EMPEROR BORE-US: How Commodus Ruined Rome by Becoming Incredibly Fucking Dull
He traded his loincloth for logic, his gladius for gratitude, and the entire Roman Empire died of terminal sanctimony.
So, picture this: Emperor Commodus—the guy whose entire personality was “roid-rage Hercules cosplay”—gets bonked on his pretty little head. Or maybe he just ate the wrong kind of mushroom from the imperial garden. Whatever the cause, instead of waking up and demanding to personally slaughter a giraffe in the Colosseum, he wakes up and starts asking his wrestling partner, Narcissus, about the nature of the *logos*. Now, Narcissus, who in our timeline famously strangled the bastard in his bath, is just standing there, dick in hand (probably, it’s Rome), completely baffled as the Emperor of the known world starts weeping about the beauty of accepting one’s fate. The Praetorian Guard, who were paid specifically to protect a raging, god-complex asshole, suddenly have to stand around while Emperor Marcus Aurelius Part Two starts a goddamn book club.
The parties, of course, were the first casualty. One minute you’re at a classic Roman orgy—all the wine, cunny, and questionable appetizers you can handle—and the next you’re being forced into a mandatory seminar on *apatheia*, or “not giving a fuck,” led by an emperor who clearly gives *way too many* fucks. Commodus swapped his lion-skin cape for a drab philosopher’s robe that did absolutely nothing for his famously sculpted ass. He stopped executing senators for fun and started forcing them into six-hour “virtue circles.” The grain dole now came with a free papyrus scroll of his own terrible poetry about the illusion of worldly pleasure. Rome was fucking *miserable*. They wanted bread and circuses, not breathing exercises and a lecture on how their desire for bread and circuses was merely an attachment to a fleeting external.
His own sister, Lucilla—a woman who could scheme her way out of a locked chastity belt—was apoplectic. In our world, she tried to have him killed because he was a tyrannical, homicidal egomaniac who was ruining the family name. In *this* world, she wanted him dead because he was the most insufferable prick in the Empire. “Honestly, who brings up Epictetus during foreplay?” she complained in a totally-real letter I just invented. Conspiracies bloomed not out of fear, but out of sheer, bone-deep annoyance. Assassins weren’t motivated by restoring the Republic; they were driven by the primal need to shut this guy up before he could explain the dichotomy of control *one more time*.
Naturally, they still got him. But it was way more pathetic. No dramatic wrestling match, no honorable poison. A handful of senators, led by his chamberlain and his favorite concubine, Marcia, just smothered him with a decorative pillow while he was mid-sentence during a fireside chat about the transitory nature of existence. His last words, muffled by damask, were probably a faintly surprised, “But… this is an inappropriate reaction to an external impression.” The official cause of death was listed as “acute philosophical ennui,” and the people of Rome rioted for a solid week, demanding the immediate return of mindless violence and public sex. And who can blame them?
