n till an hour before sunset. Palus and
Murmex appeared about mid-afternoon and were matched against the victors
in the earlier fights. Each located himself at one focus of the ellipse of
the arena, at which points two simultaneous fights were best seen by the
entire audience. There they began each fight, not simultaneously, but
alternately, till all their antagonists were disposed of, most killed and
some spared. The spectators seldom hurried Murmex to end a fight; they
never hurried Palus. His longest delay in finishing with an adversary,
even his manifest intention to exhaust an opponent rather than to wound
him, never elicited any protest from any onlooker. All, breathless,
fascinated, craned to watch the perfection of his method, every movement
of his body, all eyes intent on the point of his matchless blade.

Last of the day's exhibitions, came the fencing match between Palus and
Murmex, at the center of the arena, empty save for those two and their two
_lanistae_. All others in the arena, including the surgeons, their helpers
and the guards, drew off to positions close under the _podium_ wall.

Murmex and Palus fenced in all sorts of outfits, except that neither ever
fought as a _retiarius_. Mostly both were equipped as _secutors_, but they
fought also as _murmillos_, Greeks, Gauls, Thracians, Samnites and
_dimachaeri_, or one in any of these equipments against the other in any
other.

Sometimes they delighted the populace by donning padded suits liberally
whitened with flour or white clay, their _murmillos'_ helmets similarly
whitened, and then attacking each other with quarter-staffs of ash,
cornel-wood or holly. A hit, of course, showed plainly on the whitened
suits. As neither could injure the other in this sort of fight, and as
they were willing to humor the populace, each was careless about his guard
and reckless in his attack. Even so hits were infrequent, since each, even
when most lax, had an instinctive guard superior to that of the most
expert and cautious fencer among all other contemporary fighters. Even
when, very occasionally, if Palus happened to be in a rollicking mood,
each substituted a second quarter-staff for his shield and, as it were,
travestied a _dimachaerus_, as what might be called a two-staff-man or a
double-staff-man, hits were still not frequent. Each had a marvellously
impregnable defence and they were very evenly matched in the use of the
quarter-staff in place of a shield as they