# Under Cleander’s dominance, consulships and governorships are sold as Dio and later lives print it

Date: 189

## The fact

Dio describes Cleander’s sale of offices and enrichment. Livius independently frames Cleander’s dominance before the 190 grain crisis.

It is one event.

## Context

Selling the consulship is [institutional corruption](/drivers/institutional-corruption). Shared buyers (including future emperors in the tradition) remain. Do not invent a unique bribe total.

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.

Dio’s narrative of Cleander stresses sale of offices and a flood of suffect consulships. Livius notes the 190 consul year beside Cleander’s fall. Historia Augusta is an unreliable late compilation and is used only as a labelled secondary carrier, not as tape. Cleander’s death row remains separate.

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

Cassius Dio Book 73 (Loeb English) — Commodus and Livius — Commodus independently describe this instrument.

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

Office-sale under Cleander is a corruption path of high confidence on the literary charge, medium on every named purchaser.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a sourced public record of this instrument at the date assigned here.

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.

The driver `institutional-corruption` is attached because the mechanism named in Significance follows from this instrument, not because a standing list of welfare headings needed another tick. 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. Label HA where used as unreliable. Split from Cleander’s beheading. 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

- Institutional Corruption: https://factrail.ai/drivers/institutional-corruption

## Sources

- https://www.livius.org/articles/person/commodus/
- https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/73*.html

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/com-cleander-sale-offices