ored 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 cooerdination 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 I