Keen as was his enjoyment of his own dexterity and fond as he was of displaying it to admiring and applauding onlookers, infatuated as he was with the intoxication of butchery, proficiency and adulation, he retained sufficient vestiges of decency and self-respect to restrain him from exhibiting himself as a beast-fighter in public spectacles before all Rome. Of late years I have heard not a few persons declare and maintain that they had seen and recognized him in the arena during the mornings of public festivals; that his outline, attitudes, movements and his manner of handling a sword, a club, a spear or a bow were unmistakable. I asseverate that these persons were and are self-deceived, or talking idly or repeating what they have heard from others or merely lying. Commodus never so far debased himself as to take his stand in the arena of the Colosseum on the morning of a public spectacle with all Rome looking on; still less did he ever disgrace himself by actually killing beasts in full sight of the whole populace. I speak from full knowledge. I know.
I may remark here that, taking the other extreme from these detractors or gossips, there exist persons who maintain that Commodus never drove a chariot in public, let alone as a competing jockey in a succession of races in the Circus Maximus on a regular festival day in full view of all Rome; likewise that he not only never, as a gladiator, killed an adversary in public combat, but never so much as shed blood in any of his fights; asserting that he merely practised with lath foils inside the Palace.
These latter persons are of the class who are horrified that a Prince of the Republic should have debased himself as did Commodus, who feel that it is discreditable to Imperial Majesty in general that such shameful occurrences took place and who are foolish enough to fancy that harm done may be undone by forgetting what happened, by whispering about it, by keeping silent, by hushing up as much as possible all reports of it, by expunging all mention of it from the public records, by garbling histories and annals so as to make it appear that Commodus merely longed to do and practiced or played at doing what he actually did.
These wiseacres are as far from the truth as his libellers and slanderers.
If anything in addition to my solemn assertion is needful to convince any reader of this chronicle that I am right, let me remind him that all Rome knew or knew of Palus the Gladiator, afterwards of Palus the Charioteer, later yet again of Palus the Gladiator; of Palus, the unsurpassable, the inimitable, the incomparable: incomparable in his ease, his grace, his litheness, his agility, his quickness, his amazing capacity for seeing the one right thing to do, the one thing which no other man could have thought of, and for doing it without a sign of perturbation, haste or effort, yet swift as lightning, with the effectiveness of Jove's thunderbolts and with the joyousness of a happy lad; always the same Palus and always in every dimension, attitude and movement the picture, the image, the double of Commodus: whereas no one ever heard or saw Palus the Beast-Fighter.
I think the chief reason why Commodus could not resist the temptation to degrade himself to the level of a public character and a public gladiator, yet, despite his infatuation for beast-killing, shrank from dishonoring himself by appearing at a public festival as a beast-fighter, was that beast-fighters are not merely more despised than charioteers or gladiators but the contempt felt for them has in it quite a different quality from that felt for gladiators and charioteers. Everybody sees criminals killed by beasts and there are all sorts of variations in the manner in which criminals are exposed to death by wild animals. Some are turned naked and weaponless into the arena to be mangled by lions or bears or other huge beasts: others are left clad in their tunics; some of these are allowed the semblance of a weapon; a club, knife, dagger or light javelin; so that their appearance of having some chance may make their destruction more diverting to the spectators: others, in order to prolong their agonies, are furnished with real weapons, as a sword, a pike, a trident, even a hunting spear with a full-sized triangular head, its edges honed sharp as razors; others are left completely clad, with or without sham weapons or actual arms, yet others are protected by armor, corselets, kilts, greaves, or even hip-boots and helmets, and wear swords and carry shields as well as pikes or spears: these last differ in appearance in no respect from professional beast-fighters.
This produces, in the minds of persons of all classes a sort of confusion between beast-fighters and criminals and brings it about that there attaches to those persons of noble-birth or free-birth who, whether from hope of gain, from poverty, or from infatuation with the sport or from mere bravado, abase themselves as beast-fighters, an obloquy far intenser than that which attaches to freemen or nobles who dishonor themselves by becoming gladiators or charioteers. Such self-abasements have been known ever since the reign of Nero, began to become more common under Domitian and have ceased to be regarded as anything unusual; in fact, so many men of good birth or even of high birth have become gladiators or charioteers, so many of these have acquired popularity, so many, even if actually few, have won wealth and fame, that professional charioteering or swordsmanship has almost ceased to be regarded as a degradation. Not so beast-fighting. No one can point to a record of any freeman or noble having appeared in the arena as a beast-fighter and afterwards having regained by any acquisition whether of reputation or fortune the position in society which he had forfeited by his dishonor.
At any rate, Commodus gratified his enthusiasm, for beast-killing in two entirely different ways. One was by regaling the people with spectacles of unheard-of, even of incredible magnificence, at which not only the noon- hour was filled with ingenious and novel feats of trick-riding, tightrope- walking, jugglery, acrobatics and the like, and one of the surprises invented by Mercablis and the afternoons ennobled by hosts of gladiators, paired or fighting by fours, sixes or tens, twenties or in battalions, as if soldiers in actual battles; but the mornings were exciting with the slaughter of hordes of animals of all kinds; with fights of ferocious beasts, and with, the fighting and killing of fierce animals by the most expert and venturesome beast-fighters. At these spectacles Commodus participated as a spectator, in the Imperial Pavilion, surrounded by his officials and the great officers of his household, clad in his princely robes, seated on his gold-mounted ivory throne.
His other method of gratifying his infatuation was by himself killing all sorts of beasts, either from the coping of the arena, or from platforms constructed out on the arena or from the level of the sand itself, for which feats he had as spectators the whole Senate and the entire body of our nobility, summoned by special invitation and most of them by no means reluctant to enjoy the spectacle of the superlative prowess possessed by their Prince.
When any of the Vestals were present at these eccentric exhibitions they occupied their front-row box and Marcia usually sat with them, generally accompanied by as many of her intimates among the wives of senators as the box would accommodate. The Vestals, as the only human beings in Rome who did not fear Commodus, were often entirely independent in their behavior and refused his invitations; but they did it politely, alleging that the regulations of their cult forbade any Vestal absenting herself from the Temple and Atrium on that particular day. When no Vestal was present Marcia occupied their box, by their invitation, and filled it with her noblest and wealthiest favorites among the senatorial matrons, often wives of ex-consuls.
On these occasions Commodus wore fulldress boots of a shape precisely as with his official robes but not of the usual color: they had indeed the Imperial eagles embroidered on them in gold thread, but, instead of being of sky-blue dull-finished leather, they were of a shiny, glaze-surfaced leather as white as milk, their soles gilded along the edges. Gold embroidery set off his tunic, which was of the purest white silk, shimmering brilliantly. He always wore many gold rings, set with rubies and emeralds; also an elaborate necklace matching his rings. His bright, soft, curly, yellow hair haloed his face as did his almost as bright and fully as yellow and curly beard. His eyes were very bright blue, his cheeks very red. He was very handsome. The expression of vacuous miscomprehension like that on the face of a country bumpkin, which was so usual with Commodus when dealing with official business or social duties, never appeared on his countenance when revelling in his favorite sport: then his expression was intelligent, lively and even charming.
