THE ETHICS OF THE ANCIENT 265 



was sometimes such that the dying were aroused 

 and forced on to the fight by burning with a 

 hot iron. The dead bodies were dragged from 

 the arena with hooks, like the carcasses of 

 animals, and the pools of blood soaked up with 

 dry sand (5). There was an occasional Roman, 

 like Seneca, sane enough to realise the real char- 

 acter of these performances, and brave enough 

 to denounce them as crimes. But by the great 

 mass of all classes of Romans, even by those who 

 pretended to think, they were regarded with per- 

 fect moral indifference. The excuse offered by 

 Pliny was generally concurred in by his country- 

 men, that these bloody shows were necessary for 

 the cultivation of manliness and for keeping 

 awake the strenuous and red-handed instincts in 

 the young. 



Scarce less revolting than the gladiatorial arena, 

 in its violation of every principle of humanity, 

 was the institution of human slavery. During the 

 later republic and the earlier empire, one -half 

 the population of the Roman state was slaves. 

 The slave population was recruited chiefly, as in 

 Greece, by war and by slave-hunting. Slave- 

 traders and slave-markets flourished both in the 

 capital itself and in all the great ports visited by 

 Roman ships. Some of the outlying provinces of 

 Asia and Africa were almost depopulated by the 

 slave-hunters. Greek slaves were the highest- 

 priced, because the most intelligent. Among the 

 wealthy, who, like the illiterate rich of every age, 

 dawdled their time in ostentation, there were 



