210 Off SPORTS AKD EXERCISES. 



worrying these miserable slaTcs. To the Greeks may be 

 attributed two barbarous diversions, which have been 

 eagerly adopted by succeeding nations. The fighting of 

 Cock fights. cocks, and the diversion of bull-fights. The former was 

 " ^ "• first introduced by Themistocles, as a religious festival :— 

 it soon degenerated into a sport for the gratification of 

 avarice and cruelty. The latter had its rise in Thessaly, 

 and was afterwards transported to Rome by Julius 

 Caesar*. 

 The Roman To Greece, Rome was indebted for almost every insti- 



hT^^iTh"^^ tution of popular sports and bodily exercises ; — but the 

 •f Greece. Romans carried them to a height of splendour and mag- 

 nificence unknown to their first inventors. The Circus 

 and Amphitheatre of Rome, exhibited, on a scale propor- 

 tioned to the immense extent and power of the nation, 

 all the popular sports + celebrated at the Grecian so- 

 lemnities. In their gymnasia, youth were likewise care- 

 fully instructed in the gymnic exercises, and likewise th^ 

 athletic combatants trained up for public exhibition ;— 

 But the barbarous policy of the state, or rather the rude 

 They were and ferocious manners of the people, gave rise to the alli- 



more gloomy, ^j^qq gf bloody shews and combats, with manly sports 

 ferocious, and , .''- , i/..,-. 



crueL *"" exercises. A gloomy and ferocious superstition, 



operating on the minds of a people inured, like the Ro- 

 mans, to foreign warfare and intestine broils, suggested 

 the practice of shedding the blood of captives, as a grate- 

 ful sacrifice to the manes of illustrious warriors. This 

 practice, at first a superstitious rite, became a ceremony^ 

 of more pomp and ostentation at the obsequies ;]: of dis- 

 tinguished persons. Hence the origin amongst the Ro- 

 Combatsof ^ ., ... r i j- i. j u xi 



gladiators. mans of the protessiou of a gladiator — and when the 



• See Pcgge's Dissertation on Cock-fighting in t^e ArchceologJa ' 

 Brittan., and Potter's Antiquities of Greece. 



f The Ludi circenses, or circensian games, included all the diver-^ 

 sions of the Circus, viz. Th^ Pentathlum, or Quinquertium, cha-. 

 riot races, Pyrrhic dance of the Greeks, to which were added 

 sports of Roman origin.— The Naumachia, or sea fights, aad bloody 

 combats of gladiators, and the contests of ferocious animals with 

 each other and with man. 



\ The first shew of gladiators was instituted by Marcus and 

 Dccius Brutus, on the death of their father, in the year of thq 

 •»ty» 490.— ^See Kcnnet's Antiquitiw of Rome. 



people 



