Lucilla

Lucilla was a daughter of Marcus Aurelius, the wife of the emperor Lucius Verus and later the wife of the senator Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus. After her brother Commodus became emperor, she became involved in a failed conspiracy against him in 182. She was exiled to Capri and subsequently executed.

As Augusta and the widow of a co-emperor, Lucilla retained exceptionally high status after Lucius Verus’s death, but her position weakened once Commodus succeeded Marcus Aurelius. Ancient accounts connect her with a group that attempted to remove Commodus in 182, apparently using her relative Claudius Pompeianus Quintianus as the intended assassin. The plot failed immediately, exposing Lucilla and ending her political career.

Simon Turney’s Praetorian places Lucilla at the centre of a conspiracy against her brother Commodus. The fictional guardsman Rufinus is drawn into the danger surrounding her plot, so Lucilla’s imperial rank, grievances and historical attempt to remove the emperor become the mechanism by which a new Praetorian discovers that loyalty at court is inseparable from faction, surveillance and lethal suspicion.