Such, amidst the sacred security and inviolability of the office, was the
hazardous tenure of the individual. Nor did his dangers always arise from
persons in the rank of competitors and rivals. Sometimes it menaced him in
quarters which his eye had never penetrated, and from enemies too obscure
to have reached his ear. By way of illustration we will cite a case from
the life of the Emperor Commodus, which is wild enough to have furnished
the plot of a romance--though as well authenticated as any other passage
in that reign. The story is narrated by Herodian, and the circumstances
are these: A slave of noble qualities, and of magnificent person, having
liberated himself from the degradations of bondage, determined to avenge
his own wrongs by inflicting continual terror upon the town and
neighborhood which had witnessed his humiliation. For this purpose he
resorted to the woody recesses of the province, (somewhere in the modern
Transylvania,) and, attracting to his wild encampment as many fugitives as
he could, by degrees he succeeded in forming and training a very
formidable troop of freebooters. Partly from the energy of his own nature,
and partly from the neglect and remissness of the provincial magistrates,
the robber captain rose from less to more, until he had formed a little
army, equal to the task of assaulting fortified cities. In this stage of
his adventures, he encountered and defeated several of the imperial
officers commanding large detachments of troops; and at length grew of
consequence sufficient to draw upon himself the emperor's eye, and the
honor of his personal displeasure. In high wrath and disdain at the
insults offered to his eagles by this fugitive slave, Commodus fulminated
against him such an edict as left him no hope of much longer escaping with
impunity.

Public vengeance was now awakened; the imperial troops were marching from
every quarter upon the same centre; and the slave became sensible that in