I consider that my opinions are corroborated by the well-known fact that whenever Palus appeared as a gladiator in the amphitheater, Galen was present in the arena as chief of the surgeons always at hand to dress the wounds of victors or of vanquished men who had won the approbation or favor of the spectators or of the Imperial party. True, Galen was often there when Palus was not in the arena, for he was always on the watch for anatomical knowledge to be had from observation of dying men badly wounded. But, on the other hand, while he was often in the arena when Palus was not there, he was never absent when Palus was fighting.
Similarly, after Aemilius Laetus was appointed Prefect of the Palace, he was always present in person in the arena whenever Palus appeared in it. This, too, makes for my contentions.
The first fight in which I saw Palus revealed to me, and brought home to me with great force, the reason for his nickname, its origin and its astonishing appropriateness. The word "palus" has a number of very different meanings: manifestly its fitness as a pet name for the most perfect swordsman ever seen in any arena came from its use to denote the paling of a palisade, or any stake or post. Palus, in a fight, always appeared to stand still: metaphorically he might be said to seem as immobile as the post upon which beginners in the gladiatorial art practice their first attempts at strokes, cuts, thrusts and lunges. So little did he impress beholders as mobile, so emphatically did he impress them as stationary, that he might almost as well have been an upright stake, planted permanently deep in the sand.
I first saw him fight as a secutor, matched against a retiarius. This kind of combat is, surely, the most popular of all the many varieties of gladiatorial fights; and justly, for such fights are by far the most exciting to watch and their incidents perpetually varied, novel and unpredictable. It is exciting because the retiarius, nude except for one small shoulder-guard and a scanty apron, appears to have no chance whatever against the secutor with his big vizored helmet, his complete body-armor, his kilt of lapped leather straps plated with polished metal scales, his greaves or leg-rings or boots and his full-length, curved shield and Spanish sword. The secutor, always the bigger man and fully armed and armored, appears invincible against the little manikin of a retiarius skipping about bareheaded and almost naked and armed only with his trident, a fisherman's three-tined spear, with a light handle and short prongs, his little dagger and his cord net, which, when spread, is indeed large enough to entangle any man, but which he carries crumpled up to an inconspicuous bunch of rope no bigger than his head.
Yet the fact is the reverse of the appearance. No one not reckless or drunk ever bet even money on an ordinary secutor. The odds on the retiarius are customarily between five to three and two to one. And most secutors manifestly feel their disadvantage. As the two men face each other and the lanista gives the signal anyone can see, usually, that the retiarius is confident of victory and the secutor wary and cautious or even afraid. Dreading the certain cast of the almost unescapable net, the secutor keeps always on the move, and continually alters the direction and speed and manner of his movement, taking one short step and two long, then three short and one long, breaking into a dogtrot, slowing to a snail's-pace, leaping, twisting, curving, zigzagging, ducking and in every way attempting to make it impossible for the retiarius to foretell from the movement he watches what the next movement will be.
Palus behaved unlike any other secutor ever seen in the arena. He availed himself of none of the usual devices, which lanistae taught with such care, in the invention of which they gloried and in which they drilled their pupils unceasingly. He merely stood still and watched his adversary. The cunning cast of the deadly net he avoided by a very slight movement of his head or body or both. No retiarius ever netted him, yet the net seldom missed him more than half a hand's breadth. When the disappointed retiarius skipped back to the length of his net-cord and retrieved his net by means of it, Palus let him gather it up, never dashed at him, but merely stepped sedately towards him. If the retiarius ran away, Palus followed, but never in haste, always at a slow, even walk. No matter how often his adversary cast his net at him, Palus never altered his demeanor. The upshot was always the same. The spectators began to jeer at the baffled retiarius, he became flustered, he ventured a bit too near his immobile opponent, Palus made an almost imperceptible movement and the retiarius fell, mortally wounded.
I was never close enough to Palus to see clearly the details of his lunges, thrusts and strokes. I saw him best when I was a spectator in the Colosseum while impersonating Salsonius Salinator, for in my guise as colonial magnate I sat well forward. Even then I was not close enough to him to descry the finer points of his incomparable swordsmanship. Yet what I saw makes me regard as fairly adequate the current praises of him emanating from those wealthy enthusiasts who were reckoned the best judges of such matters. By the reports I heard they said that Palus never cut a throat, he merely nicked it, but the tiny nick invariably and accurately severed the carotid artery, jugular vein or windpipe.
I can testify, from my own observation, to his having displayed comparable skill in an equally effective stab in a different part of his adversary's body. As is well known, a deep slash of the midthigh, inside, causes death nearly as quickly as a cut throat; if the femoral artery is divided the blood pours out of the victim almost as from an inverted pail, a horrible cascade. Most of the acclaimed gladiators use often this deadly stroke against the inside midthigh, slashing it to the bone, leaving a long, deep, gaping wound. Palus never slashed an adversary's thigh; in killing by a thigh wound he always delivered a lunge which left a small puncture, but invariably also left the femoral artery completely severed, so that the life-blood gushed out in a jet astonishingly violent, the victim collapsing and dying very quickly. Such a parade requires altogether transcendant powers of accuracy from eye and hand.
Besides fighting as a secutor against a retiarius Palus in the same accoutrements fought with men similarly equipped, or accoutred as Greeks, Gauls, Thracians, Samnites, or murmillos; also he appeared in the equipment of each of these sorts of gladiators against antagonists equipped like himself or in any of the other fashions.
In all these countless fights he was never once wounded by any adversary nor did he ever deliver a second stroke, thrust or lunge against any: his defence was always impregnable, his attack always unerring; when he lunged his lunge never missed and was always fatal, unless he purposely spared a gallant foe.