FOUR-FOOTED PRIZE-FIGHTERS. 230 



nations from seeing anything wrong in a prize-fight. 

 " Volenti 11011 fit injuria!' They might think it disgrace- 

 ful to plague a peaceful creature, but can see nothing ob- 

 jectionable in witnessing a display of natural combative- 

 ness. " Que idea /" exclaimed a Mexican whom Bishop 

 Riley had taken to task for his cock-fighting proclivities. 

 " Que dano hay f They volunteer performances on every 

 dung-hill : are they any the worse for having spectators ?" 

 The historian of " European Morals" (vol. i. p. 290) ob- 

 serves that in Spain an intense passion for bull-fights is 

 quite compatible with a charitable disposition ; and the 

 Hindoos, with all their Buddhistic prejudices, are en- 

 thusiastic votaries of the cockpit. Beast-fights were the 

 most popular amusements among the ancients. King 

 Porus of India, who was probably either a Buddhist or 

 a Brahman, entertained his conqueror with what the 

 Spaniards would call a gran matanza of trained elephants. 

 Nebuchadnezzar had his famous lion-pit ; Prusias, the 

 King of Bithynia, imported Indian tigers ; and Antiochus 

 Epiphanes kept a lot of fighting-bulls. But these private 

 sports were dwarfed by the public circenses of Imperial 

 Rome. Three hundred bears were let loose during the 

 games of Claudius, three hundred lions and five hundred 

 bears at the triumph of Hadrian, and at the dedication 

 of the Coliseum by Titus five thousand wild animals 

 on a single day! (Magnin, " Origines du Theatre," pp. 

 449-453.) Tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, 

 giraffes, and lions were imported in numbers that must 