He was at this time in his twenty-sixth year and in the very prime of his life. Before his death, instead of the rosiness of health on his face and the glow of youth on his cheeks, his entire countenance was unbecomingly flushed and florid, like that of a drunkard.
His weapons were as exquisitely designed and finished as his costume. When he used a club it was of the wood of some Egyptian palm or of cornel-wood, heavily gilded; a heap of such clubs was always in readiness when he entered the arena. Similarly there was ready for him an arsenal of swords, of every style, shape and size, from short Oscan swords not much longer than daggers to Gallic swords with blades a full yard long and thin as kitchen spits. All were gold-hilted, sheathed in colored, tooled, embroidered, gilded or even bejewelled leather; many had their blades gilded except the edges and points. There was piled up ready for his choice a mountain of spears, of patterns as various as the swords. All had their shafts whitened with some novel sort of paint which produced a gleaming effect like the sheen of the white portions of the finer sorts of decorated Greek vases. This glaze effect was over all of each shaft except at the grip, where the natural wood always appeared, roughened like the surface of a file with criss-cross lines to afford him a surer grasp. His bows were all gilded, his quivers gilded or of gem-studded, brightly tinted leather, in many colored patterns; his arrows gilded all over, points, shafts and feathers; or with feathers dyed red, blue, green or violet. Every detail of his get-up and equipment was to the last degree perfect, reliable, beautiful, unusual and costly.
I pondered a great deal over his infatuation and its consequences.
In the first place, as when contemplating the torrent of beast-wagons flowing down the Flaminian Highroad, I was, being still inwardly a Roman noble, overwhelmed with shame that the enormous, but even so insufficient, revenues of the Republic should be diverted from their proper uses for the maintenance of our prosperity and the defence of the frontiers of the Empire and squandered on the silly amusements of a great, hulking, empty- headed lad.
Then I was almost equally ashamed that a man who could, on occasion, if sufficiently roused, be, for a space, as completely Prince and Emperor as Commodus had repeatedly shown himself in my sight, could, on the other hand, waste his time and energies on displaying his dexterity in feats of archery, javelin-throwing, swordsmanship, agility and mere strength. It appeared to me not only shameful but incredible that a man who was capable of such complete adequacy in his proper station in life as Commodus had shown himself to be, for instance, when berating Satronius and Vedius or, still more, when facing the mutineers and dooming Perennis, should be willing to leave the management of the Republic and the ruling of the Empire to an ex-slave and ex-street porter like Cleander, and occupy his time with spearing bears, shooting with arrows lions, tigers, or elephants and what not, burying his sword-blade in bulls, even with clubbing ostriches.
I oscillated or vacillated between these two lines of thought. The sight of Commodus dodging the lightning rush of an infuriated ostrich and neatly despatching him with a single blow on the head from a palm-wood club no longer and no thicker than his own forearm not only stirred my wonder that any man could possess such accuracy of eyesight, such power of judging distances and time, such perfect coördination of his faculties of observation, of his will and of his muscles; but also roused my disgust that a man capable of ruling the world and with the opportunity to show his capabilities should degrade himself to wasting time on tricks of agility and feats of strength and skill.
On the other hand the sight of Commodus using a full-grown male Indian elephant as a target for his arrows enraged me. Next to a man an Indian elephant is the most intelligent creature existing on this earth of ours, as far as we know. An elephant lives far longer than a man. His life of useful labor is longer than the total life of a long-lived man. And his labor can be very useful to mankind. An elephant can travel, day after day, as fast and far as a horse, he can accomplish easily tasks to which no team of horses, not even of sixteen horses, is adequate, he can outdo any gang of men at loading or unloading a ship with massive timbers or with many other kinds of cargo in heavy and bulky units. It can only be a shame to kill, for mere sport, so noble a creature. It is bad enough to exhibit in the arena fights of elephants, which kill each other for our diversion, when we might utilize their courage and prowess in battle, as the Indians do. But to use an elephant as a mere target for arrows is far worse.
Then again, while I watched Commodus killing an elephant with his arrows I could not but think of the hundreds of men who had been employed in tracking his herd, building a stockade, driving into it what elephants they could, fettering them, taming them, caring for this one after he had been tamed, tending him on his journey of many thousand miles from India, across Gadrosia, Carmania, Susiana, Mesopotamia and Syria to Antioch and from there to Rome; on getting food for him on his journey and at different cities; on the vast expense of all this; and for what? That a silly and vainglorious overgrown child should shoot him full of arrows till he bled to death!
I raged inwardly.
I quite agree that Commodus enjoyed killing for killing's sake; it gave him a sort of sense of triumph to behold any animal succumb to his weapons. But I think his sense of triumph was also far more for his repeated self-congratulation on his accuracy of aim for shot or blow, on the perfection of his really amazing dexterity.
When he shot at elephants the procedure was always the same; two elephants were turned into the arena, and Commodus was matched against some archer of superlative reputation, whose prowess had been repeatedly demonstrated before the audiences of the Colosseum, a Parthian, Scythian, or Mauretanian. A prize was offered to him if he won and wagers were laid, mostly of ten to one or more on Commodus; he, of course, betting on himself with at least one senator at any odds his taker chose. Then the contest began, Commodus shooting from the Imperial Pavilion, his competitor from any part of thepodiumwhich he might choose, so that both archers were on an equality, being placed on the coping of the arena at spots they had chosen. The prize went to whichever killed his elephant with the fewest arrows. Commodus always won. Not that his competitors did not do their best. They did. But he was, in fact, the best archer alive. His accuracy of aim was uncanny and his strength really terrific. He could himself string a hundred and sixty pound bow and he shot a bow even stiffer than that without apparent effort and with fascinating and indescribable grace. He never missed, not only not the animal, but not even the vital part aimed at. I was told that, when he first practiced on an elephant, he killed it with arrows in the liver, of which eleven were required to finish the beast. He then had it cut open under Galen's supervision, he watching. He thereafter never failed to reach an elephant's heart with his third arrow, killed most with his second, and not a few with his first, a feat never equaled or approached by any other archer, for the killing of an elephant with five arrows by Tilla the Goth remains the best record ever made in the Colosseum by any other bowman. The impact of his arrows was so weighty that I have beheld one go entirely through the paunch of a full-grown male elephant and protrude a foot on the other side.
