Narcissus II: The Strangling of Commodus reconstructs the final night of 945 AUC (31 December 192 AD), when Commodus was poisoned and then strangled by Narcissus, a palace wrestler drawn unwillingly into Marcia’s conspiracy. Based on Cassius Dio and Herodian, the piece explores how Narcissus, became the instrument of the emperor’s death. It follows his panicked flight into the unused wings of the Palatine, his futile hope for pardon under Pertinax, and his eventual capture and execution under Septimius Severus. This historically informed reenactment fills the silence left by ancient writers, tracing one plausible path through the collapse of the Antonine line.
This article is a historically informed reconstruction of the final night of 945 AUC (31 December 192 AD), tracing the death of Commodus, the actions of Narcissus, and the political transition that carried Rome from the collapsing Antonine line to Pertinax and eventually Septimius Severus. Ancient writers such as Cassius Dio and Herodian describe the emperor’s assassination but leave Narcissus’ subsequent movements in silence; what follows is a plausible narrative built from that gap, grounded in known Roman domestic practices, Praetorian interrogation methods, arena punishment customs, and the structure of the imperial household on the Palatine.
It’s a “what‑if” reenactment, not invention for its own sake, but an attempt to walk through the narrow corridor of events that the sources gesture toward without fully describing.
Narcissus II: The Strangling
Bare‑chested Narcissus, close study of the imperial wrestler linked to Commodus’ final night
Narcissus would have known for weeks that something in the palace had turned. Something in the air, something in the way that people spoke, looked and perceived the Roman world.
Commodus no longer fought in the aena for display but for appetite, cutting down any creature brought before him, beasts dragged in nets, animals led trembling into the sand, even the great ones. The tiger, the hippopotamus, numerous elephants.
Commodus fought again after eating, sweating under the secutor’s helmet, striking with the left hand he was so proud of, forcing athletes and gladiators to face him as though he were one of them. The contests grew cruel,. They were no longer staged but real, men dying because he wished to see them die, and the people were afraid. They sensed danger.
It was the very last day of the year 945 AUC (Ab Urbe Condita) and rumours spread that the emperor meant to shoot spectators from the imperial seat, to imitate Hercules and prove he could kill at any distance. People stayed away from the arena a little although Commodus made notes of the Senators who declined to attend.
In the corridors, servants whispered. In the storerooms, slaves kept their heads down. Everyone moved more quietly. Everyone waited. Narcissus at the centre of the palace would have felt it too, the tightening, the dread, the sense that the emperor had begun to enjoy the fear he caused.
At first it would all have felt like good fortune for a wrestler. To be discovered in his home province, lifted out of obscurity, dressed in fine clothing and jewels, placed close enough to the emperor to feel the heat from his blood stained body, it was intoxicating.
Narcissus wouldn’t believe that he sometimes sat beside Commodus in the imperial box, and thenwatched him kill beasts as if it were nothing, and he would have believed proximity to the emperor meant safety, although over the three years he’d been at the palace, Commodus’ displays had grown stranger, and Narcissus would have begun to feel exposed. People knew Narcissus’ face, his build, his gait. They whispered Narcissus’ name. He was too close to the excesses of the emperor, too often beside him when he demanded to be called Lord, God, Hercules.
Saying those words about being a god aloud felt wrong, impious, dangerous, and each time the emperor spoke them, Narcissus felt a little more of the emperor’s madness staining him.
The response to Commodus’ action began with a wax tablet that he kept him under his bed for private notes, lists, and sudden decisions. Marcia, his former favourite, found it by accident, lifting the covers to straighten the bedding and seeing names quickly inscribed into the wax, including her own name.
Marcia showed Narcissus the tablet with her name inscribed on it, and Eclectus’ too, and others whose loyalty Commodus had begun to doubt. Commodus was planning a purge of the palace. Something nasty.
Quintus Aemilius Laetus, the Praetorian prefect, was already in the circle of conspirators; he understood better than anyone that Commodus’ paranoia had reached a point where no one close to him was safe. Narcissus didn’t need to be named to be in danger. The logic of the hour made his name on a later list almost unavoidable.
Marcia would have summoned Narcissus quietly. Not because he was a born killer, he wasn’t a killer, he was just a wrestler on the make and likely to be on the next list.
