34. To this day, some historians believed that the Emperor Commodus was actually the son of a gladiator
Commodus was obsessed with gladiators. Since his father had been a wise philosopher, this led to many rumors. Could it really be that his love of the arena was down to the fact that Commodus had been fathered by a gladiator? Certainly, the ancient historian Cassius Dio believed so. According to him, Faustina, the second wife of Marcus Aurelius, loved the company of strong, young men. And so, when she was in the coastal town of Caieta one time, she enjoyed an affair with a strong gladiator. Commodus was, it was said the result of this extra-marital liaison.