With rhinoceroses and hippopotami the procedure was similar. Neither of these animals could be had as plentifully as elephants, of which I saw Commodus and his competitors kill more than thirty; mostly Mauretanian elephants, but some Indian and a few Nubian. I saw killed for his amusements in similar contests in which he participated four rhinoceroses and six hippopotami. In these matches he killed one rhinoceros with two arrows and the rest with one; so of the hippopotami. As with the elephants, after he had seen a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus cut open under Galen's direction, he retained so vivid an impression of the location of its heart that, from any direction, whether the beast was moving or still, he sent his arrow so as to reach the heart. This sounds incredible, but it is exactly the truth.
As I watched I kept imagining the baking deserts of Libya or the steaming swamps of Nubia, the shouting hordes of negroes, the many killed by the beast, its capture, and the infinite and expensive care necessary to bring one alive to Rome.
Besides these enormous animals he practiced archery on the huge long- horned bulls from the forests of Dacia and Germany; on the bisons from the same regions, beasts with heavy shoulders, low rumps and small horns, parallel to each other, curving downwards over the brows; on the big stags from these far-off forests, or any sort of stags! And on two varieties of African antelope not much inferior in size to stags or bulls. He very seldom needed a third arrow to put an end to any beast of these kinds, not often a second arrow, and, actually, killed hundreds, even thousands, neatly and infallibly with his first shot. All these animals he shot from thepodium, often leaning on the coping, his right knee on it, generally standing, his feet wide apart, the toes of his right foot against the coping wall; for, as with sword or spear or club, he also shot left- handed.
Prom the arena itself, standing on the sand on which they scampered about, he shot multitudes of smaller animals: wild ponies, wild asses, striped African zebras, gazelles, and at least a dozen varieties of small African antelopes, for which there are no special names in Latin or even in Greek. The antelopes and gazelles, although they ran quicker than hares, he never missed and seldom did he fail to kill with one arrow whatever animal he aimed at. He never, to my knowledge, missed even the incredibly speedy wild asses.
Nor did he ever miss an ostrich, though he shot both from thepodiumand the sand these birds, which are swifter than even the wild asses. He shot at them with arrows made specially after a pattern of his own, with crescent-shaped heads set on the shaft with the two horns of the crescent pointing forward, the inner curve sharpened to a razor edge. Shooting at an ostrich racing at top speed he never failed to decapitate it with one shot, invariably severing its neck about a hands-breadth below its head.
He also killed with javelins or arrows wolves, hyenas, bears, lynxes, leopards, panthers, tigers and lions. But when killing such dangerous and ferocious animals he took his stand on a platform, the floor of which was about three yards square and elevated about that distance above the sand, constructed well out in the arena so that he could shoot down in any direction on beasts rushing towards or past the platform or driven past it or towards it. He slaughtered incredible multitudes of these creatures and certainly displayed amazing strength and skill, habitually killing a lion with one javelin, almost as often with one arrow, and the like for tigers; and oftener for panthers and leopards. He never needed a second arrow to finish a wolf or hyena or even a lynx. The marvellous accuracy of his aim, the way he planted his arrow unerringly in the heart of a galloping wolf scudding across the sand far from him; the way he drove a broad-bladed hunting-spear clear through a huge shaggy bear, never failed to rouse my wonder, even my admiration. [Footnote: See Note J.]
I do not recall any special feat of the Imperial beast-killer during the summer and autumn of the year in which I had fooled Bulla and been transferred from the stud-farm to the Choragium, which was the year in which Crispinus and Aelian were consuls, the nine hundred and fortieth year of the City, [Footnote: 187 A.D.] and the eighth of the Principate of Commodus. But, when the season for spectacles in the arena opened with the first warm, fair weather of the following spring, he returned to his favorite sport with redoubled zest, amounting to a craze.
It was during the spring and early summer of this year that he began to make huge wagers with wealthy senators, betting that he could kill a specified number of a specified variety of animal with a specified number of spears or arrows; always proposing so to limit himself as to number of weapons that the exploit appeared impossible. The result was that avaricious Midases were eager to wager, as they felt certain of winning. Yet he never lost, not once.
And, after each wager made, or won, he made the next on a narrower margin at smaller odds, until he struck the whole nobility numb by offering to wager even money that he could kill one hundred full-grown male bears from his usual platform with one hundred hunting spears, covenanting that he was to lose if he needed one hundred and one spear-casts to lay out those hundred bears limp, flabby and utterly dead. This appeared so utterly an impossibility that Aufidius Fronto offered to put up two million sesterces against him. The pompous sham philosopher, who feigned the profoundest contempt for riches, could not resist what looked like enormous gains. He made the wager, and Commodus won.
Now I cannot insist too positively on the amazing, the incredible strength and skill and nerve required for this fatiguing and taxing feat. Any other man I ever knew or heard of would have shown evidences of weariness long before he had despatched his hundredth bear; would certainly have betrayed the terrific strain on his nerves. Commodus was, apparently, as fresh, as jaunty, as full of reserve strength, as far from being unsure of himself when he finished the hundredth bear as when he drove his first spear into the first.
Now it requires altogether exceptional strength so to cast even the best design of hunting-spear, as keen as possible, as to drive it through the matted pelt, thick hide and big bones of a bear; in so driving it, to aim it so that it will pierce his heart calls for superhuman skill. And to reiterate this feat ninety-nine times in succession argues a perfection of eye, hand and nerve never possessed by any man save Commodus. Any other man would have felt the strain, most men would have become so anxious towards the end as to become agitated. He kept calm and cool.
I thoroughly enjoyed the discomfiture of Aufidius Fronto and relished his futile efforts to appear indifferent to his money loss.
Not many days later Commodus made a similar and still more hazardous wager with Didius Julianus, the most opulent and ostentatious of the senators, who was afterwards nominally Emperor for two months and five days. This wager covenanted that Commodus, from his platform in the arena, would despatch one hundred full-grown male lions, in their prime and vigorous, with one hundred javelins. On this arduous frivolity they wagered ten million sesterces and had the actual gold, fifty thousand big, broad, gold pieces, carried into the arena and piled up in a gleaming mound on a monster crimson rug for all to behold. This bit of ostentation was like Didius Julianus and not unnatural for Commodus. I have never seen any man perform so easily so difficult a feat. Killing a lion with three javelins requires very unusual strength and skill. To kill ten lions with forty casts would tax the muscles, dexterity and nerves of the best spearman the world ever knew. To kill a hundred lions with, barely one javelin apiece was bravado to propose and miraculous to accomplish. Accomplish it he did and without any visible effort or strain. Eighty-nine of the hundred he shot through the heart; the remaining eleven with difficult fancy shots which he was, against all reason, tempted to essay, and which, against all probability, uniformly were fully successful.
Didius Julianus paid his wager without any show of chagrin, as he could well afford to do.
