I was amazed to find how much I needed to sit down, what a relief it was, and to realize how near I had been to fainting. In the breezy shade I soon revived and felt my strength come back.
From my comfortable seat I watched one of those exhibitions of miraculous horsemanship of which only Commodus was capable.
The Palace Stadium, of course, is a very large and impressive structure and its arena of no mean extent. But compared, not merely with the Circus Maximus, but with the Flaminian Circus or Domitian's Stadium it seemed small and contracted.
In this comparatively cramped space Commodus, divested of his official robes and clad only in a charioteer's tunic, belt and boots, performed some amazing feats of horsemastery.
The pace to which he could speed up a four-horse team on that short straight-away, his ability to postpone slowing them down for the turn, and yet to pull them in handily and in time, the deftness and precision of his short turns, the promptness with which he compelled them to gather speed after the turn, these were astonishing, enough; but far more astonishing were his grace of pose, his perfect form in every motion, the ease of all his manoeuvres, the sense of his effortless control of his vehicle, of reserve strength greatly in excess of the strength he exerted; these were nothing short of dazzling. His pride in his artistry, for it amounted to that, and his enjoyment of every detail of what he did and of the sport in general, was infectious and delightful. I felt my love of horses growing in me with my admiration for so perfect a horseman, felt the like in all the spectators.
Team after team and chariot after chariot he tried out.
Meanwhile Tanno and I, seated comfortably side by side, varied our watching of Commodus and our praises of his driving with talk of my embroilment with both sides of the feud, with rehearsing to each other the unseen missteps which had led me into such a hideous predicament, and with discussions of what might be done to set me right with both clans. Also he described again to me what had occurred on the road after I was knocked senseless and rehearsed his version of both fights, I commenting and telling him what I recalled.
"What occupies my thoughts most," he said, "is that statuesque horseback informer planted by the roadside in the rain. What in the name of Mercury was he doing in your Sabine fog so early on a wet day?"
I was unable to make any conjecture.
For some time Commodus was almost uninterruptedly on the arena, making his changes from team to team, with scarcely an instant's interval. When he lingered under the arcade at the starting end of the Stadium Tanno remarked:
"We had best join the gathering. Do you feel sufficiently rested?"
I stood up and, for the first time that day, did so without any dizziness, lightheadedness or weakness in my knees. I felt almost myself.
Under the arcade we found Commodus explaining the merits of a new chariot made after his own design. It was a beautiful specimen of the vehicle- maker's art, its pole tipped with a bronze lion's head exquisitely chased, the pole itself of ash, the axle and wheel-spokes of cornel-wood, all the woodwork gilded, the hubs and tires of wrought bronze, also gilded, the front of the chariot-body of hammered bronze, embossed with figures depicting two of the Labors of Hercules; every part profusely decorated and the whole effect very tasteful.
Commodus ignored all these beauties entirely and discoursed of its measurements.
"Come close, Hedulio," he commanded, "this is just what I wanted you for."
The jockeys, athletes, acrobats and mimes about him made way for Tanno and me and some other gentlemen.
"I have always had very definite theories of chariot construction," Commodus went on. "I hold that the popular makes are all bad; in fact I am positively of the opinion that the tendencies in chariot building have been all in the wrong direction for centuries. They have followed and intensified the traditions from ancient days, when chariots were chiefly used for battle and only once in a while for racing.
"For battle purposes chariots, of course, were built for speed and quick turning, but after that, to avoid upsets. When a man was going to drive a pair of half-wild stallions across trackless country, over gullies and boulders, through bushes, up and down hill, often along a gravelly hillside, he saw to it that his chariot would keep right side up no matter how it bounced and tilted and swerved. He made sure that his axle was long, his wheels far apart, and their spokes short, so that his chariot- bed was as low as possible. He was right.
"But, after fighting from chariots was wholly a thing of the past in Italy and chariots were used, as they are used, for racing only, why cling to provisions for obsolete uses?
"A good general thinks of winning victories, not, like the fools I have disgracing me along the Rhine, of avoiding defeats. So a good charioteer ought to think, not of avoiding upsets, but of winning races. Yet all charioteers appear to want their vehicles as low built as possible, with short spoked wheels, wide apart on the ends of a long axle. That makes them feel safer on a short turn, and, so help me Hercules, I hardly blame them, anyhow. Besides, they all want to spraddle their legs apart and set their feet wide, so as to stand firm on the chariot bed, so they want the chariot body made as wide as possible.
"Now I don't need to plant my feet far apart when I drive. I believe I could drive on one foot and keep my balance. So I hold a broad chariot body is worse than unnecessary. More than that I maintain that the lower the axle is set, the less the team's strength goes into attaining speed. The lower the axle is set, the more sharply the pole slopes upward from the axle to the yoke-ring; the less of the team's energy goes into pulling the chariot along, the more of it is wasted, so to speak, on lifting the chariot into the air at every leap forward. The higher the axle is set, the nearer the pole is to being level, the less power is wasted on that upward pull and the more is utilized on the forward pull and goes to produce speed.
"Then again, I maintain that the farther apart the wheels are set the more one drags against the other, not only at the turns, where anyone can see the outer wheel drag on the inner, but at every swerve of the team on the straightaway. All such dragging reduces speed and tires the team with pulling which is energy utterly wasted.
"I hold the ideal racing chariot should have a chariot body as narrow as possible, not much wider than the width of the driver's hips; should have the wheels as close together as possible, to diminish the drag of one wheel against the other, should have the axle set as high as can be managed.
"All charioteers exclaim that such a chariot tends to overset. So it does. But I never have had an overset and I never expect to overset. I know how to drive and poise myself so as to keep my chariot right side up, and I never think of oversetting, I think of winning my race, and always do.
"Anyhow, here before your eyes, is my new racing chariot and of all the chariots ever made on earth this has the longest wheel-spokes, the highest-set axle, the closest-set wheels and the narrowest chariot body. Now I'm going to try it out and show it off."
He did to admiration, amid excited acclaims, his four cream-colored mares fairly flying along the straights and taking the turns at a pace which made us hold our breath.
After this thrilling exhibition he came back under the arcade and spoke to me first.
"Hedulio," he said, "you are one of the most competent horsemasters I ever knew. What do you think of my idea of the best form for a racing chariot?"
"I think," I said, "that it has all the merits you claim for it, but that not one charioteer in ten thousand could drive in it and avoid an upset, sooner or later, at a turn."
"Right you are!" he replied, "but I am one charioteer in ten thousand."
"Say in a hundred thousand," I ventured to add. "For surely you could not find, among all the professionals in the Empire, any other man to equal you in team-driving."
He beamed at me.
When we left the Palace Tanno saw me in my litter and insisted on following behind mine in his until he had seen me out of mine and into my own house.
There