"If you draw blood from me, I'll pay you one hundred thousand sesterces: if I fail to lay you out on the pavement, totally insensible, in three bouts, I'll pay you two hundred thousand sesterces. You can pick any lanista here to judge the fight and tell us when to separate and rest."
Capito, cool enough, indicated Murmex as referee.
"He's not a lanista," Commodus objected.
"He's Frugi's pupil," Capito maintained, "and therefore the best lanista here."
"I agree," said Commodus, and he called:
"Who's the physician on duty?"
When the official came forward he said truculently:
"Get your plasters ready and your revivers. You'll have to attend a man flat on the pavement, insensible and with a bad scalp wound, before much time has passed."
And actually, though Capito fenced well, he was no match for Commodus.
The bout was worth watching. The adversaries were just the same height and differed little in weight. Capito seemed more compact and steady; Commodus more lithe and agile. Capito was a handsome man and made a fine figure in his scanty, leek-green fencing tunic. Commodus, always vain, of his good looks, delighted in exhibiting himself totally nude, not only because he loved to shock elderly noblemen imbued with old-fashioned ideas of propriety, but also because he rightly thought himself one of the best formed men alive. He was fond of being told that he was like Hercules but, except in the paintings of Zeuxis, Hercules has always been depicted as brawnier and more mature than Commodus was then or ever became, to his last hour. To me he suggested Mercury, especially as he appears in the paintings of Polygnotus, or Apollo, as Apelles depicted him.