# Lucilla’s conspiracy fails in 182 and a senatorial purge follows as Dio and Herodian print it

Date: 182

## The fact

In 182 a conspiracy associated with Lucilla failed; [Commodus](/people/commodus) then executed leading senators as Dio and Herodian print. This Fact is that failed-plot-and-purge instrument. Historia Augusta colour is not used as a second tape.

It is one event.

## Context

Palace assassination and reply-killings are a [judicial-independence](/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion) erosion: the household is the court. Confidence medium on names and totals, high that a 182 crisis sits in both Greek narratives.

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.

Sister Lucilla, with senators, is the named plot. Failed assassination, then executions. Senatorial historians are hostile and later. The plot is still a dated palace-justice cluster, not a public independent court.

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 Britannica independently describe the 182 plot and the senatorial killings that followed.

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

Confidence medium on magnitudes.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 182 conspiracy and subsequent executions as received.

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. Lucilla is not Cleander. Split sister-plot from chamberlain-riot. 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://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/73*.html
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Commodus

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/com-lucilla-conspiracy-182