Popular Sports and Exercises. 179 



tion, arose to such a pitch, that streams of 

 blood flowed annually from several hundreds, 

 perhaps thousands, of the wretched gladiators, 

 throughout 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 high 

 offices bribed their favour, by outvying each* 

 other in the number and pomp of these im- 

 pious shews. Even the most powerful and en- 

 lightened minds among the Romans were 

 tainted by the contagious influence of custom 

 and the strength of national prejudice : Cicero, 

 the humane an^l digniiied statesman and phi- 

 losopher, very faintly, if at all, disapproves of 

 the excessive fondness of the people for this 

 abominable exhibition in his time ; and plainly 

 expresses his approbation of the practice as 

 antiently conducted. His words are, " crudele 

 gladiatorum spectaculum & inhumanum non- 

 nuUis videri solet ; & baud scio an ita sit, ut 



* Julius Caesar, in his Edileship, presented three 

 huiKifed and iweniy' pair of gladiators — and Trajan, as 

 averse from cruelly as (he fonns^r, brought out 1000 pair 

 of gladiators enuring a solemnity of 123 daysi — But the. 

 sanguinary hero, enlisted 400 senators and 600 knights 

 (if there be not a corruption of the text of SueloniuSj 

 the historian) as gladiatars, at a celebration of the Oir- 

 censian' games. — See Gibbon's History o( the Decline 



and Fall of the Romaa Empire. 



Z 2 



