the overseer. To the officer he
said:

"If I, with only a tunic and club, am not afraid of a lion charging me,
you and your men, in armor and with shields and swords ought not to be
afraid." "We are not," the officer declared, "we are concerned for you,
not for ourselves."

"Pooh!" said Commodus. "If I could kill the first handily when I was not
expecting him, I can kill all the rest the same way when I know what is
coming. A lion, by that sample, is as easy to dodge and club dead as an
ostrich or easier. Send me another."

Another was let out amid the dead silence of the dazed and astounded
spectators. Commodus killed the second as handily as the first.

Now I must say that no exploit recorded of any human being or traditional
of any legendary hero, outclasses as a feat of strength, coolness, courage
and perfect coordination of all the mental and physical faculties, this
act of Commodus' in killing two successive lions with a palm-wood club. A
charging lion is an object so terrifying as to chill the blood of a
distant onlooker. Very unusually good nerves and very exceptional self-
confidence are required to face with composure a portent which appears so
irresistible. And when the lion emits his tremendous roar and rises,
bodily, into the air in his mortal spring, mouth wide open, its crimson
cavern glaring, teeth gleaming, eyes blazing, mane erect, paws spread,
claws wide, the stoutest heart might well quail. Yet, after barely
escaping one lion, this foolhardy coxcomb, this vainglorious madcap,
joyously called for another and jauntily despatched him: whatever may be
said against Commodus as a man and an Emperor, as an athlete he believed
in himself and justified his belief.

He called for a third, in spite of Marcia's shrieks, gesturing to her to
sit down and keep still, and laughing up at her. But by this time Aemilus
Laetus, who was afterwards the last Prefect of the Praetorium to Commodus
and who was then an officer of the Guards, superior to the officer who had
protested, approached, saluted and spoke to the Emperor. Their conference
was conducted in tones too low to be overheard, but it was afterwards
reported, both by those who claimed to learn of it from Commodus and by
those who claimed to have been informed by Laetus, that he had urged upon
the Emperor that his personal importance to the Republic was too great for
him to risk himself so needlessly, and that Commodus had yielded to his
expostulations.