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Commodus – the Resurrected Gladiator (Cass. Dio 73, 21, 3; Historia Augusta, Commodus, 16, 6–7)
Abstract
The author of a key monograph on Commodus, O. Hekster, has prudently analyzed two key sources in explaining the emperor's seemingly irrational behavior, the work of Cassius Dion (73, 21, 3) and the Historia Augusta, Comm. (16, 6–7). Both testimonies report on the Ruler’s participation in gladiatorial combat in 192 AD. This episode was usually considered a manifestation of Emperor’s madness. Hekster however, following T. Wiedemann (Emperors and Gladiators), concluded that Commodus in the arena manifested the gladiatorial ethos: courage, the victory of life over death and civilization over savagery. For this reason, he incorporated the Emperor’s show-offs into the religious politics of the Ruler, who identified himself with Hercules, the defender of order and civilization. In the arena gladiator-New Hercules combined both ideas. Probably, however, the episode mentioned in both sources gave Commodus more than identification with the hero. For the Emperor played out his resurrection in the arena. The transfer of his helmet through the amphitheater’s Porta Libitina (the bodies of slain gladiators were carried out through it) and its re-entry into the arena, in the eyes of spectators familiar with arena ritual, was seen as the Ruler’s return from the afterlife. However, there are no threads of the Hercules myth in this thoughtful scene, and its symbolism was contained only in the ceremony of munera gladiatoria. At least in this crucial episode for theatrical representations of the Ruler, the Emperor personifying the gladiator ethos was dominant, and this creation should be considered a propaganda masterpiece. Its effect, however, in view of the Ruler’s imminent death, was instead minor.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/rh.2024.57.77-99
Date of publication: 2024-10-22 08:44:35
Date of submission: 2024-02-09 12:01:55
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