Every one which I saw, either earlier when I was
myself or while in the Choragium as Festus the Beast-Wizard or later,
justified the claim of Mercablis to being the most original-minded
sensation-deviser ever known in the Colosseum or elsewhere.
One of his utterly unpredictable surprises recurs often to my
recollection.
It was a hot July day and, during the noon pause, the vendors of cooling
drinks did a good business among the spectators of the upper tiers. To the
ring-rope round the opening in the awning, over the middle of the arena,
had been fastened a big, strong, pulley block. One of the lightest and
most agile of the awning-boys hung by his hands from the radial rope
stretched from nearest that pulley, worked out to it, sat on it, rove
through it a light cord which he carried coiled at his waist, and worked
back along the radial rope, leaving the cord trailing from the pulley-
wheel to the sand of the arena. By means of the cord the arena-slaves rove
through the pulley first a light rope, then a very strong one.
The end of this rope they fastened to an iron ring, from which hung four
stout chains, three of them of equal length, each about thirty feet, whose
lower ends, at points precisely equidistant from each other, were fastened
to a big iron hoop all of twenty-four feet across.
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