"Let him put the entire gang to the torture," the Emperor was reported as
ordering. "Let him prosecute his enquiry until he gets a confession
plainly naming the man who bribed the poor wretch who left that cage half-
fastened, or the man who bribed the man who forced him to do it, or the
whole chain of scoundrels, from the noble millionaire conspirators who
hatched the idea, through their rabble of go-betweens down to the fool who
hocussed that door-snap."
After the prisoners were marched off Commodus had the herald apologize for
the interruption of the entertainment, proclaim that it would now proceed
and request everyone to remain to enjoy it. Then he mounted his platform.
Yet this was his last exhibition of himself in the role of beast-slayer. I
conjecture that as the episode of the piebald horse enlightened him as to
the facilities for unobtrusive assassination afforded his enemies by his
public appearances as a charioteer, so this episode of the accidentally
liberated lion awakened him to the ease with which it might be arranged,
whenever he entered the arena as a beast-slayer, that some monster might
be loosed at him rather than for him. At any rate he never again took his
stand in the arena for his long idolized sport.
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