ndian
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 ship with massive 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 noble 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 succumb 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 chos