Titans of History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  In spite of such engrossing problems, Marcus Aurelius remained a keen scholar of Stoicism, and in the last ten years of his life, in breaks between his campaigning and administrative duties, he wrote his Meditations. Written in Greek and randomly arranged just as they came to him, these are an eclectic selection of diary entries, fragments and epigrams in which he addresses the challenges of life at war, the fear of death, and the cares and injustices of everyday life.

  The general sentiment of the Meditations is that overreaction and lingering bitterness are the most damaging responses to life’s iniquities. “If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs you, but your own judgment of it,” he writes. “And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now.” Another typical injunction reads: “A cucumber is bitter; throw it away. There are briars in the road; turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add ‘And why were such things made in the world?’”

  As the Meditations were written against the backdrop of war, mortality naturally features prominently in them. Marcus’ position is clear: “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”

  It is advice that Marcus followed throughout his life but he did not succeed as a father. Before he died on campaign in 180, he appointed as his successor his son Commodus, whose diabolical and demented tyranny ended in assassination. But in spite of all, Marcus Aurelius managed to articulate with greater compassion than any of his contemporaries a timeless vision of fortitude in the face of human injustice and mortality.

  COMMODUS

  AD 161–92

  … even from his earliest years he was base and dishonorable, and cruel and lewd, defiled of mouth, moreover, and debauched.

  Historia Augusta

  Malevolent, scheming, cruel, depraved, murderous, megalomaniacal and corrupt, Commodus has recently re-entered popular consciousness in the Hollywood film Gladiator. Whatever its historical accuracy, that movie captured the essence of Commodus, whose reign, in the judgment of the English historian Edward Gibbon, marked the early decline of the Roman empire.

  Born in Lanuvium near Rome, son of the philosophical Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Commodus was groomed from an early age to succeed to the throne, being declared Caesar (“junior emperor”) when he was just five years old. By AD 169, the death of his two brothers had left him as sole son and heir to the emperor, and he subsequently traveled with his father across the empire, seeing firsthand how the business of government was conducted.

  In AD 176, Commodus (still only fourteen) was awarded the title of Imperator, and a year later, that of Augustus as he became de jure co-ruler and the emperor’s anointed heir. Other offices followed, including those of tribune and consul. The latter position, granted in AD 177, made him the youngest consul thus far in Rome’s history. Three years later, his father died and Commodus became sole emperor in AD 180.

  On attaining exclusive power, Commodus immediately signed a peace deal to end his father’s military campaigns on the Danube, celebrating with a major triumph through the streets of Rome to commemorate his “achievements.” He showed little interest, however, in affairs of state, leaving the day-to-day business of government to a succession of personal favorites, the first of whom was Saoterus—a former slave. Others included the Praetorian prefects Tigidius Perennis and Marcus Aurelius Cleander.

  Commodus preferred to spend time at the gladiatorial amphitheater, both as a spectator and, more extraordinarily, as a participant. Convinced that he was the reincarnation of the mythical god-hero Hercules, he entered the arena dressed in a lion skin and carrying a club or sword. In front of startled senators and plebeians alike, the most powerful man in the empire would comport himself like a ferocious slave (which is what most gladiators were), butchering wild beasts and slaying human opponents who had been carefully handicapped in advance. Some were reportedly wounded soldiers or amputees, brought in from the streets.

  When not fighting mock battles, the emperor earned a reputation for debauchery. Rumors had it that a harem of 300 women and girls and 300 boys allowed him to play out his every sexual fantasy. Roman high society was scandalized by stories of orgies and moral decadence. Unhappiness with the drift and apparent licentiousness of Commodus’ rule soon provoked unrest, and his reign became marked by a series of conspiracies and revolts. As early as 182, his eldest sister Lucilla led a plot to overthrow him; but the plans were exposed and Commodus had the conspirators executed (including Lucilla herself).