At once Commodus offered to bet that he could kill a hundred similar lions with a bare hundred arrows. Didius at once wagered the same sum he had just lost and the bet was made. The exhibition was delayed more than a month until it had been possible to accumulate at Rome a full hundred full-grown male lions. Then Commodus again shot in sight of a pile of gold pieces on an expanse of crimson velvet spread on the sand of the arena.
Commodus won as before, with exactly the same number of heart shots and fancy shots. If one miracle can be greater than another this feat surpassed its predecessor. For a lion takes a great deal of killing before he dies, and each of these hundred lions died as quickly as any lion ever does. Instant killing of a lion with a javelin is a miracle, even more miraculous is instant killing of a lion with one arrow. Commodus so killed the full hundred.
I know of no more astounding demonstration of his infallible and tremendous muscle power than the fact that, shooting at a lion fully twenty yards away, and in the act of rearing rampantly at the beginning of a bound, he sent his arrow into the roof of its mouth, through the brain, the entire length of the spinal cord and so far that its point protruded from the dead beast's rump above the root of its tail. Galen, who, as often, was in the amphitheater in case of injury to the Prince, and who was in the habit of dissecting such dead beasts as interested him, cut along the path followed by the missile, cleaving the dead lion in two lengthwise and laying the two halves hide downward on the sand, so as to demonstrate to a bevy of curious and awed spectators the incredible path of that arrow.
Commodus lived on miracles. Of all the thousands of darts, javelins and spears which I saw him throw, of all the countless arrows I saw him shoot, not one ever missed its mark, not one merely hit the beast aimed at, everyone, even if launched at an ostrich skimming the sand or a gazelle, struck deep and true precisely where he had aimed it.
As I am about to narrate the occurrence which put an end to the insensate indulgence in beast-killing in which Commodus had revelled, I am reminded that, besides his vilifiers, who assert that he publicly exhibited himself as an ordinary beast-fighter, and his apologists, who maintain that he not only did not do so, but never so much as drove a chariot in public or spilt human blood with an edged weapon, there are others who, while not retailing or inventing any fictions or attempting to blink or suppress any facts, yet inveigh against Commodus as absurdly assuming the attributes of Hercules while really a weakling and as pretending to powers which he never possessed, as having been largely or wholly a counterfeit spearman, a make-believe archer, a sham swordsman and a mock athlete.
Among other alleged proofs of these baseless contentions they cite the ecstatic joy with which, to the limit of the supply gathered from all parts of the African deserts, he day after day, on the sands of the arena, delightedly clubbed ostriches, alleging that killing an ostrich with a sword or club is child's play and no feat of skill. As to this particular citation of vaunted evidence, as in their contentions at large, they are egregiously mistaken and far from the facts and the truth.
Actually, for a lone man, on level ground, far from any shelter, an angry full-grown young male ostrich is a formidable assailant and a dangerous antagonist. No living creature that roves the surface of our earth moves faster than a healthy ostrich. When running it skims the arena, when attacking it darts. It kicks forward, raising its long and powerful leg high in the air and bringing it down with a blow so swift that the eye cannot follow it and so forcible that I have seen one such stroke smash all together the collar-bone, shoulder-blade, upper arm-bone and half the ribs on that side of its unfortunate victim, a big, agile, vigorous Nubian, habituated to ostriches in their haunts. And, if the leg misses its mark, as it very seldom does, the bird, as it hurls past its enemy, pecks viciously at his face, its sturdy beak being capable of inflicting a serious wound wherever it strikes, and often destroying an eye, its usual target.
To stand alone, far out in the arena, bare-headed, clad only in a diaphanous silken tunic, armed only with a club no longer or thicker than his forearm; so habited and armed to await the assault of an infuriated bird so bulky, so swift, so agile and so powerful; to dodge jauntily, but infallibly, both the stroke of the leg and the stab of the beak, and invariably to bring his club down on the darting head and finish the bird neatly with that one blow; this was equally a feat of self-confidence, of dexterity, of agility and of strength. I hold no man justified in condemning Commodus because he gloried in clubbing ostriches.
The incident I recall occurred when spring had already waned and was merging into summer. The lower tiers of the Colosseum were well filled with senators, nobles and other persons of sufficient importance to be invited. None of the Vestals were present and their box was occupied by Marcia and her intimates. There were enough spectators seated to give the amphitheater an appearance of gaiety and vivacity almost as great as if it had been filled by all classes of the populace. The weather was clear, warm and sunny, with a light, soft breeze.
Commodus had exhibited his dexterity as an archer by shooting a great number and great variety of small antelopes, each one of which he had killed with a single arrow. Next he began clubbing ostriches and disposed of a dozen or more. Altogether there were about fifty. It was characteristic of Commodus that he was impatient of any delay between different exhibitions when he was thus displaying his prowess. After the ostriches he intended to mount his platform and shoot fifty or sixty lions. In order to have them handy to begin on as soon as the last ostrich was despatched he had commanded that those which were to be let out of posterns should be disposed behind the doors and that some of the cages of those which were to be liberated from cages should be hoisted from the crypt and set ready in the arena. A full dozen of such cages had been set out. I was not with the gang hoisting these cages and marshalling other lions behind posterns, but was at the opposite end of the arena with a smaller gang which was engaged in getting ready a score or more of tigers which were to be let out after the lions and which were giving a great deal of trouble.
Commodus was facing my end of the arena and so had his back to the lions in their cages, which were about thirty yards from him. The liberated ostriches did not seem to pay any attention to the caged lions and each, as he was driven back towards Commodus by men with long hayforks, with which they caught the birds' necks and held them off, turned furiously on Commodus and charged him viciously. Each bird Commodus dodged with one slight instantaneous and effortless movement; each bird fell dead at once, neatly clubbed on the head.
As he clubbed the last ostrich I saw a lion step dazedly and tentatively out of one of the cages. Of course, it was not intended that any of the lions should be liberated until the Emperor had mounted his platform, approved the bow selected for him or chosen one for himself, and similarly inspected and approved as many arrows as he expected to need. It was hardly possible that any cage-door came open by accident. I conjectured a plot similar to that which I had seen fail when the piebald horse threw himself and his fall and the wreck of the chariot he helped to draw failed to cause the death of Palus the Charioteer.
The lion, once he was wholly out of his cage, sneaked forward his length or more, crouched, and bounded towards Commodus. A shout of dismay, horror and warning went up from the audience. Marcia shrieked and leapt to her feet. Most of the spectators also stood up, the audience rising in a sort of wave as it emitted its yell of consternation.
Commodus whirled round, saw the lion, stood and eyed him precisely as if he had been a charging ostrich; appeared to measure the diminishing distance, showed no sign of perturbation, crouched slightly, dodged as the lion sprang at him; dodged so slightly that I was sure the lion had him, but so effectively that no claw touched him; straightened up as the lion, wholly in the air, shot past him; swung his short club and brought it down on the lion's neck; and stood there, triumphant, by a lion stretched out motionless on the sand, totally limp and unmistakably dead.
