n the spear, in air, like a legion's
standard.

Then the madness surged into his brain.

"So I rule Rome!" he exclaimed, and threw the leopard at the gladiators'
feet. "Because I pity Rome that could not find another Paulus! I
strike first, before they strike me!"

They flattered him--fawned on him, but he was much too genuinely mad for
flattery to take effect. "If you were worth a barrelful of rats I'd
have a senate that might save me trouble! Then like Tiberius I might
remain away from Rome and live more like a god. I've more than half a
mind to let my dummy stay here to amuse you wastrels!" He glanced up at
the box, where his substitute lolled and yawned and smiled. "All you
degenerates need is some one you can rub yourselves against like fat
cats mewing for a bowl of milk! By Hercules, now I'll show you
something that will make your blood leap. Bring out the new Spanish
team."

With an imperious gesture he sent senators and gladiators to scatter
themselves all over the arena. Not yet satisfied, he ordered all the
guards fetched from the tunnel and arranged them in a similar disorder,
so that finally no stretch of fifty yards was left without a man
obstructing it. There was no spina down the midst, nor anything except
the surrounding wall to suggest to a team of horses which the course
might be.

"Let none move!" he commanded. "I will crush the foot of any man who
stirs!"

Attendants, clinging to the heads of four gray stallions that fought and
kicked, brought out his chariot and others shut the gate behind it.
Commodus admired the team a minute, then examined the new high wheels of
the gilded chariot, that was hardly wider than a coffin--a thing that a
man could upset with a shove and built to look as flimsy as an egg
shell. Suddenly he seized the reins and leaped in, throwing up his
right hand.

If he could have ruled his empire as he drove that chariot he would have
far outshone Augustus, for whose memory men sighed. He managed them with
one hand. There was magnetism sent along the reins to play with the
dynamic energy of four mad stallions as gods amuse themselves with men.
If empire had amused him as athleticism did there would have been no
equal in all history to Commodus.

In a chariot no other athlete could have balanced, on a course providing
not one unobstructed stretch of fifty yards, he drove like Phoebus
breaking in the horses of the Sun, careering this and that way, weaving
patt