This creature's dozen years of brutal misrule brought an end to the eight decades of stability and prosperity under the previous five good emperors. Succeeding his father, Marcus Aurelius, he survived an assassination attempt in which his sister conspired against him. He retaliated by executing a number of prominent senators, and carried on the rest of his reign with arbitrary viciousness. He appears to have lapsed into madness as his reign proceeded, imagining himself to be Hercules and regularly entering the arena. Incensed by his increasingly erratic behaviour, his advisors had him strangled by a champion wrestler. Hey, you think anyone in the Bush White House has The Rock on their speed dial?
