"Lions!" he said. "Loose that big one!"
"Paulus," a scarred veteran answered (they were all forbidden to address him by any other name in that arena), "you have ordered us to keep that fellow for the birthday games. If you keep killing all the best ones off at practise, what shall we do when the day comes? The last ship- load has arrived from Africa and already you have used up nearly half of them. There is no chance of another cargo arriving in time for the games. And besides, we have lacked corpses recently; that big one hasn't tasted man's flesh. He is hungry now. He will eat whatever we throw in, so let him taste the right meat that will make him savage."
"Loose a leopard then."
The veteran went off without a word to give his orders to the men below- ground, whose duty it was to drag the cages to the openings of tunnels in the masonry through which the animals emerged into the sunlight. There were ten such openings on either side of the arena, closed by trapdoors, set in grooves, that could be raised by ropes from overhead.
Commodus picked up one javelin and poised it. Half-a-dozen gladiators watched him, paying no attention to the doors, through any one of which the animal might come. They knew their Paulus, and were trained, besides, to look at death or danger with a curious, contemptuous calm. But the courtiers were nervous, grouping themselves where the sunlight threw a V-shaped shadow on the sand, as if they thought that semi- twilight would protect them.
A wooden door rose squeaking in its grooves but Commodus kept his back toward it.
"Women!" he exclaimed.
His sudden scowl transformed his handsome face into a thing of horror. He began to mutter savagely obscene abuse. A leopard crept into the sunlight, tried to turn again but was prevented by the closing trap, and crouched against the arena wall.
"Beware! The beast comes!" said a gladiator.
"Hold your presumptuous tongue, you slave-born rascal!" Commodus retorted. "Take that yapping dog away and have him whipped!"