Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire Part 62

When all seven were quiet the herald proclaimed that wagers might now be laid on the apes, the survivor of the seven to be the winner. Each had a different color painted on his iron ring: blue, green, red, yellow and so on. The spectators appeared to make bets.

Then when the arena was clear between the elephant and the baboons and beyond them, the mahout spoke to his charge, the elephant inserted his trunk through the opened lid of a crate of ducks, grasped a duck by the neck, lifted it out, swung it, and hurled it at the hanging apes. It hurtled through the air, napping its wings in vain, and pa.s.sed between the baboons, they grabbing for it as it shot by, it falling far beyond them on the sand.

A roar of appreciative yells rose from the spectators.

The elephant threw another duck and another. The third came within reach of one ape. He seized it and bit it savagely, tearing it to pieces with vicious glee. Its impact set him swinging.

Duck after duck was hurled till another baboon caught and rent another.

This went on till two of the swinging apes came within grasping distance of each other. At once they grappled, bit each other and fought till one was killed.

It made a queer spectacle; the crates of quacking ducks, the thin-legged, blackskinned, turbaned _mahout_, the wickedly comprehending little elephant, the chattering baboons, the ducks hurtling through the air, and running about the sand all over the arena, for many of them fell and escaped alive, the yelling spectators of the upper tiers, the mildly amused parties in the Imperial and senatorial boxes, the blaze of sun over everything.

The duck-throwing was continued till only one ape remained alive.

It was all very exciting and so whimsically odd that it was acclaimed a most successful surprise. It is yet remembered by those who saw it or heard of it from them as the most spectacular and peculiar of all the inventions of the lamented Mercablis.

Of my experiences while in the Choragium and about the amphitheater the most notable were my opportunities for observing Commodus as a beast- fighter, the pa.s.sion for the sport which possessed him, his absorption in it, even rage for it, his unflagging interest in it, his untiring pursuit of it, and his amazing strength and astounding skill in the use of arrows, spears, swords, and even clubs as weapons for killing beasts.

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, att.i.tudes, movements and his manner of handling a sword, a club, a spear or a bow were unmistakable. I a.s.severate 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; a.s.serting that he merely practised with lath foils inside the Palace.

These latter persons are of the cla.s.s 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 hus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sertion 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 unsurpa.s.sable, 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, att.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+elds 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 cla.s.ses a sort of confusion between beast-fighters and criminals and brings it about that there attaches to those persons of n.o.ble-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 n.o.bles who dishonor themselves by becoming gladiators or charioteers. Such self-abas.e.m.e.nts 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 swordsmans.h.i.+p has almost ceased to be regarded as a degradation. Not so beast-fighting.

No one can point to a record of any freeman or n.o.ble 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 enn.o.bled 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 partic.i.p.ated 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 n.o.bility, 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 n.o.blest 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 s.h.i.+ny, 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, s.h.i.+mmering 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 b.u.mpkin, 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 a.r.s.enal 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 n.o.ble, 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 s.p.a.ce, 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, swordsmans.h.i.+p, 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 coordination 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 s.h.i.+p with ma.s.sive 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 n.o.ble 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 succ.u.mb 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 compet.i.tor from any part of the _podium_ which 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 compet.i.tors 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 compet.i.tors kill more than thirty; mostly Mauretanian elephants, but some Indian and a few Nubian. I saw killed for his amus.e.m.e.nts in similar contests in which he partic.i.p.ated 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 the _podium_, 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 mult.i.tudes of smaller animals: wild ponies, wild a.s.ses, 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 a.s.ses.

Nor did he ever miss an ostrich, though he shot both from the _podium_ and the sand these birds, which are swifter than even the wild a.s.ses. 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 rus.h.i.+ng towards or past the platform or driven past it or towards it. He slaughtered incredible mult.i.tudes 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 s.h.a.ggy bear, never failed to rouse my wonder, even my admiration. [Footnote: See Note J.]

CHAPTER x.x.xI

RECOGNITION

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 Princ.i.p.ate 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 n.o.bility 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.