scaped the
glittering, needle-pointed, razor-edged spear-head by half a hand's-breath
or less by an almost imperceptible inclination of his body, made at the
last possible instant, when it seemed as if the lance had already pierced
him. It was indescribably thrilling to behold this.

Besides fencing equipped as Gauls, Samnites, Thracians and _secutors_ they
appeared in every combination of any of these and of Greeks and
_murmillos_ with every other. Palus as a _dimachaerus_ against Murmex as a
_murmillo_ made a particularly delectable kind of bout. Almost as much so
Murmex as a Gaul against Palus as a Thracian. And so without end.

After my return from Baiae Falco pampered me more than ever and, in
particular, arranged to take me with him to all amphitheater shows and
have me sit beside him in the front row of the nobles immediately behind
the boxes of the senators on the _podium_. This does not sound possible in
our later days, when amphitheater regulations are strictly enforced, as
they had been under the Divine Aurelius and his predecessors. But, while
Commodus was Prince much laxity was rife in all branches of the
government. After the orgies of bribe-taking, favoritism and such like in
the heyday of Perennis and of Cleander, all classes of our society became
habituated to ignoring contraventions of rules. Under Perennis and later
under Cleander not a few senators took with them into their boxes
favorites who were not only not of senatorial rank, nor even nobles, but
not Romans at all: foreign visitors, alien residents of Rome, freedmen or
even slaves, and the other senators, as a class exquisitely sensitive to
any invasion of their privileges by outsiders, winked at the practice
partly because some of them participated in it, much more because they
feared to suffer out-and-out ruin, if, by word or look, they incurred the
disfavor of Perennis while he was all-powerful or, later, of the more
omnipotent Cleander. When a senator saw another so violate propriety,
privilege and law, he assumed that the acting Prefect of the Palace had
been bribed and so dared not protest or whisper disapprobation.

Much more than the senators the nobles obtained secret license to ignore
the rules, or ignored them without license, since, when so many violated
the regulations, no one was conspicuous or likely to be brought to book.
Falco, being vastly wealthy, probably bribed somebody, but I never knew:
when I hinted a query he merely smi