Herculean muscles in condition was within the palace grounds, but the
tunnel by which he reached it continued on and downward to the Circus
Maximus, so that he could attend the public spectacles without much
danger of assassination.

Nevertheless, a certain danger still existed. One of his worst frenzies
of proscription had been started by a man who waited for him in the
tunnel, and lost his nerve and then, instead of killing him, pretended
to deliver an insulting message from the senate. Since that time the
tunnel had been lined with guards at regular intervals, and when
Commodus passed through his mysterious "double" was obliged to walk in
front of him surrounded by enough attendants to make any one not in the
secret believe the double was the emperor himself.

No man in the known world was less incapable than Commodus of self-
defense against an armed man. There was no deception about his feats of
strength and skill; he was undoubtedly the most terrific fighter and
consummate athlete Rome had ever seen, and he was as proud of it as Nero
once was of his "golden voice." But, as he explained to the fawning
courtiers who shouldered one another for a place beside him as he
hurried down the tunnel:

"How could Rome replace me? Yesterday I had to order a slave beaten to
death for breaking a vase of Greek glass. I can buy a hundred slaves
for half what that glass cost Hadrian. And I could have a thousand
better senators tomorrow than the fools who belch and stammer in the
curia, the senate house. But where would you find another Commodus if
some lurking miscreant should stab me from behind? It was the geese
that saved the capitol. You cacklers can preserve your Commodus."