Commodus ascends to the throne of Rome by killing his father, the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, who preferred another heir. From then on he rules with insecurity and cruelty: he terrorizes the Senate, eliminates rivals, courts the love of the people with blood in the Colosseum. And the harder he squeezes, the more hatred he reaps, until rebellion —embodied in Maximus, the general he tried to destroy— ends him. For peacemaking criminology, Commodus shows that the cycle of violence also flows from above: the tyranny that sows its own revolt.
// The theoryThe violence of power also breeds violence
Peacemaking criminology insists that violence breeds violence in all directions, not only among equals. Oppression from power —state terror, the tyrant's cruelty, disproportionate punishment— does not produce stable submission, but resentment that sooner or later erupts. Commodus illustrates this from the throne: each act of cruelty with which he tries to secure his power strips him of legitimacy and adds enemies. His violence does not buy order; it buys the rebellion that brings him down. The theory generalizes it: regimes that govern by fear sow their own fall, because fear, unlike legitimacy, has to be renewed with growing doses of violence until it becomes unsustainable.
The contrast with his father is the key. Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic emperor, governed (in idealized form) from virtue and reason; Commodus, from fear and bloody spectacle. The film pits two forms of power against each other —one that seeks legitimacy, another that knows only force— and shows which one endures. Violence from the throne is as much part of the cycle as revenge in the street.
Fear is not legitimacy
Commodus confuses fear with legitimate power, and that is his fatal error in the eyes of peacemaking criminology. Fear compels obedience, but it does not generate consent; and an order sustained only by terror needs more and more violence to maintain itself, in a spiral that exhausts it. The theory connects it to criminal policy: systems that stake everything on deterrence by fear —brutal penalties, exemplary punishment, the iron fist— reproduce Commodus's logic. They work in the short term and in the long term they generate the resentment that erodes their own base. Legitimacy, not fear, is the only thing that sustains an order without the need for growing violence; and Commodus, who has only fear to offer, is doomed from the start.
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// The subjectThe insecurity that turns into cruelty
Commodus is not a cold monster: he is a deeply insecure man, desperate for the love of a father who preferred others and for the approval of a people who admire Maximus. His cruelty springs from that wound —he kills and terrorizes to feel powerful precisely because he feels small—. Peacemaking criminology captures a real pattern: much of violence, including the tyrant's, is born of fragility, not strength. Commodus tortures Rome because he cannot bear his own insignificance. This does not excuse him, but it humanizes him —and explains why his violence is so insatiable: no amount of others' fear fills the void it springs from—.
Cómodo
// The crackNeither tyrant without a cause, nor rebellion without a cost
The crack with Commodus is twofold. Reducing him to an evil tyrant «just because» erases the wound —the insecurity, the paternal rejection— that the theory considers part of the explanation; but that wound does not absolve him: he is fully responsible for every cruelty. The other crack is to romanticize the rebellion that brings him down as if the violence «of the good guys» were outside the cycle. Peacemaking criminology is more uncomfortable: revolt against the tyrant is understandable and often necessary, but it is still violence, and if it only replaces him with another power that governs by fear, the cycle continues. Maximus brings down Commodus, but the lesson of the theory is that Rome would only heal if the power that comes next changes the logic, not just the tyrant.
That the film ends with the hope of a republic —a legitimate order instead of a new master— is, without meaning to, the proposal of peacemaking criminology: the only way to break the cycle of violent power is not a better tyrant, but a different kind of power.
Legitimacy instead of fear
Commodus matters because he extends peacemaking criminology to power itself: not only criminals and avengers feed the cycle of violence, but also the states and rulers who confuse authority with terror. The lesson holds for criminal policy: a justice system that governs by fear —exemplary punishment, harshness as spectacle— reproduces Commodus's logic and sows the resentment that erodes it. The alternative is legitimacy: a justice that people perceive as fair, that they consent to rather than fear. Studies on obedience to the law confirm it —an authority perceived as legitimate is obeyed more than one that is feared—. Commodus, who knew only how to instill fear, is the historical and dramatic proof that fear, as a method of government, always ends up costing the head of the one who wields it.
«Commodus the Merciful», he calls himself, while he governs by terror. The irony is the thesis: whoever needs to proclaim his mercy while sowing fear has already lost legitimacy, and with it, sooner or later, the throne. Violence from above, like all violence, does not know how to end without generating the violence that destroys it.
Three key takeaways
- Commodus shows the cycle of violence from power: the tyranny that governs by fear sows the resentment and the rebellion that destroy it. Violence from above breeds that from below.
- Fear is not legitimacy: an order sustained only by terror needs growing violence until it exhausts itself. It holds for criminal policy —the "iron fist" reproduces Commodus's logic—.
- His cruelty is born of insecurity (it does not absolve him). And the rebellion that brings him down is still violence: breaking the cycle requires changing the logic of power (legitimacy), not just the tyrant.
Sources · further reading
- Pepinsky, H. E. & Quinney, R. (eds.) (1991). Criminology as Peacemaking. Indiana University Press.
- Tyler, T. R. (1990). Why People Obey the Law. Yale University Press.
- Arendt, H. (1970). On Violence. Harcourt.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Cómodo?
Cómodo («Commodus») es un villano de Gladiator, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. He kills his father, terrorizes the Senate, rules by fear.
¿Por qué Cómodo (Commodus) se convierte en villano?
Commodus and peacemaking criminology: violence from above that breeds violence from below. An emperor who rules through cruelty and fear and, without knowing it, sows the rebellion that destroys him.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Cómodo?
El caso de Cómodo se analiza desde la Criminología de la paz. Peacemaking criminology shows that violence breeds violence in both directions, including from power itself. Commodus, from Gladiator, is tyranny as a link in the cycle: an insecure emperor who rules through cruelty, fratricide and terror, and whose oppression sows exactly the rebellion —embodied in Maximus— that ends him. Violence from above breeds violence from below.
