After this, there was a prolonged silence, which was broken by the Empress saying she did not believe in doctors. “Whenever they are at a loss as to what to prescribe, they ask you what you are fond of eating, and tell you to stop eating it.” Commodus, as if to show his agreement with his mother’s ideas, at that moment put almost an entire quail into his mouth, and choked in the process. His mother hit him on the back, and told him to look up towards the ceiling. A slave brought him some water. The Emperor frowned, and told him not to eat so fast. “It is my habit,” he said, “and a habit which you would do well to imitate, to count twenty-six between each mouthful.” But Commodus, who had turned purple in the face, merely went on choking, and this lasted several minutes. The Emperor asked me a few questions about Athens, and what was being done and said and written in our city. I answered him as best I could, but he did not seem to take notice of my replies, and went on, as though he were a machine, to other topics and other questions. I spoke of you, and I mentioned your latest book, but he changed the subject as though it were distasteful to him. I suspect that your ideas are too frivolous for him, and may even shock him. Then Commodus, having recovered from his choking fit, began to talk of a pugilistic match which was to take place in a neighbouring village. He described at great length the champions who were to take part in it, the chances and the odds, and entered into many technical details which were tedious, and indeed quite incomprehensible to me. But the Emperor and the Empress listened with smiling and patronizing approval, and with obvious admiration of their son’s knowledge. The Emperor is extremely conservative, and does all he can to encourage national sports and pastimes. He never misses a single event of importance at the Games, and even when he is in a country retreat like this, he patronizes the local efforts in which his son seems to play so prominent a part. After this dissertation on pugilism, which seemed to me interminable, had come to an end, Commodus related how he had played a practical joke on one of the freedmen who had been looking on at the sports. It appears that the man, who was old and rather fat, had been on the point of sitting down, and Commodus had pulled the chair from under him and he had come heavily to the ground, much to the amusement of the bystanders.