The Dying Gladiator, which ornaments the capitol, is alone a magnificent proof of the perfection to which sculpture was carried centuries after the art had culminated at Athens.

These gladiators were generally men from tribes which had fought against Rome.

A gladiator, though the crowd might almost deify him, was a casteless individual, unprivileged before the law, whom any franchised citizen would rate as socially far beneath himself.

So it was easy to suppress the scandal that the gladiator Paulus was the emperor himself, although half Rome half-believed it; and the substitute who occupied the seat of honor at the gamesageing a little, growing a little pouchy under eyes and chinwas pointed to as proof that Commodus was being ruined by the life he led.

" Neb and Diogenes regarded the whole thing very much as I suppose the Caesars used to look upon the arena, when the gladiators were the most blood-thirsty.