On some Quadrupeds supposed to he extinct, 367 



expanded to aid their speed, and they continued their course 

 for a time without their heads. He would expose a prize- 

 fighter to the attack of a panther, and strike the beast dead 

 before it could fasten its teeth on the man. A hundred lions 

 have been sent out of the dens, and all killed by him with 

 such certainty, that they lay close together, not a dart failing *. 

 Domitian had been equally notorious in these grand sports 

 in the Amphitheatre. 



" What scene sequestered, or what nide renown, 

 Sends no spectator to the imperial town ? 

 The Rhodopean hind now tempts the plains, 

 And tunes from Hemus his Orphean strains. 

 The Sarmat, Caesar, hies, thy works to see ; 

 And gives the steed he swills + to share the glee. 

 They come, who first the rising Nile explore ; 

 And they who hear remotest ocean roar. 

 The Arab hasted, the Sabean flew ; 

 And the Cilician own'd his native dew. 

 With tortured tresses, here Sicambrians gay ; 

 There Ethiops, bristling in their diverse way. 

 *Mid various speech, but one glad voice we find, 

 That hails thee father of converg'd mankind $." 



As for the Romans themselves, according to Juvenal, these 

 amusements seem to have been preferred to all others. 



*' Could you the pleasures of the Cirque forego, 

 At Fabrateria or at Frusino, 

 Some villa might be bought, for what will here 

 Scarce hire a gloomy dungeon by the year §." 



Had the fossil animals died, or been killed by natural acci- 

 dents, the skeletons would generally have been found entire, 

 but for the most part they are scattered and broken, and are 

 often mixed with bones of animals resembling the species of 

 the present time ||. In the vicinity of Orleans in France, a 

 fossil roe, of a living species, was found in limestone, along 

 with the bones of the palceotherium. 



Instances have occurred of bones being found, in great 

 numbers ; and, many feet deeper, other heaps of bones of ele- 

 phants and wild beasts ; but as many amphitheatres were built 



* Herodian, " Commodus." 



+ The Tartar opens a vein of his horse and drinks the blood. 



% Martial (Elphinston's, p. 1 9) on the Sports of Domitian. , 



§ Satire iii. 



II Cuvier. Theory of the Earth, pp. 89 and 263. 



2 B 2 