  Commodus now directed a blood-spattered reign of terror. Ministers he considered insubordinate or simply insufficiently deferential were killed; so too were those who even hinted at opposition to his rule. The emperor became increasingly obsessed with personal aggrandizement, so much so that even the name Rome was deemed an inadequate reflection of his majesty. The city was thus renamed Colonia Commodiana—the Colony of Commodus—and “re-founded” in AD 190, with Commodus portraying himself as a latter-day Romulus. He renamed the months of the year after the twelve names that he had now given himself. The legions were renamed Commodianae, part of the African fleet was given the title Alexandria Commodiana Togata, the Senate was called the Commodian Fortunate Senate, and his palace and the Roman people were all given the name Commodianus. Truly, this was megalomania on an enormous scale.

  Unsurprisingly, conspiracies against Commodus multiplied, and finally, in early AD 193, a plot involving his mistress Marcia succeeded where others had failed. Commodus was strangled in his bath by a wrestler named Narcissus.

  After his death, Rome’s citizens—especially the upper classes—breathed a collective sigh of relief and the Senate proclaimed the city prefect, Publius Helivius Pertinax, the new emperor. However, he too soon faced a challenge and the empire slipped once more into civil war—a sad dénouement to the Antonine dynasty that had sought to end such internecine strife.

  Commodus was the first emperor since Domitian—almost eighty years earlier—to take power on the basis of birth, rather than merit or force. Tragically for the future of Rome, the consequences were remarkably similar to that previous occasion. As the celebrated Roman historian Cassius Dio, observed, Commodus’ rule marked the shift from “a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron.” The Historia Augusta, a collection of biographies of Roman emperors produced in the 4th century AD, records that the Senate proclaimed the following after Commodus’s passing:

  Let the memory of the murderer and the gladiator be utterly wiped away … More savage than Domitian, more foul than Nero. As he did unto others, let it be done unto him … The guiltless are yet unburied; let the body of the murderer be dragged in the dust. The murderer dug up the buried; let the body of the murderer be dragged in the dust.

  CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

  c. 285–337

  In hoc signo vinces—“In this sign shalt thou conquer”

  The words accompanying the divinely inspired vision that appeared to Constantine before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, AD 312

  Constantine was a bundle of contradictions—he was no saint but a brutal, bull-necked, flamboyant soldier who murdered his friends and allies and even his closest family. He owed his supremacy to the sword. Nonetheless, his embrace of Christianity was a decisive act in Western history.

  When Constantine was born in the middle or late 280s, the Roman empire had recently been divided by the emperor Diocletian into eastern and western halves. Constantine was the son of Constantius, a general who later, in 305, was to be proclaimed emperor of the western empire. As a child, Constantine was sent to Nicomedia (modern Izmit in Turkey) to be raised at the court of Diocletian, who had taken for himself the eastern portion of the empire. Under Diocletian’s rule, Constantine witnessed fierce persecution of Christians, which intensified after 303.

  In 305 a complex power struggle for control of both the eastern and the western parts of the empire began. Constantius died at York, in Britain, in 306, whereupon Constantine was procla
imed emperor by his troops. A capable soldier, Constantine set about consolidating his power, which was initially centered on Gaul. In 312 he crossed the Alps with an army, attacking and defeating the western emperor Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, and becoming the sole western emperor himself. Following a dream in which God appeared to him, he made his soldiers paint a Christian monogram on their shields. “By this sign you will conquer,” said the dream. His vision of Christ coincided in his belief in the one divinity of the Unconquered Sun. His victory made Jesus his god of victory—he believed he owed his power to Christianity. But his embrace of Christianity was also political: the idea of a single empire under one emperor, one god.

  In 313 Constantine met the eastern emperor Licinius, and the two men agreed the Edict of Milan, a historic proclamation that extended to all people the freedom to worship whatever deity they chose. For Christians, this meant that they were granted legal rights for the first time and were able to organize their forms of worship as they chose. The edict also restored all property that had been confiscated under the recent persecutions.

