t of the god against being confounded with the
emperor. Mai Fragm. Vatican. ii. 225.--M.]

[Footnote 32: Dion, l. lxxii. p. 1216. Hist. August. p. 49.]

Elated with these praises, which gradually extinguished the innate sense
of shame, Commodus resolved to exhibit before the eyes of the Roman
people those exercises, which till then he had decently confined within
the walls of his palace, and to the presence of a few favorites. On the
appointed day, the various motives of flattery, fear, and curiosity,
attracted to the amphitheatre an innumerable multitude of spectators;
and some degree of applause was deservedly bestowed on the uncommon
skill of the Imperial performer. Whether he aimed at the head or heart
of the animal, the wound was alike certain and mortal. With arrows whose
point was shaped into the form of crescent, Commodus often intercepted
the rapid career, and cut asunder the long, bony neck of the ostrich.
[33] A panther was let loose; and the archer waited till he had leaped
upon a trembling malefactor. In the same instant the shaft flew, the
beast dropped dead, and the man remained unhurt. The dens of the
amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions: a hundred darts from the
unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they run raging round the
Arena. Neither the huge bulk of the elephant, nor the scaly hide of the
rhinoceros, could defend them from his stroke. Aethiopia and India
yielded their most extraordinary productions; and several animals were
slain in the amphitheatre, which had been seen only in the
representations of art, or perhaps of fancy. [34] In all these
exhibitions, the securest precautions were used to protect the person of
the Roman Hercules from the desperate spring of any savage, who might
possibly disregard the dignity of the emperor and the sanctity of the
god. [35]

[Footnote 33: The ostrich's neck is three feet long, and composed of
seventeen vertebrae. See Buffon, Hist. Naturelle.]

[Footnote 34: Commodus killed a camelopardalis or Giraffe, (Dion, l.
lxxii. p. 1211,) the tallest, the most gentle, and the most useless
of the large quadrupeds. This singular animal, a native only of the
interior parts of Africa, has not been seen in Europe since the revival
of letters; and though M. de Buffon (Hist. Naturelle, tom. xiii.) has
endeavored to describe, he has not ventured to delineate, the Giraffe. *
Note: The naturalists of our days have been more fortunate. London
probably now cont