Marcia fainted.
So did half her guests.
So did some of the older senators.
Commodus, not so much as noticing the perturbation of his guests, not evenMarcia, called out to the overseer in charge of the cages:
"Not a man of you dare move. Stand where you are."
The guards, a batch of whom were stationed at each postern by which the attendants entered and left the arena, ran towards the Emperor. He ordered them to summon all their fellows from all through the Colosseum and when their chief officer approached him gave orders that they form a cordon behind the cages and see to it that no man of those who had been getting out the cages should escape.
While this was being done the spectators had reseated themselves, the inanimate had been revived and even Marcia had recovered consciousness and composure and, with her guests was as before their fright.
When all were in order Commodus ordered:
"Let out another lion!"
The overseer in charge of the cages and the officer of the guards demurred.
"Do as I tell you!" Commodus browbeat the overseer. To the officer he said:
"If I, with only a tunic and club, am not afraid of a lion charging me, you and your men, in armor and with shields and swords ought not to be afraid." "We are not," the officer declared, "we are concerned for you, not for ourselves."
"Pooh!" said Commodus. "If I could kill the first handily when I was not expecting him, I can kill all the rest the same way when I know what is coming. A lion, by that sample, is as easy to dodge and club dead as an ostrich or easier. Send me another."
Another was let out amid the dead silence of the dazed and astounded spectators. Commodus killed the second as handily as the first.
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."
The fellow fairly cowered, visibly sweating and trembling, but insisted:
"I really think that you really will be glad to see this gentleman."
I perceived that some unusual enticement must have been offered the pitiful wretch to induce him to brave the terrors of the punishments with which the procurator had threatened him if he allowed any would-be visitors to reach me. It also appeared to me that the fellow was fond of me and had the best of intentions.
"Show the gentleman up," I finally said.
He had been gone but a very short time when the door opened and in came….
Tanno!
He shut the door fast and, without a word, we were clasped in a close embrace.
When our emotions quieted sufficiently I pressed Tanno into a chair and resumed mine. We gazed at each other some time before either mastered himself enough for words. Tanno spoke first, veiling his feelings beneath his habitual jocularity. He said:
"Caius, you are certainly unkillable or bear a charmed life. You have been officially certified as dead two several times. First you were butchered by the Praetorians at Ortona, then you were assassinated by a disgruntled public-slave in the Umbrian Mountains: after two demises here you are, as alive as possible. Please explain."
"I feel faint," I said, "and, illogically, both thirsty and hungry."
I signalled for my servitor and, almost at once, he brought plenty of the Choragium's more than passable wine, fresh bread and a variety of cold viands. A draught of wine and a mouthful of bread and ham made me feel myself. Then I told about my close shaves when I three several times barely escaped assassination at the hands of partizans of Bulla, about the kindness of theVillicusand procurator and why I had changed my name.
"Why didn't you send at least a tiny note to Vedia and let her know you were alive after all?" he queried.
"I have lain awake night after night," I replied, "composing letters to Vedia and to you, letters which would tell you what I wanted if, by good luck, they came into your hands, but which, if they fell into the hands of secret-service agents, would tell nothing and not so much as arouse enough suspicion to cause them to investigate me and take a look at me. I could not frame, to my satisfaction, even one such letter. I knew that any messenger I employed would most likely post off to some Imperial spy and show him my letter before he took it to its destination or instead of delivering it. I canvassed every possible messenger, from my personal servitor here in the Choragium, through all the slaves I knew here or in the Colosseum who are free to run about the city, up to every sort of street-gamin, idler, loafer, sycophant and what not. I could not think of any kind of messenger who would be safe, nor of any letter which would not be dangerous. Much as I wanted to apprise Vedia of my survival I could not but feel that any attempt on my part to communicate with her or with you would lead straight to betrayal, detection, recognition and the death from which Agathemer saved me."
"I believe you were right," Tanno agreed. "It has all come out for the best. You are alive and unsuspected and I have found you."
"How did you find me?" I queried.
"Galen," he said, to my astonishment, "told me that you were sheltered in the Choragium, cloaked under the style and title of Festus the Beast- Tamer. He said he recognized you last fall, but did not judge it wise to give me or Vedia so much as a hint as long as you were busy in the arena in full view of all Rome on festival days and under the eyes of our entire nobility during our Prince's exhibitions of himself as Hercules Delirans. When Commodus abruptly realized that beast-killing might not suit his health because of the opportunities it gave for accidentally letting lions or tigers or what not out of their cages at unexpected moments, since he was not likely to revert to his renounced sport and you were not likely to be so much in demand and therefore less likely to be much under observation, Galen thought it safe to tell me. He says he has always believed that you had nothing to do with Egnatius Capito's conspiracy, had merely been seen by some secret-service agent while talking to Capito, never were a member of his conspiracy, never conspired against Commodus, never were disloyal, have never been and are not any danger to our Prince, and therefore are a man to be shielded rather than informed on. So he kept his face when he recognized you in the arena masquerading as Festus and kept his counsel till he judged the time ripe to tell me.
"I at once told Vedia, in person and privately. She is overjoyed, and, just as her encounter with you on the Flaminian Road not only stopped her proposed marriage to Orensius Pacullus, but made her feel she never wanted to hear of him again, so your resurrection and reappearance now has spoiled an apparently prosperous wooing of her by Flavius Clemens, who is as good a fellow as lives; noble, rich, handsome, charming and just such a suitor as Vedia might and should have married if you were really dead, and one she could not, in any case, help flirting with. She must have admiration, attention and admirers. With all her love of gaiety she loves you unalterably."
"I infer," I said, "that she told you of our encounter on the FlaminianWay."
"She did," he answered, "and gave me a full report of your story of your adventures from Plosurnia's Tavern till she saw you. As soon as we conferred we both started to use all our influence and any amount of cash necessary (we both have cash to spare, hoards of it) to arrange for your legal manumission by thefiscus, your disappearance, and your comfort in some secure shelter until it might be safe for you to reappear as yourself in your proper station in society.
"We found we should have no difficulty in arranging for your manumission. It has already been favorably reported on the recommendation of the authorities of Nuceria. We had only to slip a small bribe or two to expedite matters. But when we sent off a dependable agent, armed with all the necessary papers, to set you free from your captivity on the Imperial estate, and provide you with plenty of cash to make everything smooth for your disappearance, he was confronted with a most circumstantial story of your assassination and burial, with the official reports of both and the affirmation of an upper inspector who had investigated the matter.
"We could not but think you dead in fact and Vedia was as heartbroken as five years ago, if not more so, for the glamour of that romantic encounter with you was magical. I believed you dead and was astounded when Galen gave me his information. Vedia is as amazed as I."
