Commodus, nearly as naked as when he was born, came running from a dressing room and pranced and leaped over the sand to bring the sweat-beads to his skin; then, snatching at the nearest gladiator, wrestled with him until the breathless victim cried for mercy; dropped him then, as crushed as if a python had left a job half-finished, and shouted for the ashen sword-sticks.  In a minute, with a leather buckler on his left arm, he was parrying the thrusts and blows of six men, driving and so crowding them on one another’s toes that only two could seriously answer the terrific flailing of his own ash stick.  He named them, named his blow, and laid them one by one, half-stunned and bleeding on the sand, until the last one by a quick feint landed on him, raising a great crimson welt across his shoulders.

“Well done!” Commodus exclaimed and smote him on the skull so fiercely that he broke the sword-stick.  “You have killed him,” said a senator as two men promptly seized the victim’s arms to drag him out.

“Possibly,” said Commodus.  “That blow I landed on him would have killed a horse.  But he is fortunate.  He dies proud—­prouder than you ever will, Varronius!  He got past Paulus’ guard!  Would you like to attempt it?  Woman!  How I loathe you soft, effeminate, sleek senators!  You fear death and you fear life equally!  Where is Narcissus?  Where are those men who are to try to kill me at my birthday games?”

There was no answer from Narcissus.  Commodus forgot him in a moment, called for javelins and hurled them at a target, then at half-a-dozen targets, hitting all six marks exactly in the middle as he spun himself on one heel.

“I am in fettle!” he exclaimed, clapping the back of the senator whom he had scurrilously insulted a moment ago.  If he was conscious of applause from the group of courtiers and gladiators he gave no sign of it.  What pleased him was his own ability, not their praises.

“Lions!” he said.  “Loose that big one!”

“Paulus,” a scarred veteran answered (they were all forbidden to address him by any other name in that arena), “you have ordered us to keep that fellow for the birthday games.  If you keep killing all the best ones off at practise, what shall we do when the day comes?  The last ship-load has arrived from Africa and already you have used up nearly half of them.  There is no chance of another cargo arriving in time for the games.  And besides, we have lacked corpses recently; that big one hasn’t tasted man’s flesh.  He is hungry now.  He will eat whatever we throw in, so let him taste the right meat that will make him savage.”

“Loose a leopard then.”

The veteran went off without a word to give his orders to the men below-ground, whose duty it was to drag the cages to the openings of tunnels in the masonry through which the animals emerged into the sunlight.  There were ten such openings on either side of the arena, closed by trapdoors, set in grooves, that could be raised by ropes from overhead.