The outrages Commodus was perpetrating, and the executions he was daily ordering, at length became intolerable. His nominal wife, the same Marcia who had protected the Christians, finding, from a memorandum which she picked from his pocket, that he had doomed her with several others to die, gave him a cup of poison. As he was reeling under the influence of the draught, an accomplice plunged a dagger into his heart, and “he went to his own place.” “To his own place!” Where was that place? No one can be familiar with the history of the awful crimes which have been perpetrated upon this globe, and not feel that there is necessity for justice and retribution beyond the grave. The joy in Rome was indescribable when the rumor spread through the thronged streets, on the morning of the 1st of January, 193, that the tyrant was dead. The senate and army placed Pertinax, mayor of Rome, upon the vacant throne. He was, for a pagan, a good man. He found the nation with an empty treasury, and enormously in debt, and attempted to economize; but the army demanded the wealth and luxury which could be obtained only by rapine. Commodus had accumulated a vast amount of gold and silver plate; chariots of most costly construction; robes of imperial purple, heavily embroidered with gems and gold; and last, but not least, he had seized, and crowded into his harem, six hundred of the most beautiful boys and girls. The plate, the chariots, the robes, and the handsome boys and beautiful girls, were all sold to the highest bidder. It is Christianity alone which recognizes the brotherhood of man. Pertinax, a pagan, could perhaps see no wrong in selling these young men and maidens into slavery. All the money thus infamously obtained was honestly paid into the exhausted treasury. The army had loved Commodus. He allowed the soldiers unlimited license; he filled their purses with gold; he crowded their camp with male and female slaves. Pertinax wished to introduce reforms. The army hated Pertinax because he was good, as devils hate angels. “Away with him!” was the cry which resounded through the whole encampment. Three hundred burly wretches, from the encampment outside the walls of Rome, marched to the palace. Deliberately they cut off the head of Pertinax. Parading it upon a lance, they, with shouts of triumph, marched back through the streets of Rome to their barracks. The citizens looked on in dismay: they dared not utter a word. The army was their master. A standing army and an unarmed people place any nation at the mercy of an ambitious general.