After some mutual desultory chat he fell to questioning me about my adventures and, drinking and eating when the humor took us, we spent most of the day together, I rehearsing for him all that I had told Vedia and much more in detail and also telling of all which had befallen me since then.
When Tanno left, it was as late as he could possibly remain and yet reach the Baths of Titus in time for the briefest bath there.
Next day he came again.
By this time both he and I had had time to think over the situation and to arrive at definite conclusions as to what was best to do. I was delighted to find that his ideas and mine agreed as to all essentials.
When he first came in he said:
"I had mighty little sleep last night. I could hardly close my eyes for thinking over your marvellous adventures. The more I ponder over them the more wonderful they seem; especially your involvement with Maternus; your encounter with Pescennius Niger; your presence in the Circus Maximus when Commodus:—I mean Palus:—drove his car over the axles of the stalled chariots and escaped between them out of the smash and wreckage; your involvement with the mutineers, and your safety in Rome all these months, even in the arena of the amphitheater. I congratulate you."
Then he told me his plan which he had already talked over with Vedia and which she approved. There happened to be in Rome a distinguished and wealthy provincial of senatorial rank, about to leave for Africa, where his estates were situated and where he owned vast properties near Carthage, Hippo Regius, Hadrumetum, Lambaesis and Thysdrus, in all of which places he had residences of palatial proportions and luxury. He had been making enquiries among his acquaintances for a slave much of the sort Agathemer had been to me. He had not found one to suit him. Tanno thought that I would suit him and could easily pass myself off as the sort of man he wanted. Then I would get out of Rome unsuspected and be comfortable and well treated in the most Italian of all our out-provinces, in a delightful climate, amid abundance of all the good things of life.
I agreed with him.
Then he disclosed his plan for bringing this about. By influence or bribing or both he would arrange to have me sold out of the Choragium, ostensibly as now superfluous there, and to have me bought from thefiscusby a dependable and close-mouthed go-between buyer, who would agree to hold me for quick resale to a purchaser designated by Tanno. Thus Nonius Libo, the wealthy provincial who was to be induced to purchase me, would know nothing of my identity with Festus the Animal Tamer or of my connection with the Choragium.
I acclaimed this project, as far more promising than Vedia's plan to seclude me in the dreary wilds of Bruttium.
Tanno gave me a letter and went off. I found the missive a long and loving letter from Vedia: one to soothe and transport any lover.
Tanno had said that he would not visit me again except as was absolutely needful, considering it reckless and venturesome to run the risk of some Imperial spy noticing his visits to the Choragium and making investigations. Though he remarked that no man in Rome seemed less likely than he to be suspected of disloyalty, intrigue or of being a danger to the Prince.
Within a very few days he paid me one more visit to inform me that everything had gone well, that all necessary arrangements had been made for my sale by thefiscusout of the Choragium, and all necessary preparations made to take full advantage of it.
A few days later I was formally sold for cash to a provincial slave- dealer, named Olynthides. In a slave-barrack which he had hired for the month only I found myself with a motley crew, but kept apart from them and comfortably lodged, well fed and considerately treated, as valuable merchandise.
The day after Olynthides had bought me Nonius Libo came to inspect me. He talked to me in Latin and in Greek, commended my fluency and polish in the use of both, had me write out a letter in each at his dictation, read both and commended my accuracy, script and speed; questioned me about the history of music, painting, and sculpture and as to my opinions on the works of various sculptors, painters, architects and composers; asked about my tastes along these lines and as to jewelry, fine furniture, tapestries, carpets and the like; also as to my personal tastes concerning lodging, bathing, hunting, food and clothing and was I a good sailor and fond of the sea; and stated that I suited him.
I was not present at his chaffering with Olynthides but, after no long interval I was summoned into the courtyard and Olynthides handed me over to Nonius Libo, along with a bill of sale.
Olynthides had said to me:
"I make it a point always to forget the names of the slaves I buy for cash without any guarantees and resell the same way. I have as bad a memory for names as any man alive and I help my bad memory to be as much worse as I can. I'll forget your name in a few days. I am not sure I remember it now. What is it?"
I was ready for him, for I had made up my mind to change my name again and had selected my new name.
"Phorbas" I answered.
"Oh, yes!" he ruminated, "Phorbas, to be sure. I should have said Florus or Foslius or something like that. Phorbas! I'll remember Phorbas till after you are sold and the cash in my hands and you and your new master out of sight. Then I'll forget that too, like all the rest."
As Phorbas, Phorbas the Art Connoisseur, I began my life with Nonius. He was domiciled in a palace of a residence on the Carinae, which he had leased for the short term of his proposed stay in Rome. There I was lodged in a really magnificent apartment, with a private bath, a luxurious bedroom, a smaller bedroom for the slave detailed to wait on me, a tinytricliniumand a jewel of a sitting-room, gorgeous with statuettes and paintings, crammed with objects of art and walled with a virtuoso's selection of the best books of the best possible materials and workmanship.
There I spent some happy days. Nonius had told me I might go out all I pleased. I had replied that I preferred to remain indoors until we set out for Carthage. He smiled, nodded and said:
"I understand: do as you like."
I passed my time most agreeably, except for several intrusions by Libo's wife, Rufia Clatenna. She was a tall, raw-boned, lean woman, with unmanageable hair which would not stay crimped, a hatchet face, too much nose and too little chin, a stringy neck, very large, red, knuckly hands and big flat feet. She had a mania for economy and close bargains, seemed to regard her husband as an easy mark for swindlers and to be certain that he had been cheated when he bought me. She thought herself an art-expert, whereas she had no sound knowledge of any branch of art, no memory for what she had heard and seen, and no taste whatever. To demonstrate that her husband had made a bad bargain when he bought me she bored me with endless questions concerning the contents of her domicile, of which she understood almost nothing, and concerning famous composers, painters, sculptors and architects, as to whom she confused the few names, dates and works she thought she knew about.
Nonius came on us in his atrium while she was putting me through a questionnaire on every statue, painting and carving in it. The first time he saw me alone he said, smiling:
"You mustn't mind her; I put up with her, you can, too."
When he came into my apartment and told me he meant to set off from Rome next day, I ventured to express my puzzlement that he had bought me and never mentioned to me, since I came into his possession, any of the subjects on which he had questioned me and for knowledge of which he had, presumably, wanted me.
"Oh," he said, "I didn't buy you for myself. I know very little about art and music and am no connoisseur at all. I bought you for my cousin Pomponius Falco. He is as much interested in such matters as any man in Africa. He is richer than I and you'll find him the best possible master. He'll be at Carthage when we get there and I'll resell you to him soon after we land."
