Famine Conspiracy and Convoluting History

By Lisa Pang, 2027

In 192 A.D., Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius (the last of the “five good emperors” whose Stoic approaches to ruling brought a period of relative tranquility and stability to the Roman Empire), was assassinated. Commodus started his reign in 177 A.D., but throughout the short sixteen years, this one man utterly changed the prestige of the Roman Senate, indulged the ever-growing power of the Praetorian Guards (personal bodyguards and intelligence agents for the Roman emperors), and gradually led the once-thriving empire to a path of demise. Squandering time with his concubines, Commodus left all responsibilities within the empire to his trusted chamberlain—Marcus Aurelius Cleander.

In 189 A.D., a famine broke out. Edward Gibbon reflected in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “Pestilence and famine contributed to fill up the measure of the calamities of Rome. The first could be only imputed to the just indignation of the gods; but (A.D. 189) a monopoly of corn, supported by the riches and power of the minister, was considered as the immediate cause of the second.” Indeed, the famine was not a natural disaster but a result of power abuse and conspiracies. Historical sources generally suggested that Cleander intentionally caused it in his quest for power and emperorship. As such, the theme of food and famine has been tightly connected to politics, the monopoly of agricultural resources as a manipulation of power, and a convoluting period of Roman history. This essay compares how Cleander’s plot was described respectively in Historia Augusta, Herodian’s History of the Roman Empire since the Death of Marcus Aurelius, and Cassius Dio’s Historiae Romanae while shedding light on some points of ambiguity. 

Cleander rose to power by selling political offices, thus winning immense economic profits for himself. Historia Augusta, a late Roman collection of biographies of the Roman emperors from 117 A.D. to 284 A.D., noted,

Ad cuius nutum etiam libertini in senatum​ atque in patricios lecti sunt, tuncque primum viginti quinque consules in unum annum, venditaeque omnes provinciae. Omnia Cleander pecunia venditabat; revocatos de exsilio dignitatibus ornabat, res iudicatas rescindebat.

According to Roman traditions, patricians were upper-class, land-owning elites who comprised most of the Roman senate. Moreover, the patrician identity was mainly hereditary and based on familial lineage. Cleander thus defied traditions that had been well established since the Roman Kingdom and early Republic by selling senatorial and patrician positions. Moreover, according to Herodian, Cleander also possessed “the command of the bodyguard, the stewardship of the imperial bedroom, and the control of the imperial armies,” reflecting a culmination of his economic, political, and military power. He thus started coveting emperorship, attempting to rally public support for himself, thus forcing Commodus to step down from the throne. 

With his immense wealth and political networking, Cleander bought up most of the grain supply that originated in Alexandria and stored it himself instead of distributing it to Roman markets. He planned to distribute grain to people and the army when they were slightly suffering from the famine, thus becoming the hero of Rome who relieved its people from the food crisis.

However, historical sources diverged from this point in the details concerning the famine. The only account from Historia Augusta is, “Nec eam tum invidiam populo saeviente Commodus ferre potuisset, plebi ad poenam donatus est” (At that time, Commodus could not endure the hatred with people raging, and gave Cleander over to the populace for punishment). The work did not mention the famine anywhere nor attribute the food crisis as a driving force of Cleander’s demise. Historia Augusta seemed to question the historical significance of the famine and imply that it is Cleander’s previous dishonorable acts that piled up public dissatisfaction. On the very opposite, Herodian fully encapsulated and perhaps even exaggerated the situation:

Famine gripped the city … At first [the Romans] attacked [Cleander] bitterly when they thronged the theaters; later, however, they went in a body to Commodus, who was passing the time on his estate near the city … Unlooked for by the assembled mob, the imperial cavalry appeared fully armed and, at the order of the prefect, butchered those in their path.

Herodian pictured a full-scale civil war; he then described a great slaughter of fugitives by the horsemen, the violent resistance of the civilians, and how the infantry was later employed to curb the mob. Although Herodian did not specify the number of deaths and casualties, the content implied a considerable scale of civil disobedience and military suppression from the authority. Of course, Commodus was ignorant of the chaos even as the mob approached his suburban estate. Only after Commodus’s eldest sister, Fadilla, rushed into the palace and reported imminent danger did Commodus realize Cleander’s treachery and order him to be beheaded.

Interestingly, Cassius Dio’s style seems to lie between Historia Augusta and Herodian’s account. After acknowledging Cleander’s intentionality in the famine, Dio wrote,

There was a horse-race on … a crowd of children ran into the Circus. The children shouted in concert many bitter words, which the people took up and then began to bawl out every conceivable insult; and finally the throng leaped down and set out to find Commodus (who was then in the Quintilian suburb) … The latter sent some soldiers against them, who wounded and killed a few … Marcia … reported the matter to [Commodus].

The expressions “some soldiers” and “wounded and killed a few” mitigated the degree of violence and empirical suppression of the event. Dio and Herodian also seemed to disagree on the individual who reported the rebellion to Commodus (Dio claimed that it is Marcia while Herodian mentioned Fadilla). 

Ultimately, the three accounts left a heavily ambiguous history. While they demonstrated how food and agriculture were tightly connected to corruption, power abuse, and conspiracy, they nonetheless left many questions unanswered. How severe was the famine? How many people died from it? What was the degree of civil disobedience and military brutality? How much was it correlated to the downfall of Commodus—and the Roman Empire? Besides the above-mentioned sources, literary works, statistics, and archeological findings should also be assessed to gain a more accurate understanding of this period of convoluting history. 

Works Cited

Cary, Earnest, trans. Roman History. Loeb Classical Library, n.d.

Echols, Edward C. Herodian of Antioch’s History of the Roman Empire. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 

Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. 1. London: Everyman’s Library, 1993. 

Historia Augusta