# Commodus is assassinated on 31 December 192 in a palace plot involving Marcia, Laetus, and Narcissus as received

Date: 192

## The fact

On 31 December 192 [Commodus](/people/commodus) was killed in a palace conspiracy as Dio and Herodian print. This Fact is that assassination as a dated extra-legal outcome, not a constitutional court and not Pertinax’s next-day accession as a second twin.

It is one event.

## Context

Contribution is complex because he is the victim of the killing and the author of the reign that produced the plotters.

Commodus’s documented role is bounded by other offices and collaborators named in the sources below. Sharing a field with them is not a reason to drop a documented act, and it is not a reason to assign later consequences done in the name after death.

Marcia, the prefect Laetus, and the cubicularius Eclectus are the named conspirators; the wrestler Narcissus is the killer in the bath after poison fails. This is others’ act, stored as the outcome of the reign. He did not author his own strangling.

Named person as heading of the dated public instrument. Later editors, museums, printers, or offices share publication. Complex where later carriers are the surviving public file.

## Evidence and sources

Loeb Dio and Herodian independently date 31 December 192 and name Marcia, Laetus, and Narcissus.

Official or archival record: Cassius Dio Book 73 (Loeb English) — Commodus (https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/73*.html; LacusCurtius / University of Chicago).

## Significance

Assassination as succession method is a [judicial-independence](/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion) erosion for the principate. Confidence high on the date and the plot heading.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 31 December 192 killing as received. Not established: a unique reconstructed kill-list he had drafted that day.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

Established here: a sourced, dated public instrument with a named contribution by Commodus.

They are not a public rating.

Commodus did not file a later UNESCO form, a later Loeb colophon, or a later museum label as a personal act. A portrait or conventional bust is not this mechanism. Allegation, reconstruction, and established occurrence stay distinct. A bath strangling is not the senate’s next-day damnatio. Split 31 Dec from 1 Jan. Keep the carrier date of later English distinct from the received historical year stored in the date field. Do not read a later English edition as a recovered autograph of Commodus.

## People

- Commodus: https://factrail.ai/people/commodus

## Drivers

- Judicial independence erosion (court capture): https://factrail.ai/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion

## Sources

- https://www.livius.org/sources/content/herodian-s-roman-history/
- https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/73*.html

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/com-assassination-192