Nonius and Clatenna had no children, but doted on her sister's son, a lad of not much over twenty, lean as his aunt, but small boned and not unshapely. He was not, however, handsome, for he had a pasty, grayish complexion, thin lank hair, almost no beard, and a long nose suggesting a proboscis. His name was Rufius Libo, and he was Nonius Libo's heir. In his favor Nonius made a will a few days before we left Rome, leaving him his entire estate except a jointure to Clatenna, endowments to some municipal institutions in his home towns, legacies to various friends and manumission to faithful slaves. Of this will he had several duplicates made and properly witnessed and sealed. One of these he left on deposit in Rome; another he despatched to Carthage by a special messenger by way of Rhegium, Messana, the length of Sicily to Lilybaeum and thence by sea to Carthage; and he gave one each to Clatenna and to Rufius.
When he gave orders for the despatch of the copy of his will by the special messenger I was astonished, as I assumed that we were to travel by the same route. But I found that he meant to sail all the way from the Tiberside water-front of Rome to Carthage. This amazed me. And not unnaturally. For we Romans generally dislike or even abhor the sea and sail it as little as possible, making our journeys as much as we can by land and as little as may be by water, choosing any detour by land which will shorten what crossings of the sea cannot be avoided.
Among the few Romans whom I have known who enjoy sea voyages I count myself. Of all of them Nonius outclassed the rest. He worshiped the water and was happiest when afloat and well out to sea. He told me that he had spent more money on his private yacht than on any of his residences, and, when I saw her, I believed him. A larger, better designed, better equipped, better manned, better supplied, better appointed private yacht I never beheld. His rowers kept perfect time and made top speed all down the Tiber, her crew set sail like man-of-warsmen, her officers were pattern seamen and got the very most speed on their way from every condition of wind and weather. Rufius and Clatenna, while not as good sailors as Nonius and I, were notably good sailors and we had a very pleasant voyage until we were almost in sight of Carthage. Then we encountered a really terrific storm.
Now I am not going into any details of our disaster. I do not know whether all writers of memoirs get shipwrecked or all survivors of shipwrecks write reminiscences, but I am certain that of all the countless memoirs I have read in the course of my life, ninety-nine out of every hundred contained one or more accounts of shipwrecks, narrated with the minutest detail and dwelling on the horrors, agonies, miseries, fears, discomforts and uncertainties of the survivors and narrators with every circumstance calculated to harrow up their readers' feelings. I could write a similar meticulous narrative of my only shipwreck, and it was sufficiently uncomfortable, terrifying, ghastly and hideous to glut a reader as greedy of horrors as could be, but I am going to pass over it as lightly as possible and summarize it as briefly as I may.
Suffice it to set down here that we were not driven on any rock or reef or shoal nor did we collide with any other ship. Laboring heavily in the open sea, straining on the crests and wallowing in the troughs of the stupendous billows, the yacht, even as carefully built a yacht as Libo's, began to leak appallingly, the inrush of the water surpassed the utmost capacity of the pumps and the most frantic efforts of the men at them; the vessel settled lower and lower, labored more and more heavily and was manifestly about to founder.
The officers were capable men, the small boats sturdy and their crews and steersmen skillful and confident. Clatenna was brave and Libo magnificent. He kept his head, dominated his officers, and insisted that Rufius and I should embark in a different boat from that to which he and Clatenna trusted themselves. He personally saw to it that Clatenna and Rufius had, on their persons, each their copy of his will.
Both boats were successfully launched, and, as we drew away from the doomed ship, we saw a third and fourth put off with other valued members of his household. While a fifth and sixth were being swung overboard we saw, from the top of a huge swell, the yacht go under and vanish; saw, when we next rose on the chine of a billow, the water dotted with spars, wreckage and swimmers; saw, five or six times more, the three other boats: and then many times, high on a vast wave, beheld only the waste of lifeless waters, without boat or swimmer.
All night we floated and, not long after sunrise, we were seen and rescued by a trading ship from Carales in Sardinia, bound for Carthage.
At Carthage we were soon in the palace formerly Libo's and now the property of Rufius. He, on succeeding to his uncle's estate, at once rewarded with a huge donation the steersman of the boat in which we had been saved, saying that the other steersmen did their best, but that, if the others had been as dexterous as he, his aunt and uncle would not have perished by so deplorable and so untimely a death.
Within a few days he, now my owner by inheritance, sold me to PomponiusFalco, as Nonius had intended to do himself.
Falco liked me at first sight and I him. He was a man between thirty-five and forty years of age, a natural born bachelor and art connoisseur. He was of medium height, of stout build, with curly black hair and a curly black beard, a swarthy complexion, a bullet head, a bull neck, a huge chest and plump arms and legs. He was by no means unhandsome in appearance and very jovial, good-humored, and good-natured; manifestly fond of all the good things of life and able to discriminate and appreciate the best.
For several days after I came into his possession I was his dearest toy. He spent most of his waking hours conversing with me about music and musicians, poetry and poets, literature and authors, paintings and painters, statuary and sculptors, architecture and architects, gems, ivories, embroideries, textiles, furniture, pottery and even autographs and autograph collecting. He seemed to appraise me an expert on all such lines and to be well pleased with his purchase.
Certainly I was as well clothed, fed, lodged and attended as if I had been his twin-brother.
Before he had owned me many days Falco said to me:
"Phorbas, I've been puzzling about you. You are a slave and you were sold to poor Libo and by Rufius to me as a Greek. Yet you have none of the appearance nor behavior of a Greek nor yet of a slave. You look and act and talk like a freeman born and a full-blooded Roman, and a noble at that. Please explain."
Now, of course, in imagining all the forms in which I might be assaulted by the perils which beset me, I had foreseen just such a query as this utterance of Falco's involved and I had pondered and rehearsed my answer. I realized that I must be ready with a reply wholly plausible because entirely consonant with the facts of our social life, as they existed, so that no one could take any exception to it. I thought I had framed such a reply.
"You know how it is," I answered easily. "A Roman master buys a young and comely Greek handmaid. In due course she has a daughter, legally also a slave and nominally a Greek, yet half Roman. When she is grown, if she happens to be comely and the property of a master like most masters, she has a daughter, a slave and spoken of as a Greek, yet only a quarter Greek. If she has a similar daughter, that daughter, a slave and called a Greek, is only one-eighth Greek. I conceive, from all I know, that my great grandmother, grandmother and mother were such slave women. I, a slave and ostensibly a Greek, am fifteen-sixteenths Roman noble, by ancestry, according to my reckoning. No wonder my descent shows in my bearing, manner and conversation."
