For a time Commodus remained in the camp, and let the elders govern. Before long the lighter courtiers hint that it is more comfortable in Rome, and he talks of going. The elders frown, and Pompeianus lectures him. He bows submissively, but it is not long before he decides to go. Numbers of officers discover a similar call to the capital, and a gay cavalcade sets out. Rome is enchanted, and goes out miles along the road to meet Commodus, and strews flowers and laurel in his path, and enthuses over his handsome face and the curly hair that shines like gold in the sun. It was the coming of Caligula and Nero over again. The Roman people--_quantum mutatus ab illo!_--had come to appreciate a pretty face, and a prospect of endless games, immeasurably more than the security of the frontier. When Commodus had set out with his father for Germany, he had been married--“hastily married,” the chronicle says--to a lady as young and thoughtless as himself. Crispina was a very beautiful girl, and of distinguished family. Her father, Bruttius Præsens, was a Senator of great merit. It seems that she accompanied Commodus to the camp, and returned with him to Rome. In his train were the evil counsellors whom Marcus had banished and recalled. Their hour had come. For three years Commodus enjoyed the pleasures which they provided or invented for him, and left the administration in the capable hands of his father’s servants. Possibly this was the highest virtue Marcus had expected of him. But the ambition of his confidants steadily grew, and a bitter feud in the palace now came to a head and gave them an opportunity. Crispina and Lucilla were violently opposed to each other. The Imperial title of Lucilla paled beside that of the wife of the ruling Emperor. The fire which had been borne before her when she went abroad now passed to Crispina, and she had to yield precedence in the palace and the theatre. Crispina, on the other hand, resented the familiarity of Commodus with his sister, and would hardly be ignorant of the interpretation that was generally put on it. The adherents of the palace were thus divided into two parties, and the Empresses fought for the monopoly of Commodus’s favour. At last Lucilla despaired of gaining her end through Commodus, and resolved to have him murdered.