Now I must say that no exploit recorded of any human being or traditional of any legendary hero, outclasses as a feat of strength, coolness, courage and perfect coordination of all the mental and physical faculties, this act of Commodus' in killing two successive lions with a palm-wood club. A charging lion is an object so terrifying as to chill the blood of a distant onlooker. Very unusually good nerves and very exceptional self- confidence are required to face with composure a portent which appears so irresistible. And when the lion emits his tremendous roar and rises, bodily, into the air in his mortal spring, mouth wide open, its crimson cavern glaring, teeth gleaming, eyes blazing, mane erect, paws spread, claws wide, the stoutest heart might well quail. Yet, after barely escaping one lion, this foolhardy coxcomb, this vainglorious madcap, joyously called for another and jauntily despatched him: whatever may be said against Commodus as a man and an Emperor, as an athlete he believed in himself and justified his belief.
He called for a third, in spite of Marcia's shrieks, gesturing to her to sit down and keep still, and laughing up at her. But by this time Aemilus Laetus, who was afterwards the last Prefect of the Praetorium to Commodus and who was then an officer of the Guards, superior to the officer who had protested, approached, saluted and spoke to the Emperor. Their conference was conducted in tones too low to be overheard, but it was afterwards reported, both by those who claimed to learn of it from Commodus and by those who claimed to have been informed by Laetus, that he had urged upon the Emperor that his personal importance to the Republic was too great for him to risk himself so needlessly, and that Commodus had yielded to his expostulations.
At any rate Commodus ordered arrested and bound the entire gang who had been handling the lions' cages. He then walked up to them and enquired who had let out that lion. When no one confessed to having been responsible and several were accused by their fellows, the Emperor gave orders to lead off all concerned, hale them not before the Palace court, nor the commission in charge of prosecutions for offences against Imperial Majesty, but before the regular public magistrate in charge of trials for murder, assassination, poisoning, homicidal conspiracy and the like.
"Let him put the entire gang to the torture," the Emperor was reported as ordering. "Let him prosecute his enquiry until he gets a confession plainly naming the man who bribed the poor wretch who left that cage half- fastened, or the man who bribed the man who forced him to do it, or the whole chain of scoundrels, from the noble millionaire conspirators who hatched the idea, through their rabble of go-betweens down to the fool who hocussed that door-snap."
After the prisoners were marched off Commodus had the herald apologize for the interruption of the entertainment, proclaim that it would now proceed and request everyone to remain to enjoy it. Then he mounted his platform.
Yet this was his last exhibition of himself in the role of beast-slayer. I conjecture that as the episode of the piebald horse enlightened him as to the facilities for unobtrusive assassination afforded his enemies by his public appearances as a charioteer, so this episode of the accidentally liberated lion awakened him to the ease with which it might be arranged, whenever he entered the arena as a beast-slayer, that some monster might be loosed at him rather than for him. At any rate he never again took his stand in the arena for his long idolized sport. Beast-slaying he thenceforth eschewed.
Of course it was not by any means at once that we in the Choragium realized that the Emperor had abandoned his vagary. We knew only that we were suddenly unemployed and were merely glad of the respite and then uneasy at the change. I had time to reflect how marvellous had been my luck. Commodus himself had three several times asked me questions about my ability to control beasts; Galen had many times stood by me or passed near me, often with his eyes apparently meeting mine. Satronius Satro had stood and gazed at me, not three yards away. A score of other senators, all of whom had known me in the days of my prosperity, had been as near me, and noblemen to the number of something like a hundred. Not one of these had identified me.
If I escaped recognition it was, I conjectured, because of the deep-seated habit of mind of noblemen and more exalted personages and of men, like Galen, who have risen to a station in life which places them on an equality with nobles; the habit of mind which makes them regard a slave not as a human being, to be looked at as an individual, as they look at an equal or any freeman, but as a mere object like a door, or gate or piece of statuary or of furniture or a sort of utensil. Such men look full at a slave, if unknown to them, without really perceiving him. From this cause, I conceive, I escaped recognition, detection, and annihilation.
Much less than a month after the episode of Commodus and the two lions I was reading in my quarters, when the slave detailed as my personal servant entered and, cringing, said that there was a gentleman who wanted to see me. I gazed at him severely and said:
"I think you are mistaken. Please remember what the procurator told you about persons desiring to intrude on me."