he other fashions.

In all these countless fights he was never once wounded by any adversary
nor did he ever deliver a second stroke, thrust or lunge against any: his
defence was always impregnable, his attack always unerring; when he lunged
his lunge never missed and was always fatal, unless he purposely spared a
gallant foe.

Besides the exhibitions of bravado and self-confidence traditional with
gladiators, all of which he displayed again and again, Palus devised more
than one wholly original with himself.

For instance, he would take his stand in the arena equipped as a
_secutor_, the _lanista_ would have in charge not one _retiarius_, but
ten, or even a dozen. One would attack Palus and when, after a longer or
shorter contest, he was killed, the _lanista_, would, without any respite,
allow a second to rush at Palus; then a third; and so on till everyone had
perished by the _secutor's_ unerring sword. No other secutor ever killed
more than one _retiarius_ without a good rest between the first fight and
the second. Palus, as was and is well known, killed more than, a thousand
adversaries, of whom more than three hundred wore the accoutrements of a
_retiarius_.

Palus was even more spectacular as a _dimachaerus_, so called from having
two sabers, for a _dimachaerus_ is a gladiator accoutred as a Thracian,
but without any shield and carrying a naked saber in each hand. Such a
fighter is customarily matched against an adversary in ordinary Thracian
equipment. He has to essay the unnatural feat of guarding himself with one
sword while attacking with the other. Such a feat is akin to those of
jugglers and acrobats, for a sword is essentially an instrument of assault
and cannot, by its very nature, take the place of a shield as a
protection. Everybody, of course, knows that showy and startling ruse said
to have been invented by the Divine Julius, which consists in surprising
one's antagonist by parrying a stroke with the sword instead of with the
shield and simultaneously using the shield as a weapon, striking its upper
rim against the adversary's chin. But this can succeed only against an
opponent dull-witted, unwary, clumsy and slow, and then as a surprise. A
_dimachaerus_ has to depend on parrying and his antagonist knows what to
expect.

Palus was the most perfect _dimachaerus_ ever seen in the Colosseum.
Without a shield he fought and killed many Thracians, Greeks, Gauls,
_murmillos_, Samnites and _secutors_. He