
He was short, stocky and rather fat, with wild red hair and a distinctively ruddy complexion. It was the red hair and red complexion that gave rise to the nickname ‘Rufus’. His personality was distinctively unattractive. He disliked people, he was tyrannical, cruel, greedy, brash and given to fits of violent temper and vindictive paranoia. He offended the Church not only with his blasphemies but by taxing the Church heavily and driving Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, into exile. Largely because of these practices, William Rufus suffered greatly at the hands of chroniclers in the years after his death: most of the chroniclers were monks.
Unusually for his times, William was sympathetic towards the Jews. He was also gay. These
His favourite concubine, Marcia, conspired with the imperial chamberlain and the praetorian commander to kill him. It was on New Year’s Eve in the year 192 that Marcia fed Commodus a drink laced with poison, hoping that this would look like a natural death. Unfortunately the poison made Commodus vomit. Marcia then had to call in a young athlete, a wrestler named Narcissus who was probably Marcia’s lover, to kill Commodus. Narcissus strangled the emperor.
The death by strangling was far more difficult to pass off as natural. But Marcia and her co-conspirators tried anyway. They wrapped his body in a blanket and ordered two slaves to carry it past the guards, who had the diplomacy not to notice what was going on. But it seemed that everyone was relieved to be rid of this very inadequate emperor. Rome was told that Commodus had died of apoplexy, and Rome rejoiced. In the senate, Commodus was described as ‘More savage than Domitian, more foul than Nero. As he did unto others, let it be done unto him.’ They ordered the emperor’s body to be dragged through the streets of Rome.
The death of Commodus left a power vacuum. No one else claimed the throne, so the senate chose one of its own members as emperor, as indeed it had expected to do after the assassination of Caligula. Their candidate was Pertinax, a 65-year-old former adviser of Marcus Aurelius and a senator with an excellent reputation. He was cautious, modest and tried to restore the kind of good government that had existed under Marcus Aurelius, blotting out the bad memory of the aberrant reign of Commodus.
Assassinations In The Medieval And Renaissance World
William Ii Of England
1100
The son and successor of William the Conqueror, William Rufus, the first Norman king of England, is by comparison a shadowy and elusive figure. The main thing we remember William Rufus for is his mysterious death while hunting in the New Forest, and this has left us with an iconic rustic image of him on horseback in dappled light beneath the forest oaks, felled without warning by a chance and unexpected arrow during the chase. He has become a figure that recedes into a mythic past, a pagan realm where horned gods ruled the forests and perhaps unworthy kings met their end in a kind of sacrifice.
In fact, history has a lot to say about William Rufus. He was deeply unpopular as a man, and even more unpopular as a king. He was in many ways like his father, and that may explain why he was the Conqueror’s favourite son. It is not known exactly when he was born, but it was certainly before his father conquered England, and he was a boy at the time of the conquest. He was probably born between 1056 and 1060.
He was short, stocky and rather fat, with wild red hair and a distinctively ruddy complexion. It was the red hair and red complexion that gave rise to the nickname ‘Rufus’. His personality was distinctively unattractive. He disliked people, he was tyrannical, cruel, greedy, brash and given to fits of violent temper and vindictive paranoia. He offended the Church not only with his blasphemies but by taxing the Church heavily and driving Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, into exile. Largely because of these practices, William Rufus suffered greatly at the hands of chroniclers in the years after his death: most of the chroniclers were monks.
Unusually for his times, William was sympathetic towards the Jews. He was also gay. These
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