In the year 930 from the founding of the City, Lucius Antoninus Commodus, the fifteenth from Augustus, succeeded his father in the rule and held it for thirteen years.
1 Anno ab urbe condita DCCCCXXX Lucius Antoninus Commodus quintus decimus ab Augusto patri successit in regnum mansitque in eo annis XIII.
He waged war successfully against the Germans. But in all other respects he was depraved by the disgrace of luxury and obscenity: he very often fought with gladiatorial arms in the training school, and he frequently exposed himself to wild beasts in the amphitheatre; he also killed a great many senators, above all those he saw to excel in nobility and energy.
2 aduersus Germanos bellum feliciter gessit. ceterum per omnia luxuriae et obscenitatis dedecore deprauatus, gladiatoriis quoque armis saepissime in ludo depugnauit et in amphitheatro feris sese frequenter obiecit; interfecit etiam quamplurimos senatores, maxime quos animaduertit nobilitate industriaque excellere.
The punishment of the City followed upon the outrages of its king. For the Capitol was struck by lightning, and the conflagration that arose from it burned up, in a ravening whirlwind of fire, that famous library assembled by the care and zeal of the ancestors, together with other buildings situated nearby. Then another fire, which broke out at Rome afterwards, levelled to the ground the temple of Vesta, the Palace and the greater part of the City.
3 flagitia regis poena urbis insequitur. nam fulmine Capitolium ictum, ex quo facta inflammatio bybliothecam illam, maiorum cura studioque compositam, aedesque alias iuxta sitas rapaci turbine concremauit. deinde aliud incendium postea Romae exortum aedem Vestae et Palatium plurimamque urbis partem solo coaequauit.
Commodus, incommodious to all, is said to have died by strangling in the house of Vestilianus, having been judged an enemy of the human race even while he lived.1
4 Commodus cunctis incommodus in domo Vestiliani strangulatus interisse fertur, hostis generis humani etiam uiuus iudicatus.
1A pun: commodus means “convenient”, incommodus “troublesome”. The Historia Augusta (Commodus 16) names the Vectilian house on the Caelian; Orosius makes it the house of a Vestilianus. Eutropius has Commodus declared an enemy of the human race after his death, not while he lived.
After him the aged Helvius Pertinax was created emperor by the senate, the sixteenth from Augustus. In the sixth month after he had begun to reign he was killed in the Palace through the crime of Julianus, the jurist.2
5 Post hunc a senatu creatus est senex Heluius Pertinax sextus decimus ab Augusto. qui sexto mense quam regnare coeperat Iuliani iuris periti scelere in Palatio occisus est.
2Didius Julianus, who bid for the throne after the praetorian guard had murdered Pertinax in March 193. Orosius, following Eutropius, calls him a jurist and makes him the author of the murder.
After Pertinax had been killed, Julianus seized the empire, but was soon defeated in civil war by Severus at the Mulvian Bridge and killed, in the seventh month after he had begun to rule. Thus one year was used up between Pertinax and Julianus.
6 Iulianus interfecto Pertinace inuasit imperium sed mox a Seuero apud pontem Muluium bello ciuili uictus et interfectus est mense septimo postquam coeperat imperare. ita inter Pertinacem et Iulianum unus annus absumptus est.