nd taxing feat. Any other
man I ever knew or heard of would have shown evidences of weariness long
before he had despatched his hundredth bear; would certainly have betrayed
the terrific strain on his nerves. Commodus was, apparently, as fresh, as
jaunty, as full of reserve strength, as far from being unsure of himself
when he finished the hundredth bear as when he drove his first spear into
the first.

Now it requires altogether exceptional strength so to cast even the best
design of hunting-spear, as keen as possible, as to drive it through the
matted pelt, thick hide and big bones of a bear; in so driving it, to aim
it so that it will pierce his heart calls for superhuman skill. And to
reiterate this feat ninety-nine times in succession argues a perfection of
eye, hand and nerve never possessed by any man save Commodus. Any other
man would have felt the strain, most men would have become so anxious
towards the end as to become agitated. He kept calm and cool.

I thoroughly enjoyed the discomfiture of Aufidius Fronto and relished his
futile efforts to appear indifferent to his money loss.

Not many days later Commodus made a similar and still more hazardous wager
with Didius Julianus, the most opulent and ostentatious of the senators,
who was afterwards nominally Emperor for two months and five days. This
wager covenanted that Commodus, from his platform in the arena, would
despatch one hundred full-grown male lions, in their prime and vigorous,
with one hundred javelins. On this arduous frivolity they wagered ten
million sesterces and had the actual gold, fifty thousand big, broad, gold
pieces, carried into the arena and piled up in a gleaming mound on a
monster crimson rug for all to behold. This bit of ostentation was like
Didius Julianus and not unnatural for Commodus. I have never seen any man
perform so easily so difficult a feat. Killing a lion with three javelins
requires very unusual strength and skill. To kill ten lions with forty
casts would tax the muscles, dexterity and nerves of the best spearman the
world ever knew. To kill a hundred lions with, barely one javelin apiece
was bravado to propose and miraculous to accomplish. Accomplish it he did
and without any visible effort or strain. Eighty-nine of the hundred he
shot through the heart; the remaining eleven with difficult fancy shots
which he was, against all reason, tempted to essay, and which, against all
probability, uniformly were fully successfu