The first eleven, in connection with Julius Cæsar, are called the Twelve Cæsars. The last five (excluding Verus) are known as the Five Good Emperors. CHAPTER XXX. DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST; BEGINNING OF THE GREAT GERMAN MIGRATION. (A.D. 180-476.) REIGN OF COMMODUS (A.D. 180-192).--Under the wise and able administration of "the five good emperors"--Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines--the Roman empire reached its culmination in power and prosperity; and now, under the enfeebling influences of vice and corruption within, and the heavy blows of the barbarians without, it begins to decline rapidly to its fall. [Illustration: COMMODUS (as Hercules).] Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, and the last of the Antonines, was a most unworthy successor of his illustrious father. For three years, however, surrounded by the able generals and wise counsellors that the prudent administration of the preceding emperors had drawn to the head of affairs, Commodus ruled with fairness and lenity, when an unsuccessful conspiracy against his life seemed suddenly to kindle all the slumbering passions of a Nero. He secured the favor of the rabble with the shows of the amphitheatre, and purchased the support of the prætorians with bribes and flatteries. Thus he was enabled for ten years to retain the throne, while perpetrating all manner of cruelties, and staining the imperial purple with the most detestable debaucheries and crimes. Commodus had a passion for gladiatorial combats, and attired in a lion's skin, and armed with the club of Hercules, he valiantly set upon and slew antagonists arrayed to represent mythological monsters, and armed with great sponges for rocks. The Senate, so obsequiously servile had that body become, conferred upon him the title of the Roman Hercules, and also voted him the additional surnames of Pius and Felix, and even proposed to change the name of Rome and call it Colonia Commodiana. The empire was finally relieved of the insane tyrant by some members of the royal household, who anticipated his designs against themselves by putting him to death. "THE BARRACK EMPERORS."--For nearly a century after the death of Commodus (from A.D. 192 to 284), the emperors were elected by the army, and hence the rulers for this period have been called "the Barrack Emperors." The character of the period is revealed by the fact that of the twenty-five emperors who mounted the throne during this time all except four came to their deaths by violence. "Civil war, pestilence, bankruptcy, were all brooding over the empire. The soldiers had forgotten how to fight, the rulers how to govern." On every side the barbarians were breaking into the empire to rob, to murder, and to burn.