This bit of ostentation was like
Didius Julianus and not unnatural for Commodus. I have never seen any man
perform so easily so difficult a feat. Killing a lion with three javelins
requires very unusual strength and skill. To kill ten lions with forty
casts would tax the muscles, dexterity and nerves of the best spearman the
world ever knew. To kill a hundred lions with, barely one javelin apiece
was bravado to propose and miraculous to accomplish. Accomplish it he did
and without any visible effort or strain. Eighty-nine of the hundred he
shot through the heart; the remaining eleven with difficult fancy shots
which he was, against all reason, tempted to essay, and which, against all
probability, uniformly were fully successful.
Didius Julianus paid his wager without any show of chagrin, as he could
well afford to do.
At once Commodus offered to bet that he could kill a hundred similar lions
with a bare hundred arrows. Didius at once wagered the same sum he had
just lost and the bet was made. The exhibition was delayed more than a
month until it had been possible to accumulate at Rome a full hundred
full-grown male lions. Then Commodus again shot in sight of a pile of gold
pieces on an expanse of crimson velvet spread on the sand of the arena.
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