  After the Edict of Milan, relations between Constantine and Licinius deteriorated, and in 320 the latter once again began to persecute Christians in his portion of the empire. By 324 the rivalry had spilled over into civil war.

  Emerging victorious, Constantine reunited the whole of the Roman empire under the banner of Christianity. At this high point in his fortunes he wrote that he had come as God’s chosen instrument for the suppression of impiety, calling himself “The Equal of the Apostles,” and he told the Persian king that through God’s divine power he had come to bring peace and prosperity to all lands. Crucifixion, sexual immorality, prostitution, pagan sacrifice and gladiatorial shows were all abolished; Sunday—the day of Constantine’s favored pagan deity—became the Sabbath. This was no age of tolerance: on the contrary, the persecution of the Jews, the “Christ killers,” started immediately and intensified.

  Constantine rededicated the town of Byzantium, which from 330 was known as Constantinople, the eastern Rome (today’s Istanbul).

  The church of the Holy Apostles in Byzantium was built on the site of a temple to Aphrodite. In Jerusalem Constantine ordered the church of the Holy Sepulcher to be built; in Rome, the church of St. Peter was handsomely endowed with plate and property. The intellectual credentials of the Church were reinforced when Constantine summoned the Council of Nicaea in 325 to deal with the violent debates on the nature of Christ, as man or god.

  Constantine used Christianity to unify the state, but he was as ruthless as he was practical. In 326 he executed his son Crispus and his own wife Fausta for treason and possibly adultery together, thereby joining Herod the Great of Judaea, Emperor Claudius, Ivan the Terrible, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Iranian Shah, Abbas the Great and Peter the Great of Russia, and England’s Henry VIII as royal killers of their own wives or sons—though only Herod and Constantine managed to kill both categories.

  Constantine himself was baptized on his deathbed—perhaps prompted by the realization that his position had often necessitated unchristian acts.

  ATTILA THE HUN

  406–53

  He was a man born into the world to shake the nations, the scourge of all lands, who in some way terrified all mankind by the dreadful rumors noised abroad concerning him.

  Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths, 6th-century Goth historian

  Attila, king of the Huns from 434 to 453, had a voracious appetite for gold, land and power. Defeated only once, he was the most powerful of the barbarian rulers who fed off the last vestiges of the crumbling Roman empire. According to legend, he carried the Sword of Mars, bestowed on him by the gods as a sign he would rule the world.

  The Huns were a collection of tribes from the Eurasian steppes with a fearsome reputation (the Great Wall of China was built to keep them at bay). Basing themselves in what is now Hungary, they took advantage of the decline of the Roman empire during the 4th and 5th centuries to expand their territories, until, at its peak under Attila, their empire stretched from the River Danube to the Baltic Sea, encompassing large swathes of Germany, Austria and the Balkans.

  Attila was said to be as ugly as he was successful: short, squat and swarthy with a large head, deep-set eyes, squashed nose and sparse beard. Aggressive and short-tempered, he was every inch a soldier, eating meat served on wooden dishes while his lieutenants ate assorted delicacies off silver plates. In the Hun tradition, he would often eat and negotiate on horseback, while at camp he was entertained by a fool, dwarf or one of his many young wives.

  In 434, Attila’s uncle King Ruglia died, leaving Attila and his older brother Bleda in joint charge of the kingdom. The Roman empire had long since been divided into two, the eastern (also known as the Byzantine) empire being ruled in Attila’s time by Theodosius II. To avoid attack from the Huns, Theodosius had agreed to pay an annual tribute, but when he defaulted on payments, Attila invaded Byzantine territory, capturing and destroying several important cities, including Singidunum (Belgrade).

