nder as praefect a pugione. The Libertinus seems to
me to mean him.--M.]

[Footnote 27: Herodian, l. i. p. 31. It is doubtful whether he means
the Praetorian infantry, or the cohortes urbanae, a body of six thousand
men, but whose rank and discipline were not equal to their numbers.
Neither Tillemont nor Wotton choose to decide this question.]

[Footnote 28: Dion Cassius, l. lxxii. p. 1215. Herodian, l. i. p. 32.
Hist. August. p. 48.]

But every sentiment of virtue and humanity was extinct in the mind of
Commodus. Whilst he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these unworthy
favorites, he valued nothing in sovereign power, except the unbounded
license of indulging his sensual appetites. His hours were spent in a
seraglio of three hundred beautiful women, and as many boys, of every
rank, and of every province; and, wherever the arts of seduction proved
ineffectual, the brutal lover had recourse to violence. The
ancient historians [29] have expatiated on these abandoned scenes of
prostitution, which scorned every restraint of nature or modesty; but it
would not be easy to translate their too faithful descriptions into the
decency of modern language. The intervals of lust were filled up with
the basest amusements. The influence of a polite age, and the labor of
an attentive education, had never been able to infuse into his rude and
brutish mind the least tincture of learning; and he was the first of
the Roman emperors totally devoid of taste for the pleasures of the
understanding. Nero himself excelled, or affected to excel, in the
elegant arts of music and poetry: nor should we despise his pursuits,
had he not converted the pleasing relaxation of a leisure hour into
the serious business and ambition of his life. But Commodus, from his
earliest infancy, discovered an aversion to whatever was rational or
liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the populace; the
sports of the circus and amphitheatre, the combats of gladiators, and
the hunting of wild beasts. The masters in every branch of learning,
whom Marcus provided for his son, were heard with inattention and
disgust; whilst the Moors and Parthians, who taught him to dart the
javelin and to shoot with the bow, found a disciple who delighted in his
application, and soon equalled the most skilful of his instructors in
the steadiness of the eye and the dexterity of the hand.

[Footnote 29: Sororibus suis constupratis. Ipsas concubinas suas sub
oculis...stup