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* COMMODIANUS. 215 COMMON. fire, and present few attractions as literary pro- ductions. Although some attempt is made to imitate the general rliytlim of the licxamcter, the rules of quantity are utterly neglected, and the author employs a peculiar prosody, based jjartly on accent and partly on syllabic quantity. Con- sult the edition by Dombart (Vienna, 1888), and the English prose translation of the Insti-uc- tiojicf:, in Anie-Xicene Fathers (Buffalo, 1886- 90). COMMODORE (probably from Sp. comenda- dor. It. cominandatorc, OF. commandcor, Fr. commandeiir, commander). Previous to 18G2 the courtesy title of commodore was given to all captains in the United States Naw who had commanded a squadron, but no actual rank higher than that of captain existed. In July, 1802, the first captains to hold a higher office were commissioned as commodores. In 1882 the mimber of commodores on the active list was reduced from twenty-five to ten, and in 1899 the grade was abolished and the ten commodores on the list promoted to the rank of rear-admiral, the numbers in that grade being increased from si. to eighteen. In the British Navy captains liaving certain important commands are officially styled commodores, and have an increase of pay while on this duty, but there is no grade of commodore on the British Na'y List. See Admikai,. COMOffODTTS, LTJcru.s .5<:Lirs Aubelius. A Roman Emperor (..D. 180-192). He was born in A.D. 101, and was the son of ]Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Great pains were taken with his education. But the solicitude of his father was all to no purpose. Commodvis waited only for an oi)portunity to exhibit as startling and dc- tcstiible a mixture of sensuality, ciiielty, and meanness as had ever been witnessed in Rome. When he was summoned to the throne on his father's death (March 17, ISO), he plunged into the dissipations of Rome. At that period he was successfully fighting the Marcomanni and other tribes on the Upper Danube, but he hastily con- cluded a treaty with the barbarians, and i"eaehed the capital in the beginning of the autumn. The cruelty to which he was always prone was espe- cially exhibited after a conspiracy by his sister Lucilla against his life had been discovered in the year 183. Xearly all who had risen to honor during his father's lifetime were sacrificed to appease his jealousy of the good and the great. Gross prodigality also marked his reign. He was proud of his own physical strength, and exhibited it in gladiatorial combats. For each of these exhibitions he charged the State an enormous sum. He used also to sing, dance, play, act the buffoon, the peddler, or the horse-dealer, and engage in all the filthy and horrible orgies of Egyptian sacrifice. A glutton, a debauchee, who ■^allowed in the most sensual abominations, he yet demanded to be worshiped as a god, and as- sumed the title of Hercules Romanus. ilanv plots were devised against his life, and at last one of them succeeded. His mistress, JIarcia, in concert with the prefect Lsetus and the Imperial chamberlain, Eclectus, after they had failed in an attempt to poison him, caused him to be strangled by Narcissus, a famous athlete. The life of Commodus, written by Lampridius, is to be foiuid in the so-called Augusta Historia. COMMON (OF. comun, Ft. cominun, from Lat. coiiitiiiiiiis, OLat. comoinis, common). In the law of real property, the right of ime person, in common with others, to take a profit from the land of another. The person over whose land the right is exercised may be a private owner or the State. The tenn is somewhat loo.sely employed as the equivalent of profit d, prendre (q.v. ) ; but such a "profit' may be exclusive, or 'several,' in hich ease it is not properly char- acterized as a common. Blaekstone, IioHever, seems to use the term in this sense, and he enumerates four species of commons, viz. : Com- mon of pasture, or the right of feeding one's beasts on another's land; common of piscary, or a liberty of fishing in another man's water; common of turhari/, a liberty of digging turf upon another's ground; and comman of estovers, a liberty of taking necessary wood, for the use or furnituri; of a house or farm, from off an- other's estate. These rights, with the various other profits a, prendre, will be considered under that head. See Hereditament; Ixcorporeax. The tcnn is often used to denote the common use of a piece of uninclosed ground possessed by all the inhabitants of a village or hamlet. The right of common is 'disturbed,' as the legal piirase is, when one who is not possessed of the right unlawfully infringes it, or when one pos- sessed of the right exceeds his lawful use, or where one wrongfully prevents others possessed cf the common right from exercising it, as where he incloses the land. In Great Britain the right of common was formerly possessed from time immemorial in almost everj' village with regard to certain pieces of land which wei'e not held by any owner in fee. but might be fairly considered to belong to the conmumity as a body. Statutes, both public and ju-ivate, permitted the inclosing of such common land under various conditions, such as the consent of two-thirds of those exer- cising the right of common. By this legislation, and by acts of usurpation on the part of individ- uals, much of the common land has been lost; of late years the further inclosure of common land has been to some extent guarded against. In the United States the most frequent use of the term is as a substantive to denote a piece of ground set apart for public uses, such as open- air meetings, re-iews, and for the general pleas- ure of the jieople at large. See Pbopertt, and the autliorities there referred to. COMMON, DoL. Subtle's mistress, in Ben Jonson's Alchemist, who becomes "Queen of the Fairies," or "a most rare scholar, gone mad with studying Brougbton's works," as suits the occasion of the swindlers or the demands of their dupes. COMMON, Tenancy in. The most usual form of joint or common ownership of lands or goods. It may be constituted of two or any greater number of persons, who may have equal or unequal shares, and whose titles and interests are distinct although undivided from those of their colleagues. Accordingly, while the tenant in common cannot claim any specific portion of the property as his own. he may. nevertheless, deal freely with his undivided share, alienating or devising it at his pleasure, or he may, by appropriate legal action, compel the partition of the property; whereupon, if it be divisible in fact, his share will be set off to him, as a sepa-