Commodus won as before, with exactly the same number of heart shots and
fancy shots. If one miracle can be greater than another this feat
surpassed its predecessor. For a lion takes a great deal of killing before
he dies, and each of these hundred lions died as quickly as any lion ever
does. Instant killing of a lion with a javelin is a miracle, even more
miraculous is instant killing of a lion with one arrow. Commodus so killed
the full hundred.
I know of no more astounding demonstration of his infallible and
tremendous muscle power than the fact that, shooting at a lion fully
twenty yards away, and in the act of rearing rampantly at the beginning of
a bound, he sent his arrow into the roof of its mouth, through the brain,
the entire length of the spinal cord and so far that its point protruded
from the dead beast's rump above the root of its tail. Galen, who, as
often, was in the amphitheater in case of injury to the Prince, and who
was in the habit of dissecting such dead beasts as interested him, cut
along the path followed by the missile, cleaving the dead lion in two
lengthwise and laying the two halves hide downward on the sand, so as to
demonstrate to a bevy of curious and awed spectators the incredible path
of that arrow.
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