Verus, Lucius, << VIHR uhs, LOO shuhs >> (A.D. 130-168?), was joint emperor of Rome with Marcus Aurelius from A.D. 161 until his death in 168 or 169. The two men formed Rome’s first pair of genuinely joint emperors.
Lucius Verus was born in Rome on Dec. 15, A.D. 130. His birth name was Lucius Ceionius Commodus. His father, Lucius Aelius Caesar, was a senator and the adopted son and chosen successor of the emperor Hadrian. However, he died unexpectedly before Hadrian died. Hadrian then adopted the senator Antoninus Pius as his son and successor. He required that Antoninus adopt the younger Lucius and Marcus Aurelius, a nephew of Antoninus. Hadrian died in 138 and Antoninus became emperor. After the death of Antoninus in 161, Marcus and Lucius became co-emperors of Rome. Lucius then took the name Lucius Verus. Lucius later married a daughter of Marcus Aurelius, in 164.
Marcus and Lucius’s partnership made it possible in 162 for Marcus to remain in Rome while Lucius went on a military campaign in the East. Attacks by the Parthians were unsettling Rome’s control of its eastern provinces. Lucius remained nominally in command of the eastern campaign until 166. However, he left it to his generals to really wage the campaign against the Parthians. Roman armies invaded Mesopotamia and destroyed the Parthian capital at Ctesiphon, near present-day Baghdad, Iraq. Thus, Rome reasserted its control in the East. But the campaign caused devastating harm to the Roman Empire. Roman armies returning home carried a serious infectious disease—possibly smallpox. The disease spread rapidly and caused deaths across a wide area.
In 168, Lucius agreed to join Marcus in a new offensive against Germanic tribes north of the Danube River. These tribes had been launching invasions into the Roman Empire. Around the end of 168, Lucius died of a stroke while preparing for the campaign.
See also Hadrian ; Marcus Aurelius ; Parthia ; Rome, Ancient (The decline of the empire) .
