OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

149

with redoubled violence against the gates of chap.the palace, where Commodus lay, dissolved in —luxury, and alone unconscious of the civil war.

It was death to approach his person with theunwelcome news. He would have perished inthis supine security, had not two women, hiselder sister Fadilla, and Marcia, the most fa-voured of his concubines, ventured to break in-to his presence. Bathed in tears, and withdishevelled hair, they threw themselves at hisfeet; and with all the pressing eloquence offear, discovered to the affrighted emperor thecrimes of the minister, the rage of the people,and the impending ruin which, in a few minutes,would burst over his palace and person. Corn-modus started from his dream of pleasure, andcommanded that the head of Oleander shouldbe thrown out to the people. The desiredspectacle instantly appeased the tumult; andthe son of Marcus might even yet have regain-ed the affection and confidence of his subjects. 0

But every sentiment of virtue and humanity Disso i, ltewas extinct in the mind of Commodus . Whilst pleasures

_ °* Conuno

he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these dus.unworthy favourites, he valued nothing in sove-reign power, except the unbounded licence ofindulging his sensual appetites. His hourswere spent in a seraglio of three hundred beau-tiful women, and as many boys, of every rank,and of every province; and, wherever the artsof seduction proved ineffectual, the brutal lover

' Dion Cassius , 1. lxxii, p. 1215; Hcrodian, 1. i. p. 52; Hist. Au-gust. p. 48