Commodus was a handsome and active young man, of great strength and nimbleness of body; and thus he was led to choose the roughest amusements, as archery, fencing, and such like. At first, he checked himself, and matters went on smoothly enough in the track of his father; but he soon followed his own nature. It was not long before he gave up the government to the prefect M. Perennis, who ruled in the most oppressive manner, quite in the Asiatic style. This ended in a sedition, and Commodus sacrificed his minister and favourite to the mutineers. Soon afterwards, he was attacked by an assassin, whom his sister Lucilla is said to have employed against him, but who told him that he had been set on by the senate; whereupon Commodus began to wreak his vengeance on that body. His means of ingratiating himself had been his profuse liberality, especially to the _plebs urbana_ and the soldiers: this, as we see from the coins, was very often repeated, and thus the treasures of the empire were completely drained. At the death of Pius, there were 2,700 million of sesterces (135,000,000 dollars of our [Prussian] money) in the treasury; but this had been spent in the wars of Marcus, who had even sold the valuable things in his palace, so that he should not be obliged to lay on new taxes. Commodus now also began to shed blood, that he might have more money to throw away. His reign is detestable, and it is impossible to dwell on it. After Perennis was sacrificed, our interest is excited by the similar fate of Cleander, a freedman: it does not, however, seem quite credible, that he was _præfectus prætorio_. The cavalry of the prætorians and the _cohortes urbanæ_ had now already begun to have brawls with each other; which proves in what a distracted state things then were. The city cohorts, which took the part of the town against the prætorians, had the best of it; and Commodus would have been murdered at Lanuvium,[53] whither he had retired on account of the plague, had not his sister Fadilla and his concubine Marcia, pointed out to him the danger in which he was. He only escaped by sacrificing Cleander.