Was Marcus Aurelius Murdered?
Published in
7 min readJan 8, 2024
Considering the claim that Commodus had the Stoic emperor killed
In the first act of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor famous for being a Stoic philosopher, is portrayed by the actor Richard Harris. In the movie, Marcus is shown being smothered to death by his son, Commodus, played by Joaquin Phoenix. But is that really what happened?