only senator who
asserted the honor of his rank. As a father, he permitted his sons to
consult their safety by attending the amphitheatre. As a Roman, he
declared, that his own life was in the emperor's hands, but that he
would never behold the son of Marcus prostituting his person and
dignity. Notwithstanding his manly resolution Pompeianus escaped the
resentment of the tyrant, and, with his honor, had the good fortune to
preserve his life. [42]

[Footnote 36: The virtuous and even the wise princes forbade the
senators and knights to embrace this scandalous profession, under pain
of infamy, or, what was more dreaded by those profligate wretches, of
exile. The tyrants allured them to dishonor by threats and rewards.
Nero once produced in the arena forty senators and sixty knights. See
Lipsius, Saturnalia, l. ii. c. 2. He has happily corrected a passage
of Suetonius in Nerone, c. 12.]

[Footnote 37: Lipsius, l. ii. c. 7, 8. Juvenal, in the eighth satire,
gives a picturesque description of this combat.]

[Footnote 38: Hist. August. p. 50. Dion, l. lxxii. p. 1220. He received,
for each time, decies, about 8000l. sterling.]

[Footnote 39: Victor tells us, that Commodus only allowed his
antagonists a...weapon, dreading most probably the consequences of their
despair.]

[Footnote 40: They were obliged to repeat, six hundred and twenty-six
times, Paolus first of the Secutors, &c.]

[Footnote 41: Dion, l. lxxii. p. 1221. He speaks of his own baseness and
danger.]

[Footnote 42: He mixed, however, some prudence with his courage, and
passed the greatest part of his time in a country retirement; alleging
his advanced age, and the weakness of his eyes. "I never saw him in the
senate," says Dion, "except during the short reign of Pertinax." All his
infirmities had suddenly left him, and they returned as suddenly upon
the murder of that excellent prince. Dion, l. lxxiii. p. 1227.]

Commodus had now attained the summit of vice and infamy. Amidst the
acclamations of a flattering court, he was unable to disguise from
himself, that he had deserved the contempt and hatred of every man of
sense and virtue in his empire. His ferocious spirit was irritated by
the consciousness of that hatred, by the envy of every kind of merit, by
the just apprehension of danger, and by the habit of slaughter, which he
contracted in his daily amusements. History has preserved a long list of
consular senators sacrificed to his wanton suspicion, whic