He was also one of the few freedmen who had served long enough to understand the machinery of the palace. In the nearly three years he was there he’d seen men rise and fall.
Narcissus had watched Commodus’ moods turn from indulgent to lethal as he strutted around as a re-born Hercules dressed in his lion’s skin, and learned that proximity to power wasn’t safety but exposure. When Marcia showed Narcissus the tablet, she didn’t need to persuade him. She only needed to let him read the wax. Marcia watched the logic of it sink into Narcissus’ consciousness.
Narcissus would have stared at the wax tablet for a long moment, not because he doubted its meaning but because he understood it too well. In the palace, a name on a list wasn’t a threat. It was a sentence. The only question was when the sentence would be carried out.
Marcia spoke quietly as a woman who had once been Commodus’ favourite, a stabilising presence in a household that had grown increasingly unstable, but she was also practical. She knew Narcissus was frightened. She knew fear could be shaped, and told him that Commodus had already decided to kill her, Eclectus, Laetus, and others. She told him that the emperor had begun to speak of purging the household. Marcia told Narcissus that he wouldn’t survive the week.
Then she offered Narcissus the only thing she could: a place in the world that would exist after Commodus was gone. Marcia didn’t promise wealth. or promise rank. Marcia promised survival.
Narcissus agreed because he’d no alternative. He wasn’t a trained killer like the Praetorians. He’d never strangled a man in his life, but he understood the logic of the household. He understood that refusing Marcia meant dying under Commodus. Not a lot of choices left in the world.
He understood that accepting the terms from Marcia meant living long enough to see what came next and every man wants to be there at the end of the book. Narcissus understood that Marcia, Eclectus, and Laetus weren’t asking him to kill an emperor in public. They were asking him to finish a job that their poison had already begun.
The timing was deliberate. Commodus had bathed and eaten after coming back from the arena. It was night..
The emperor was relaxed, already drowsy as the poison had begun its work but it didn’t work fast enough, and there was always the possibility that Commodus may raise the alarm. In his weakened state, the emperor could stagger out into a public area and denounce the killers and order their immediate execution.
The poison hadn’t killed Commodus fast enough although it probably was’t ever meant to kill instantly. The poison had to be mild enough to pass unnoticed in wine, subtle enough not to alert the cup‑bearers, and predictable enough to weaken Commodus without causing a scene. The emperor had long taken daily antidote tonics prepared by palace physicians, common practice for emperors who lived in fear of poisoning, and these mixtures blunted the effect of anything slipped into his drink.
With a full stomach after dinner and warm blood from the bath, the toxin acted very slowly, leaving him heavy, sluggish, confused, unable to rise, but still alive. He’d vomited over himself uncontrollably over the bedclothes, an obscene mixture of half‑digested food and streaks of blood that showed the poison had unsettled his body but not finished its work. The toxins created vulnerability, not death, and that was why the conspirators turned to Narcissus to complete what the poisoned wine had begun.
The Praetorians weren’t present because Laetus, their prefect, had withdrawn them. A guard doesn’t intervene when its commander has already decided the emperor must die. The household attendants were few: a bath slave, a cup‑bearer, one or two men who had served Commodus for a few days only and knew better than to question Marcia’s presence. The long-term serving staff had been purged a few weeks ago.
Narcissus entered the room quietly. He’d been told what to expect: Commodus weakened, confused, vomit stained and unable to rise. Narcissus stood at the threshold for a moment, watching the emperor breathe. He felt no hatred. Only fear. Fear of the man on the couch, fear of the conspirators behind him, fear of the future that had narrowed to a single act.
Commodus tried to speak when he saw him, but the words broke in his throat. Narcissus stepped forward. He didn’t think of himself as a murderer; he thought of himself as a man pushed down a corridor with only one direction left. He stood beside the bed, set his hands around the emperor’s neck, and tightened. The first pressure was clumsy, uncertain, the grip of someone who had never done this before. Commodus’ body tried to resist in the way a weakened body does, hands lifting without force, fingers opening and closing as though searching for air, legs kicking in short, uncoordinated bursts.
