206 
GLADIATORS. 
and dogs, that the bodies might be burnt by the flames which con 
sumed that of Patroclus : 
“ Then last of all, and horrible to tell. 
Sad sacrifice ! twelve Trojan captains fell.” 
The above quotations positively prove that the Romans deviated 
from their predecessors in the practice of this barbarous custom. The 
Greeks appear to have destroyed their prisoners on a revengeful 
principle, and despatched them immediately ; but the former delighted 
in cruelty, and would rather purchase captives, or destroy the lives 
of ill-disposed slaves, than send the ashes of their friends to the urn 
bloodless, or the spectators of the obsequies home, without the grati- 
fication of witnessing wretches cutting each other to death, though 
not under the influence of previous anger. 
According to Valerius Maximus, and Lampridius in Heliogabalus, 
gladiators were first introduced at Rome by M. and D. Brutus, at the 
funeral of their father, in the consulship of Ap. Claudius and M. Ful- 
vius. The examples of great men, however detestable, ever produce 
imitators. Hence, though the brothers may have acted from motives 
of family vanity only, other great personages, perceiving that the 
people delighted in the sight of blood, determined to gratify them by 
adopting the custom ; which was afterwards extended to public exhi- 
bitions given by the priests in the Ludi Sacerdotales, and managed 
solely for the amusement of the populace, or perhaps to confirm 
them in an habitual contempt for wounds and military death. 
Thus the family alluded to, introducing perhaps three pairs of gladi- 
ators to the citizens of Rome, was the means of multiplying their 
number to an amount which is shocking to humanity, for the subse- 
quent emperors appeared to have attempted to excel each other in 
assembling them at their birth-day celebrations, at triumphs, the con- 
secration of edifices, at their periodical games, and at the rejoicings 
after great victories. 
As the disposition of several of the chief magistrates who are 
recorded as having exhibited gladiators was mild and merciful, it is 
but fair to suppose that Julius Caesar, who produced three hundred 
and twenty pairs in his edileship, Titus, Trajan, and others, submitted 
to the custom in compliance with the temper of the people, rather 
than from any predilection to it in themselves. But there are few 
pernicious practices which do not carry their punishment with them. 
The prevailing frenzy had at length arrived to such an excess, that 
the gladiators became sufficiently numerous to threaten the safety of 
the state, for, when the Catiline conspiracy raged, an order was issued 
to disperse the gladiators in different garrisons, that they might not 
join the disaffected party ; yet although the fears of the government 
were excited, it does not appear that any steps were taken to lessen 
their number, as the emperor Otho had it in his power, long afterwards, 
to enlist two thousand of them to serve him against Vitellius. 
The people thus: cut off from society, and rendered murderers per 
force, were fully justified in considering the whole Roman state their 
enemy; nor was it surprising that they were* sometimes willing to 
revenge themselves upon their oppressors. Spartacus, a gladiator. 
