The death of Marcus Aurelius from plague while campaigning in 180, has left his son and heir Commodus with the unwinnable Danubian war and a treasury that has been seriously depleted by Marcus's wars and benevolences.

In a move that many Romans consider treasonable, Commodus abandons his father's military campaign against the German tribes and returns to Rome to ascend the imperial throne.

Marcus’s choice of Commodus as his successor, putting an end to the series of "adoptive emperors", will be highly criticized by later historians since Commodus was a political and military outsider, as well as an extreme egotist with neurotic problems.

Commodus devalues the Roman currency upon his accession, reducing the weight of the denarius from ninety-six per Roman pound to one hundred and five (3.85 grams to 3.35 grams).

He also reduces the silver purity from seventy-nine percent to seventy-six percent—the silver weight dropping from 2.57 grams to 2.34 grams.

Unlike the preceding Emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, Commodus seems to have had little interest in the business of administration and will tend throughout his reign to leave the practical running of the state to a succession of favorites, beginning at this time with Saoterus, a freedman from Nicomedia who had become his chamberlain.