Commodus breathing changed quickly: first a sharp intake, then a ragged, uneven rhythm as the muscles of the throat fought for space. Narcissus held on, frightened, sweating, his own breath shallow and fast. He knew that once the struggle began, it couldn’t be undone. Commodus’ efforts grew smaller, the movements losing coherence as the body’s strength ebbed. The chest rose once, faltered, and then stopped.
There was no shout, or alarm raised. No rush of guards. Only silence in the palace.
Marcia watching from the shadows exhaled. Eclectus some distance apart looked away. Laetus nodded once, the gesture of a man who had already begun thinking about the next hour, the next day, the next emperor.
The conspirators didn’t linger. They scattered quickly, each had planned in advance hurriedly taking what they had packed and put to one side, gold, silver, small cameos. Portable valuables that could be hidden in clothing or bags. The palace was vast, full of storerooms and unlocked chests. In moments of regime change, looting wasn’t opportunistic. It was expected.
Narcissus stayed where he was, staring at the body of the man he’d wrestled beside for three years. He felt no triumph. Only the cold, rising awareness that he’d stepped out of one life and into another, and that the second had no shape yet. Commodus’ body still looked powerful even in stillness, the broad chest, the heavy shoulders, the strength Narcissus had felt so many times in the practice ring. He’d admired that strength, always quietly, always at a distance, because admiration was dangerous when directed toward an emperor. Fear had kept every thought locked behind his ribs. Now that same fear held him motionless. He didn’t flee. He didn’t follow the others. He walked out of the room, down a corridor, and into a quiet wing of the Palatine where unused suites lay open and unguarded.
Narcissus wouldn’t have had a plan. He’d been approached by Marcia without preparation or planning and in a moment of fear he’d acted as instructed. Narcissus may have wondered why he’d strangled a man although in a Rome that was full of murder and where men were desensitised in the arena maybe strangling someone was normalised.
He’d a sense of desperation, and desperation told him that the palace, for all its danger, was the only place he understood after three years of living in Rome. He was still an outsider who didn’t know anyone of significance. Commodus was quite clear that he didn’t want Narcissus caught up in the power plays in Rome. Narcissus was there as a playmate for Commodus and for no-one else.
As a result, Narcissus would be on his own and would quickly made for a small set of rooms, storage spaces, servants’ quarters, a disused office, and sat down. There may have been food everywhere in the palace: bread left on tables, fruit in bowls, wine in amphorae. The palace was a world built for abundance. Narcissus would eat, and drank and waited for his heart to slow down a little.
He wouldn’t hide. He’d simply stay without a plan. When everyone scattered there were no soldiers around, everyone just ran and the Palatine Palace emptied and now there was a sense that things were returning to normal. Guards slowly returned to the halls and corridors, orders were barked loudly.
Narcissus didn’t choose his rooms so much as drift into them. The wing he settled in was one of the older sections of the Palatine, a place where clerks once worked and where minor stewards had kept accounts before Commodus reorganised the household. The corridors were quiet. The lamps were unlit. The doors stood open, as though the palace itself had forgotten they existed. Narcissus moved through them slowly, listening for footsteps, voices, anything that might signal danger, but the palace was vast, and in the first hours after an emperor’s death.
He sat down and waited. He didn’t know what else to do. He’d killed an emperor. He hadn’t fled as perhaps he should. He’d no instructions, no patron, no protection. Narcissus had only fear, and fear told him to stay where he was.
Marcia had gone and taken her slaves with her. When he thought about his future he wondered how he could ever have escaped, he was after all a muscular 2.03 metres tall. Narcissus stood out and he’d been seen with the emperor at receptions and the arena for a year at least. Hiding Narcissus would have been difficult.
On the first day after the death of the re-born Hercules, he saw almost no-one. A pair of slaves hurried past the corridor once, stealing baskets of purple dyed clothing to sell in the markets of the suburbs. A clerk walked by later, muttering to himself, his arms full of scrolls. None of them looked at Narcissus. None of them saw him in the shadows and the confusion. The palace was full of new faces, and Narcissus.
Pertinax’s name reached me before I ever saw the man. I knew only that he was the son of Helvius Successus, a freedman from Alba Pompeia, a man raised from modest beginnings and educated well enough to rise through Roman life. The palace whispered about him long before he appeared: slaves passing by my door murmured his name, clerks spoke it hurriedly as they moved through the corridors, Praetorians repeated it in low voices at their posts. Pertinax. A senator. A disciplinarian. A man who had tried to restrain Commodus’ excesses. I didn’t understand why his name mattered, but I understood that it had become the centre of the palace’s attention, and attention in those days was dangerous.
