Now it requires altogether exceptional strength so to cast even the best
design of hunting-spear, as keen as possible, as to drive it through the
matted pelt, thick hide and big bones of a bear; in so driving it, to aim
it so that it will pierce his heart calls for superhuman skill. And to
reiterate this feat ninety-nine times in succession argues a perfection of
eye, hand and nerve never possessed by any man save Commodus. Any other
man would have felt the strain, most men would have become so anxious
towards the end as to become agitated. He kept calm and cool.
I thoroughly enjoyed the discomfiture of Aufidius Fronto and relished his
futile efforts to appear indifferent to his money loss.
Not many days later Commodus made a similar and still more hazardous wager
with Didius Julianus, the most opulent and ostentatious of the senators,
who was afterwards nominally Emperor for two months and five days. This
wager covenanted that Commodus, from his platform in the arena, would
despatch one hundred full-grown male lions, in their prime and vigorous,
with one hundred javelins. On this arduous frivolity they wagered ten
million sesterces and had the actual gold, fifty thousand big, broad, gold
pieces, carried into the arena and piled up in a gleaming mound on a
monster crimson rug for all to behold.
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