, caring for and rapidly transporting all
sorts of creatures destined for the Colosseum. The Emperor's killing
capacity and love of enjoying and exhibiting his knack so outran their
measures that, by the time the increased supply began to come in, the
royal sportsman's unerrancy and swiftness outran their best results, so
that hasty messages had to be sent to Marseilles, Aquileia, Byzantium,
Antioch and Alexandria ordering the instant despatch to Rome, with the
utmost speed, regardless of expense, not only of all newly captured beasts
as they came in, in contravention of the long-established regulations by
which Rome and the provincial capitals shared each variety of animal, but
also the concurrent despatch of the local reserves, even the emptying of
the beast despositories attached to each amphitheatre. As the voyage from
Aquileia to Rome was of variable duration, owing to the uncertainty and
shiftiness of the winds, orders had been given to forward all its reserves
and supplies, at once, overland. Hence the spectacle which had so excited
the countryside and so amazed me. As Commodus was still slaughtering all
sorts of beasts daily not only with arrows and spears, to show off his
accuracy as a marksman but, even with sword or club, to display his
incredible swiftness of movement and unerrancy in directing and timing a
blow, he was taxing the capacities of his procurators and their gigantic
organization of transports, teams, detention-pens, and hunters merely to
stave off the apparently inevitable day when, whatever might run wild in
the deserts, forests and mountains, there would be, at Rome, far too few
beasts to maintain the autocrat's daily sport.

When I expressed my astonishment at the certainty with which these
explanations were uttered and my wonder as to how they came to be so sure,
Bulla said:

"Why, our King of the Highwaymen has reliable, capable and secret agents,
entirely unsuspected, in every city of Italy. He has a brother and sister
in Rome and equally devoted and unfailing helpers in Capua, Aquileia,
Milan, Brundisium and Naples. He maintains a road service of swift
couriers who bring him promptly all the information collected for him in
the cities, where his backers catch every breeze of rumor and are
forehanded in getting advance information on all important moves of the
authorities as well as in sifting truth from falsehood. Equally prompt are
his couriers in disseminating to subsidiary bands like m