Beast-slaying he
thenceforth eschewed.
Of course it was not by any means at once that we in the Choragium
realized that the Emperor had abandoned his vagary. We knew only that we
were suddenly unemployed and were merely glad of the respite and then
uneasy at the change. I had time to reflect how marvellous had been my
luck. Commodus himself had three several times asked me questions about my
ability to control beasts; Galen had many times stood by me or passed near
me, often with his eyes apparently meeting mine. Satronius Satro had stood
and gazed at me, not three yards away. A score of other senators, all of
whom had known me in the days of my prosperity, had been as near me, and
noblemen to the number of something like a hundred. Not one of these had
identified me.
If I escaped recognition it was, I conjectured, because of the deep-seated
habit of mind of noblemen and more exalted personages and of men, like
Galen, who have risen to a station in life which places them on an
equality with nobles; the habit of mind which makes them regard a slave
not as a human being, to be looked at as an individual, as they look at an
equal or any freeman, but as a mere object like a door, or gate or piece
of statuary or of furniture or a sort of utensil.
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