Are they and welcome to Emperor's of Rome, a podcast about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr.

Rianna Evans, a senior lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe

University. This is episode LXXV, flying too close to the sun.

Commodus wasn't the most attentive emperor to rule Rome,

preferring to dedicate his time to indulging his vices.

Inevitably, someone will step forward and start calling his shots,

because, hey, someone has to keep the grain flowing.

Unfortunately, this doesn't end well for these men,

and today we'll take a closer look at their fate.

Here's Rianna Evans. So after the conspiracy against Commodus he becomes more and more paranoid

and withdraws and that means it leaves the field open for

various people to fulfill the position of being in charge because he's not

interested in taking that role of being publicly at the forefront of Roman rule.

So there's an obvious vacuum there and this is a situation we've seen before, I would say,

an obvious parallel is way back with Tiberius when he went off to Capri.

And Sir Janus put his hand up and stepped into those boots.

Yeah, well the people who decide to walk into Commodus's boots should have known it never

ends well. Sir Janus was executed and most of these people are going to come a cropper too.

So Commodus is off enjoying himself and the first person to to attempt to take over governing Rome

is the Praetorian Prefect who's called Sextus Ticidius Parenis.

So when you say take over... Echidius Perainis.

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