It can only be a
shame to kill, for mere sport, so noble a creature. It is bad enough to
exhibit in the arena fights of elephants, which kill each other for our
diversion, when we might utilize their courage and prowess in battle, as
the Indians do. But to use an elephant as a mere target for arrows is far
worse.
Then again, while I watched Commodus killing an elephant with his arrows I
could not but think of the hundreds of men who had been employed in
tracking his herd, building a stockade, driving into it what elephants
they could, fettering them, taming them, caring for this one after he had
been tamed, tending him on his journey of many thousand miles from India,
across Gadrosia, Carmania, Susiana, Mesopotamia and Syria to Antioch and
from there to Rome; on getting food for him on his journey and at
different cities; on the vast expense of all this; and for what? That a
silly and vainglorious overgrown child should shoot him full of arrows
till he bled to death!
I raged inwardly.
I quite agree that Commodus enjoyed killing for killing's sake; it gave
him a sort of sense of triumph to behold any animal succumb to his
weapons. But I think his sense of triumph was also far more for his
repeated self-congratulation on his accuracy of aim for shot or blow, on
the perfection of his really amazing dexterity.
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