He hoped Pertinax would pardon him. Narcissus realised it was a foolish hope, but hope is rarely rational. Narcissus told himself that Pertinax was a man of order, a man who disliked Commodus’ cruelty, a man who might understand that the killing had been necessary. He lingered in the corridors, listening for news, waiting for signs that the new emperor had begun issuing commands. He imagined being summoned, questioned, forgiven. He imagined being allowed to remain in the palace, perhaps as a minor steward or clerk. He imagined a future. Every man likes to think he has a future and Narcissus didn’t want to return to his old town. That life didn’t appeal at all
The Praetorians were no longer indifferent and Narcissus sensed from their talk that they had been well paid.. Laetus had withdrawn them during the killing in a very political manner, but Laetus was gone now, replaced by men who wanted to prove their loyalty to Pertinax.
Narcissus tested the edges of the palace at night, moving toward the main halls, the outer courtyards, the places where guards stood watch. Each time he approached, he saw the Praetorians searching rooms, torturing slaves for information, inspecting storerooms. Narcissus stepped back quickly, returning to his wing before anyone noticed him.
He had clothing, fine tunics taken from abandoned chests, cloaks left behind by fleeing stewards. He had gold and silver, small pieces he’d gathered in the confusion after the killing. He even found wigs and theatrical disguises in a storage room used for palace entertainments. He tried them on, looking at himself in reflections, but each time he prepared to leave in disguise, something stopped him. Fear. Uncertainty. The sense that the shrinking world of the Palatine palace, for all its danger, was still the only place he understood while the world went mad around him.
Pertinax’s men searched the palace for two days. They didn’t find Narcissus. They found others instead, men and women who had been “reminded of their duties,” “corrected,” or “returned to discipline,” the soft Roman phrases that covered beatings, confinement, and the small humiliations used to extract information. Slaves who had overheard too much, clerks who had carried messages: all were submitted to the usual “necessary measures.” Narcissus remained invisible. He stayed in rooms no one used, moving only at night, eating whatever he found on trolleys in the corridors, bread left on tables, fruit in baskets, wine in amphorae. He slept lightly, waking at every sound.
Days became weeks and the food became more erratic, less of it was left outside rooms to be cleared away, less for Narcissus to take away secretly to his hiding place. Water was harder to find and the wine ran out and he began to sober-up. Narcissus found it harder to keep clean with the limited water he found. In the middle of the night,
He told himself he had a plan, though it barely deserved the name. One day, when Pertinax was near, he would step out of the shadows and speak to him. He imagined presenting himself to the new emperor as a man caught in a misunderstanding, a Roman patriot who had acted under necessity, someone who could be restored to favour with a word. It was the kind of hope men in the palace clung to when they had nothing else.
Narcissus heard the news from a pair of slaves who passed through the corridor, speaking in frightened whispers. The Praetorians had killed Pertinax after just over twelve weeks. Others had come and gone. It was confused, messy not at all what Narcissus needed to hear.
The palace was in chaos again. Narcissus felt the hope he’d been clinging to collapse. Pertinax had been his imagined future, the man who might have understood, the man who might have pardoned him if only Narcissus could have reached him in the palace and talked to the emperor. If only Narcissus could have spoken to Pertinax quietly and pleaded for his own life.. Now that particular emperor was gone before his time, and Narcissus was trapped in a palace that no longer had a master although the Praetorians were guarding the access routes.
He told himself again and again he should have left earlier. He told himself he should leave now. He gathered his looted gold, his clothing, his disguises. He rehearsed what he would say to a guard. He imagined bribing his way out. He imagined slipping through a gate at night and into the darkness, but imagination isn’t action, and Narcissus had lived too long inside the palace to know how to move beyond its walls.
Time and the imperial lifestyle had made him indecisive and he over thought everything. He’d seen people torn apart by the mob and he saw people killed in purges and he was very much afraid.
