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Caesar Dies by Talbot Mundy
page 130 of 185 (70%)

"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
patterns in among the frightened men who stood like posts for him to
drive around. He missed them by a hand's breadth--less! He took
delight in driving at them, turning in the last half-second, smiling at
a blanched face as he wheeled and wove new figures down another zigzag
avenue of men. The frenzy of the team inspired him; the rebellion of
the stallions, made mad by the persistent, sudden turns, aroused his own
astonishing enthusiasm. He accomplished the impossible! He made new
laws of motion, breaking them, inventing others! He became a god in
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