ese creatures and
certainly displayed amazing strength and skill, habitually killing a lion
with one javelin, almost as often with one arrow, and the like for tigers;
and oftener for panthers and leopards. He never needed a second arrow to
finish a wolf or hyena or even a lynx. The marvellous accuracy of his aim,
the way he planted his arrow unerringly in the heart of a galloping wolf
scudding across the sand far from him; the way he drove a broad-bladed
hunting-spear clear through a huge shaggy bear, never failed to rouse my
wonder, even my admiration. [Footnote: See Note J.]

CHAPTER XXXI

RECOGNITION

I do not recall any special feat of the Imperial beast-killer during the
summer and autumn of the year in which I had fooled Bulla and been
transferred from the stud-farm to the Choragium, which was the year in
which Crispinus and Aelian were consuls, the nine hundred and fortieth
year of the City, [Footnote: 187 A.D.] and the eighth of the Principate of
Commodus. But, when the season for spectacles in the arena opened with the
first warm, fair weather of the following spring, he returned to his
favorite sport with redoubled zest, amounting to a craze.

It was during the spring and early summer of this year that he began to
make huge wagers with wealthy senators, betting that he could kill a
specified number of a specified variety of animal with a specified number
of spears or arrows; always proposing so to limit himself as to number of
weapons that the exploit appeared impossible. The result was that
avaricious Midases were eager to wager, as they felt certain of winning.
Yet he never lost, not once.

And, after each wager made, or won, he made the next on a narrower margin
at smaller odds, until he struck the whole nobility numb by offering to
wager even money that he could kill one hundred full-grown male bears from
his usual platform with one hundred hunting spears, covenanting that he
was to lose if he needed one hundred and one spear-casts to lay out those
hundred bears limp, flabby and utterly dead. This appeared so utterly an
impossibility that Aufidius Fronto offered to put up two million sesterces
against him. The pompous sham philosopher, who feigned the profoundest
contempt for riches, could not resist what looked like enormous gains. He
made the wager, and Commodus won.

Now I cannot insist too positively on the amazing, the incredible strength
and skill and nerve required for this fatiguing a