At any rate Commodus ordered arrested and bound the entire gang who had
been handling the lions' cages. He then walked up to them and enquired who
had let out that lion. When no one confessed to having been responsible
and several were accused by their fellows, the Emperor gave orders to lead
off all concerned, hale them not before the Palace court, nor the
commission in charge of prosecutions for offences against Imperial
Majesty, but before the regular public magistrate in charge of trials for
murder, assassination, poisoning, homicidal conspiracy and the like.

"Let him put the entire gang to the torture," the Emperor was reported as
ordering. "Let him prosecute his enquiry until he gets a confession
plainly naming the man who bribed the poor wretch who left that cage half-
fastened, or the man who bribed the man who forced him to do it, or the
whole chain of scoundrels, from the noble millionaire conspirators who
hatched the idea, through their rabble of go-betweens down to the fool who
hocussed that door-snap."

After the prisoners were marched off Commodus had the herald apologize for
the interruption of the entertainment, proclaim that it would now proceed
and request everyone to remain to enjoy it. Then he mounted his platform.

Yet this was his last exhibition of himself in the role of beast-slayer. I
conjecture that as the episode of the piebald horse enlightened him as to
the facilities for unobtrusive assassination afforded his enemies by his
public appearances as a charioteer, so this episode of the accidentally
liberated lion awakened him to the ease with which it might be arranged,
whenever he entered the arena as a beast-slayer, that some monster might
be loosed at him rather than for him. At any rate he never again took his
stand in the arena for his long idolized sport. Beast-slaying he
thenceforth eschewed.

Of course it was not by any means at once that we in the Choragium
realized that the Emperor had abandoned his vagary. We knew only that we
were suddenly unemployed and were merely glad of the respite and then
uneasy at the change. I had time to reflect how marvellous had been my
luck. Commodus himself had three several times asked me questions about my
ability to control beasts; Galen had many times stood by me or passed near
me, often with his eyes apparently meeting mine. Satronius Satro had stood
and gazed at me, not three yards away. A score of other senators, all of
whom had known me in th