He approached a guard in a clumsy, hesitant way, a new recruit, young and uncertain, a Thracian posted at a minor northern gate. Narcissus offered him a profane amount of gold, more than any freedman should have carried. The recruit listened, nodded, even smiled, the way inexperienced men do when they think they’ve been handed an opportunity.
As Narcissus spoke, the guard’s expression changed. He began to take in the details: the height, the barrel chest, the wrestler’s shoulders, the unmistakable frame of a man trained for strength. Recognition came slowly, piece by piece, like a mosaic assembling itself. A freedman of that size. A man hiding in the palace. A man offering gold to be let out quietly. The recruit finally understood who stood before him.
And then he did exactly what a new recruit eager to prove his loyalty would do. He reported Narcissus to his senior officer, and the news travelled quickly, up the chain of command, through the Praetorian barracks, and into the ears of the new emperor, Septimius Severus.
Severus wanted to show he’d no part in Commodus’ murder. He wanted to show the Praetorians that he wasn’t weak. He wanted to show the Senate that he wasn’t complicit. Narcissus was the perfect symbol: a freedman and former slave, a conspirator, a man who had killed an emperor showing no loyalty to Hercules himself.
Narcissus was taken to the cells beneath the palace. He was stripped, the usual “preparation” the Praetorians used when a man was to be questioned, and subjected to the standard “indignities” that passed for procedure. They needed to show the new emperor they had been innocent of Commodus’ murder, and Narcissus became the proof they offered. He was beaten in the controlled, methodical way the guard called “correction.” He was left without food, told it was “a necessary pause.” Water was withheld under the phrase “restraint.” Each euphemism hid a small humiliation, and each humiliation weakened him.
Days passed. The body doesn’t collapse all at once; it thins, it slows, it loses its ability to regulate heat, its strength drains from the limbs first, then from the chest. After weeks of hiding, hunger, and fear, Narcissus had little left. By the time the Praetorians were finished with him, he was worn down to the point where even standing felt like an effort borrowed from somewhere outside himself.
They brought Narcissus into the arena at mid‑morning, when the sun was high enough to flatten shadows and make every movement visible. He could barely walk and was disorientated. This was how Rome liked to present the condemned. Vulnerable, weak and a victim of entertaining viewers.
The days in the cells beneath the palace had stripped him down to something smaller than a man: dehydrated, bruised, starved, and exhausted. The Praetorians had done their work with a kind of eager precision, each blow a declaration of loyalty to the new emperor. They wanted Severus to see that they had no part in murdering Commodus, and hadn’t aided Narcissus.
Narcissus stumbled onto the sand of the arena, naked as was customary for the condemned, his hands tied behind his back. The position hid the damage already done to him. Being held in stappado had torn the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms; binding his wrists behind him concealed the Praetorians’ work under the appearance of ordinary restraint. He moved stiffly, each step showing the strain of joints pulled from their proper alignment, the slow collapse of a body that had been deprived, beaten, and “corrected” in the usual Roman manner.
The crowd was small, this wasn’t a festival day, not a scheduled spectacle. It wasn’t being portrayed as a political act. Narcissus was an emperor killer, disloyal, the worst!
A few hundred citizens had gathered, drawn by rumour and curiosity. They whispered among themselves, trying to understand who the man was and why he’d been condemned. Narcissus heard none of it. His hearing had dulled. from the repeated beatings. His thoughts were slow through dehydration. He felt only the heat of the sun and the roughness of the sand beneath his feet.
On the imperial platform, Septimius Severus stood with his officers. He watched with the calm detachment of a man who understood the necessity of the moment. Severus had come to power through military discipline and political calculation.
He needed Rome to see that he’d no part in Commodus’ death, that he didn’t tolerate palace conspiracies, that he punished those who acted outside the proper channels of authority. Narcissus wasn’t being executed for killing Commodus. He was being executed for killing an emperor without permission.
A herald stepped forward and read the charges. His voice carried across the arena, clear and formal:
“By order of the emperor, this man is condemned for treachery, conspiracy, and the unlawful killing of Commodus Caesar.”
Narcissus was required to respond. The Praetorians had told him what to say. He lifted his head, his voice hoarse and thin.
“I confess,” he said. “I agree.”
It wasn’t a plea. It was a ritual. Rome didn’t need his guilt; Rome needed his compliance.