This answer was, actually, not so far from the facts, my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother had, certainly, been Roman noblewomen, daughters indeed, each of one of the oldest and longest-lineaged houses of our nobility; and, like my father, grandfather and great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather had been a Roman nobleman. But his father, my great-great-great-grandfather, had been a freed-man, manumitted in the days of Nero, acquiring great wealth, attaining equestrian rank during the last years of Nero's reign, and vastly enriched during the confusion of the civil wars, marrying a young and wealthy widow after Vespasian was firmly established at Rome by the crushing of the insurrection of Claudius Civilis.
Probably the general consonance of my answer with the facts made my utterance of it more convincing. Certainly it appealed to Falco.
"Just about what I conjectured," he said, smiling. "And will you tell me in what part of Italy and on what estate you were born and how you came by your air of aristocratic culture and by your marvellous dilettantism?"
"I know what I know and am what I am," I replied, "because I was, from childhood, treated just as if a son instead of a slave; pampered, indulged and made much of. That lasted till I was more than full-grown.
"The misfortunes of the family to which I belonged came so suddenly that I was not manumitted, as I should have been had my master had so much as a day's warning of his downfall. I was sold to a fool and a brute, as you have probably inferred from my back. The marks of his barbarity which I bear, and my lasting grief for the calamity of the household in which I was born, make me unwilling to tell you anything of my past previous to my purchase from Olynthides by Nonius Libo."
"Well," he said, "your feeling is natural and I shall not urge my curiosity on you. I mean to indulge you and even pamper you; mean to endeavor to indulge you and pamper you so you will feel more indulged and pampered than ever in your life, I'll make a new will, at once, leaving you your freedom and a handsome property. I expect to live out a long life, all my kin have been healthy and long-lived. But one can never be certain of living and I mean to run no risks of your having any more troubles. You deserve ease and comfort. And you shall have them if I can arrange it. I love you like a born brother and mean to treat you as well as if you were my twin."
The year in which Commodus killed the two lions, each with one blow of his trifling-looking little palm-wood club, in which year I was sold out of the Choragium, and purchased by Nonius, in which I crossed the sea, was wrecked and saved and resold to Falco, was the nine hundred and forty- first year of the City [Footnote: 188 A.D.] and the ninth of the reign of Commodus, the year in which the consuls were Allius Fuscianus and Duillius Silanus, each for the second time. In Africa, with Falco, I spent that and the following year very comfortably and happily, for I was as well clothed, fed, lodged and tended as Falco himself. I liked him, even loved him, and I felt perfectly safe.
The climate of Africa agreed with me, and I liked the fare, especially the many kinds of fruit which we seldom see in Rome and then not in their best condition, and some of which we never see in Italy at all. I admired the scenery, and I delighted in the cities, not only Carthage and Utica, but both Hippo Regius and Hippo Diarrhytus, and also Hadrumetum, Tacape, Cirta and Theveste, and even such mere towns as Lambaesis and Thysdrus, which last has an amphitheater second only to the Colosseum itself. They all had fine amphitheaters, magnificent circuses, gorgeous theaters and sumptuous public hot baths. Not one but had a fine library, a creditable public picture-gallery, and many noble groups of statuary, with countless fine statues adorning the public buildings, streets and parks. The society of all these places was delightfully cultured, easy and unaffected. I revelled in it and could not have been happier except that I never heard from Vedia or Tanno, let alone had a letter from either. And I wrote to both and sent off letter after letter to one or the other. For it seemed to me that a letter in this form could not excite any suspicion.
"Phorbas gives greeting to Opsitius, and informs him that after he had been sold by Olynthides to Nonius Libo, he survived the sinking of his owner's yacht and was sold by Libo's heir to Pomponius Falco, in whose retinue he now is. Farewell."
I sent off, at least once a season, a letter like this to both Tanno and Vedia. No word from either ever reached me. I could but conjecture that all my letters had miscarried.
Meanwhile, besides being reminded of it each time I wrote to Tanno or Vedia, I did not forget that I was a proscribed fugitive, my life forfeit if I were detected. I conceived that my best disguise was to dress, act and talk as much as possible in the character of dilettante art expert and music-lover, which I had assumed. Falco treated me, as he had prophesied, almost as a brother. I had a luxurious apartment in each of his town residences and country villas, and a retinue of servants: valet, bath- attendant, room-keeper, masseur, reader, messenger, runner and a litter with three shifts of powerful bearers. Everything Falco could think of in the way of clothing, furniture and art objects was showered on me and my slightest hint of a wish was quickly gratified. Also Falco supplied me a lavish allowance of cash. Therefore I could gratify any whim. Besides, my amulet-bag was intact and had in it all the gems which Agathemer had originally placed there, except only the emerald Bulla had sold for me.
I thought up everything I could do to make myself look completely a Greek virtuoso and as un-Roman-looking as possible. I patronized every complexion-specialist, friseur, perukier, manicurist and fashionable barber in that part of the world. I bought every hair tonic for sale in the colony. Between lotions and expert manipulation I succeeded in growing a thick curly beard, covering my chest as far as the lower end of my breast-bone and a thick head of hair so long that, even when elaborately frizzed and curled, my oiled and scented locks fell as far down my back as my beard spread on my bosom. Nothing could have made me look more Corinthian and less Roman.
I wore the gaudiest clothing I could find; tunics and cloaks of pure silk and of the brightest or most effeminate hues; crimson, emerald-green, peacock-green, grass-green, apple-green, sea-green, sapphire-blue, sky- blue, turquoise-blue, saffron, orange, amethystine, violet and any and every unusual tint; boots of glazed kidskin or of dull finish soft skin, of hues like my silk garments, always with the edges of the soles heavily gilded. And, for my shoes as well as for my garments, I chose particolored materials with the most startling or languorous combinations of unusual dyes. All my boots and shoes were embroidered in silver thread or gold thread, all my outer garments embroidered in crimson, deep green, deep blue, gold or silver, in big, striking, conspicuous patterns. I had elephants, lions, antelopes, horses, cattle, sheep, stags, goats, storks, cranes, even fish embroidered on my outer garments amid trees, vines, and flowers; roses, lilies, violets, poppies and others uncountable. I spent on such gewgaws a considerable part of my allowance, yet never exhausted Falco's lavish provision for me.
I also went in for jewelry, loading my fingers with flashy rings, wearing bracelets on both wrists, two or three on each, always two necklaces and even earrings, for which I had my ears pierced, like a Lydian.
When I conned myself in my dressing-room mirror, arrayed in such a superfluity of decorations and fripperies, I felt sure that no one would take me for a Roman.
In these apparently natural vanities and vagaries Falco humored me, enquiring of his friends concerning friseurs of acclaimed reputation, buying me any gaudy fabrics he saw, also presenting me with caskets of necklaces, amulets, bracelets, finger-rings and earrings. He rallied me on my oriental tastes, but aided me to gratify them.
He even came to feel his interest in jewelry and gems enhanced by my fad for them. He took to purchasing antiques in jewelry and rare and unusual gems and his hoard grew into a notable collection.