212 ON SPOUTS AND EXERCISES, 



sary to gi*atify their depraved a})petites by the exhibition 

 These cnormi- of humafi butchery and sacrifice. So lost to erery spark 

 to all ranks ^^ decency and humanity were this infatuated and fero- 

 and even to cious people, that the Highest ranks of society gloried in 

 women. voluntarily taking a part in these encounters : and even 



the softer sex, throwing aside every trait of amiable mo- 

 desty and timidity, were ambitious of displaying their 

 personal courage in these savage contests. This conduct 

 did not cicape the lash of the Roman satyrist. 



** Cum ■ Masvia Tuscum," 



*• Figat aprum, & nuda teneat venabula mamma." 



Persons of every age, sex, and condition attended thest 

 barbarous sports. The intoxication of the populace, 

 "~ from frequent gratification, arose to such a pitch, that 

 streams of blood flowed annually from several hundreds, 

 perhaps thousands, of the wretched gladiators, through- 

 out the various cities of the empire. When the people 

 had been so far steeped in blood as to prefer beyond any 

 other these sanguinary combats, all the candidates for 

 These habitual ^'S^ offices bribed their favour, by outvying each * other 

 cruelties viti- in the number and pomp of these impious shews. Even 

 mkidt^of their ^^^"^^^^ powerful and enlightened minds among the Ro- 

 philosophers. mans were tainted by the contagious influence of custom 

 and the strength of national prejudice: Cicero, the hu- 

 mane and digiiified statesman and philosopher, very faintly, 

 if at all, disapproves of the excessive fondftess of the peo- 

 ple for this abominable exhibition in his time ; and plainly 

 expresses his approbation of the practice as antiently con- 

 ducti'd. His words are, " crudele gladiatorum specta- 

 culum & inhumanum nonnullis videri solet ; & baud scio 

 an ita sit, ut nunc fit: cum vero sontes ferro depugna- 

 bant, auribus fortasse multae, oculis quidem nulla poterat 



* Julius Caesar, in his Edlleship, presented three hundred and 

 twenty pair of gladiators — and Trajan, as averse from cruelty as 

 the former, brought out looo pair of gladiators during a solemnity 

 of 123 days. But the sanguinary hero enlisted 400 senators and 600 

 knights (if there be not a corruption of the text of Suetoniui, the 

 historian) as gladiators, at a celebration of the Circerisian games.— 

 See Gibbon's History of the Deciifie aod Fall of the Roman Em- 

 pire. 