  Following an uneasy truce negotiated in 442, Attila attacked again the following year, destroying numerous towns and cities along the Danube and massacring their inhabitants. The slaughter in the city of Naissus (in what is present-day Serbia) was so great that, several years later, when Roman ambassadors arrived there for negotiations with Attila, they had to camp outside the city to escape the stench of rotting flesh. Countless other cities endured a similar fate. According to one contemporary account: “There was so much killing and bloodletting that no one could number the dead. The Huns pillaged the churches and monasteries, and slew the monks and virgins … They so devastated Thrace that it will never rise again and be as it was before.” Constantinople was only spared because Attila’s forces were unable to penetrate the capital’s walls, so he turned instead on the Byzantine army, inflicting a crushing and bloody defeat. Peace came at the cost of repaying the tribute owed and tripling future payments. Then, around 445, Bleda was murdered, surely on his brother’s orders, leaving Attila in sole command of the kingdom. Another assault on the eastern empire followed in 447, as the Huns struck further east, burning down churches and monasteries as they went, and using battering rams and siege towers to smash their way into cities, which they again razed to the ground, butchering the inhabitants.

  Attila’s only defeat came when he invaded Gaul in 451. His initial intention had been to attack the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse rather than to overtly challenge Roman interests in the area. In 450, however, Honoria—the sister of Valentinian III, the western emperor—appealed to Attila to rescue her from an arranged marriage to a Roman senator. Having received her engagement ring, Attila took this as a proposal of marriage and demanded half of Rome’s western empire as a dowry. When the Romans refused, Attila invaded Gaul with a massive army. In response, the Roman general Flavius Aetius combined his forces with the Visigoths to resist the Hun invasion. The rival armies clashed at Orléans, and in the ensuing Battle of Châlons (in modern Champagne), in which thousands of men from both sides were killed, the Huns were forced to retreat. It was one of the last great victories for the western empire but a pyrrhic one, for their forces were spent.

  When the Huns invaded Italy in 452, Aetius was powerless to stop them. Mobile and rapacious, Attila’s armies sacked and burned yet more towns and cities, including Aquileia, Patavium (Padua), Verona, Brixia (Brescia), Bergomum (Bergamo) and Mediolanum (Milan). Only an outbreak of illness among Attila’s troops slowed his campaign, but by the spring he was on the verge of taking Rome itself, in which the western Roman emperor, Valentinian III, had taken refuge. It took a direct appeal from Pope Leo I to dissuade him from sacking the city, Attila agreeing to go no further south.

  Attila’s death came in 453 after a night of heavy drinking following his marriage to another young bride. He suffocated in a pool of blood after suffering a heavy nosebleed while asleep. The soldiers who buried him were killed afterward, so that none o
f his enemies would ever be able to find and desecrate his grave.

  MUHAMMAD

  570–632

  I have perfected your religion for you, and I have completed My blessing upon you and I have approved Islam for your religion.

  Koran, sura 5

  Muhammad was the founder of the Islamic faith. Muslims believe that he was the messenger of God and the last of his prophets and that he transmitted the word of God to his people in the form of the Koran. For Muslims, the Koran and the Hadith, collections of Muhammad’s deeds and sayings, together provide complete guidance on how to live a good and devout life.

  While he founded Islam against a background of turbulent tribal feuding, Muhammad encouraged his followers to serve God with decency, humility and piety. But he was also clearly a gifted and ruthless soldier-statesman, founding a successful and expanding state by diplomacy and warfare—as well as a new world religion.

  Muhammed ibn Abdullah was born in Mecca in AD 570. He spent his early years in the Arabian desert in the care of a Bedouin wet-nurse. Both his parents and his grandfather were dead by the time he was eight, and he grew up under the guardianship of his uncle Abu Talib. Muhammad grew into a handsome young man with a generous character and great skill at arbitrating in disputes.

  This inspirational visionary was renowned as a devout and spiritual man. He would regularly retreat to the desert to meditate and pray. It was on one such retreat in 610 that he first claimed to have experienced the presence of the archangel Gabriel, who appeared to him with a command to begin his revelation of the word of God. Terrified, he told his first wife, Khadijah, of his experience. She and her blind Christian cousin Waraqah interpreted Muhammad’s experience as a sign that he was God’s prophet.