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The pyre was thus a square structure thirty feet on a side and fully twenty feet high; each side showing silvered log-butts or log-ends, with gilded pine-knots all between; its top covered with laurel boughs, over which was laid a crimson rug with golden fringe, setting off the corpse of Murmex, which lay in the silver armor he had worn in his last fight, high on the mound of laurel boughs.
Thence each bellowed for silence, their deep-toned, resonant, loud, practiced voices carrying to the upper colonnade everywhere. Silence, deep already since Murmex received his death-wound and broken only by whispers, deepened. The amphitheater became almost still.
Each had a marvellously impregnable defence and they were very evenly matched in the use of the quarter-staff in place of a shield as they were in everything else. Palus fought better with his left hand attacking and his right defending, Murmex better the other way, but each was genuinely ambidextrous and used either hand at will, shifting at pleasure.
When he returned I, from my nearby location, was certain that Commodus himself had presided all the morning, but that now Furfur was taking his place. Certainly Palus and Murmex entered the arena soon after the noon pause and gave an exhibition almost twice as long as usual, killing many adversaries.
In the Palaestra Tanno cheerfully presented Murmex to some of his favorite prize-fighters and he stood talking with them, they appraisingly conning the son of Murmex Frugi. Tanno and I seated ourselves well back on the middle tier of the spectators' benches and chatted until the Emperor should have returned from his dressing-room and should seem at leisure to notice us.
Commodus had rid himself of his official robes and was now clad only in an athlete's tunic and soft-soled shoes. I presented Murmex and the Emperor questioned him, as to his age, his upbringing, his father's years in retirement at Nersae, as to Pacideianus and put questions about thrusts and parries designed to test his knowledge of fence.
"My father with his last breath," said Murmex solemnly, "and my uncle Pacideianus as he bade me farewell, told me that I am the best swordsman alive." "Why have you never," I asked, "tried your luck in the arena?" "My father forbade me," Murmex explained. "He bade me wait. He trowed a grown man was worth ten growing lads, and he said so and stuck to that.
"Your uncle!" cried Hirnio, "son to one of the two greatest retired gladiators in Italy, nephew to the other! Living in the same town with them! Did either of them ever teach you anything of sword play?" "Both of them," said Murmex, "taught me everything they knew of sword play, from the day I could hold a toy lath sword." "Hercules!" I cried, "and what did they say of your proficiency?"
Into the stillness the heralds proclaimed that next day the funeral games of Murmex Lucro would be celebrated in the Colosseum where he had died; that all persons entitled to seats in the Colosseum were thereby enjoined to attend, unless too ill to leave their homes: that all should come without togas, but, in sign of mourning for Murmex, wearing over their garments full-length, all- enveloping rain-cloaks of undyed black wool and similarly colored umbrella hats; that any person failing to attend so habited would be severely punished; that the show would be worth seeing, for, in honor of the Manes of Murmex, to placate his ghost, no defeated fighter would be spared and all the victors of the morning would fight each other in the afternoon.
The following morning Agathemer let in to me, in that same garden, Murmex Lucro, who thanked me for my good offices with Commodus and narrated his triumphal progress of professional and social success ever since I had seen him fence with the Emperor. Agathemer did not permit Murmex to linger long, saying that it was against Galen's orders.
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