Gibbon on the barbaric slaying of animals

A hilarious diatribe against Commodus’ love of killing animals in the arena:

“But Commodus, from his earliest infancy, discovered an aversion to whatever was rational and liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the populace,– the sports of the circus and the amphitheatre, the combats of gladiators, and the hunting of wild beasts… The perfidious voice of flattery reminded him that, by exploits of the same nature, by the defeat of the Nemean lion, and the slaughter of the wild boar of Erymanthus, the Grecian Hercules had acquired a place among the gods, and an immortal memory among men. They only forgot to observe that, in the first ages of society, when the fiercer animals often dispute with man the possession of an unsettled country, a successful war against those savages is one of the most innocent and beneficial labours of heroism. In the civilized state of the Roman empire the wild beasts had long since retired from the face of man and the neighbourhood of populous cities. To surprise them in their solitary haunts, and to transport them to Rome, that they might be slain in pomp by the hand of an emperor, was an enterprise equally ridiculous for the prince and oppressive for the people.”

This reminds me of a good Lingis story, actually… He once visited a private shark-hunting museum in Australia, where the walls showed pictures of all the ferocious sharks killed by the hero owner of the museum.

Later, Lingis was told by knowledgeable locals that the museum owner’s method of heroic hunting was to drag a butchered lamb as bait behind a motorboat and slaughter the approaching sharks by machine-gun.