Archers stood along the edges of the arena, their bows half‑drawn, not to kill him but to herd him, to keep Narcissus moving, to make sure the spectacle followed its proper course. They weren’t Praetorians. They were a levy from Bithynia, provincials drafted into service, unfamiliar with Rome’s household politics, unaware of who Narcissus was or what he’d done. To them he was simply a condemned man, a naked giant pushed into the sand for the city’s amusement.
The archers laughed when they saw him. They jeered at Narcissus’ size, at his trembling legs, at the way he tried to cover himself before remembering his hands were tied and broken. They called out lewd encouragements, mocking him. Spectators mocked slow runners and clumsy victims. It was part of the ritual: humiliation before death.
Narcissus didn’t wait for their arrows, he knew what happened in an arena. He’d watched from the imperial box beside Commodus and now he was in the arena performing his role as a condemned man.
He turned and ran toward the centre of the arena, almost stumbling immediately, his breath shallow, his heart bursting against his ribs. He lurched forward, nearly falling, the sand shifting under his feet. The crowd roared, not in admiration, but in derision. They shouted advice, insults, and jokes. They mocked his size, his fear, his awkward gait. They had come not for justice but for the small pleasure of watching a man fail.
The gate opposite him opened. The pack of wild dogs spilled out, taunted and half‑starved, restless, trained for aggression. They didn’t roar or howl. They ran toward food. The crowd’s noise rose again, a coarse, delighted sound, The spectators enjoyed the moment a man realises he can’t escape.
Narcissus ran because running was the last act left to him, and as he ran, stumbling, gasping, he remembered everything he should have done: he should have fled the palace, he should have bribed a guard earlier and not later, he should have left Rome behind following Marcia as she fled. Instead he’d spent twelve weeks in an internal exile, hiding in the very building where he’d killed an emperor, reliving the moment in the quiet hours, waiting for a future that never arrived.
The dogs reached him quickly. The crowd cheered and jeered, their voices rising and falling like a single coarse breath. Severus didn’t join them. He stood watching the judicial act with the stillness of a man who understood its purpose. This wasn’t revenge. It was judgement.
For a moment, the emperor’s face didn’t show triumph or satisfaction. It showed calculation. Narcissus’ death was a message: the new regime was clean, disciplined, and uncompromising. Household killers, freedmen conspirators, and private actors had no place in the imperial order Severus intended to build. The spectacle ended quickly. The arena workers moved in to clear the carcass away. The crowd dispersed. The emperor left without comment.
By evening, Narcissus’ name had already begun to fade. Rome remembered emperors, generals, senators, and victories. It didn’t remember freedmen who acted out of fear, or men who killed because they believed they had no choice.
The rooms he’d occupied in the Palatine were cleared the next day. The cushions were taken, the wine amphorae emptied, the disguises removed. No one asked who had lived there. No one wondered how long he’d stayed. The palace absorbed the space again, as though Narcissus had never existed.
Rome doesn’t remember men who act once and then disappear. It remembers the moment, not the man.
In the end, Narcissus remains a figure glimpsed only in the margins of the ancient writers, a man brought to Rome to entertain an emperor, not to shape history. The sources give us almost nothing of his inner life, only the bare outline of a wrestler drawn into the private world of Commodus’ amusements. This reconstruction follows the narrow path available to him: a man without power, forced to act in a moment where refusal meant death, and then abandoned to the machinery of imperial punishment once his usefulness ended. What happened after the strangling is lost, but the logic of Roman power is clear enough. Narcissus was never the architect of events.
He was their instrument, frightened, coerced, and ultimately subjected to the same terror that defined the household he served. More victim than aggressor, he stands as one of the many anonymous lives bent and broken by the violence of 945 AUC.
Further Reading
- Nicholls, Matthew. “Galen and the Last Days of Commodus.” Galen’s Treatise Περὶ Ἀλυπίας (De Indolentia) in Context: A Tale of Resilience, edited by Caroline Petit, vol. 52, Brill, 2019, pp. 245–62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctvrxk2wj.13. Accessed 9 July 2026.
- Roman History by Cassius Dio
- Roman History by Cassius Dio
published in Vol. IX of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1927 - Commodus at the Baths: Imperial Cruelty and the Shadow of Narcissus
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