A man should neither disregard his reputation, nor consider the goodwill of his countrymen a poor weapon in the battle of life

A man should neither disregard his reputation, nor consider the goodwill of his countrymen a poor weapon in the battle of life, though to hunt after it with fawning and flattery is disgraceful. M. Tullius Cicero. De Amictia. Laelius on Friendship. Section 61.

The freed Phrygian Marcus Aurelius Cleander gained extraordinary power as chamberlain and favourite of the emperor Commodus, rising to command the Praetorian Guard and bringing the principal offices of the Roman state into disrepute by selling them to the highest bidder. In 182 CE he even married the emperor's mistress, Damostratia and by 184 CE he maneuvered a detachment of soldiers from Britain brought to Italy to suppress banditry, to denounce the Praetorian Prefect Tigidius Perennis to the emperor.

After Perennis was executed, Cleander disposed of the current praetorian prefect, Atilius Aebutianus, and himself took over supreme command of the Praetorians with the rank of a pugione (dagger-bearer). Cleander appointed 25 suffect consuls in 190 CE, a record in the 1,000-year history of the Roman consulship. The future emperor Septimius Severus was among them.

But in June, the praefectus annonae Papirius Dionysius contrived a food shortage and laid the blame on Cleander. A mob demonstrated against Cleander during a horse-race in the Circus Maximus. Alarmed, Cleander sent the Praetorian Guard to put down the disturbances. But the urban prefect, Pertinax (another future emperor) dispatched the Vigiles Urbani to oppose them. Cleander fled to Commodus for protection, but the mob followed him calling for his head. At the urging of his mistress Marcia, Commodus had Cleander beheaded and his son killed. Cleander obviously forgot Cicero's advice and totally underestimated the value of his countrymen's goodwill.

Image: Chariot racing by Ulpiano Checa, 1890 (PD)