The men, however, of lowest rank who were being supported for gladiatorial combats showed the utmost zeal in their behalf and contended most bravely.

They sent for Antony, feeling that they could fight with him better in Syria: then, when he neither came himself nor sent them any message, they decided that he had perished, and reluctantly made terms with the condition that they should never take part in a gladiatorial show.

Whatsoever St. Paul meant by bidding his disciples crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts, he did not mean thereby that they were to deify the flesh, as the heathen round them did in their profligate mysteries and in their gladiatorial exhibitions.

Another essential but demoralizing feature of Roman society was to be found in the games and festivals and gladiatorial shows, which accustomed the people to unnatural excitement and familiarity with cruelty and suffering.

What theatres are to the French, what bull-fights are to the Spaniards, what horse-races are to the English, these gladiatorial shows were to the ancient Romans.

At the theatre, at the great gladiatorial shows, at the chariot races, emperors and senators and generals were always present in conspicuous and reserved seats of honor; behind them were the patricians, and then the ordinary citizens, and in the rear of these the people fed at the public expense.

The Roman people, supposing that they were delivered, returned to their circuses and gladiatorial shows.

Every one who took contracts for buildings bought architect-slaves; every one who undertook to provide spectacles or gladiatorial games on account of those giving them purchased or trained a company of slaves skilled in acting, or a band of serfs expert in the trade of fighting.

Neither was the meanest peasant so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to confound these battles, which were gradually moulding the destinies of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, which are oftentimes but gladiatorial trials of national prowess.

Soon afterwards he married another wife, who at a gladiatorial show came and plucked his sleeve, in order, as she said, to obtain some of his good fortune.

After the consecration of this edifice he arranged through Tiberius and Drusus for gladiatorial combats, permission having been granted them by the senate.

However, he did not allow any of the citizens to omit any of the ancestral customs (although none of the more prominent men wished to present himself for the festivals) and he personally superintended the gladiatorial combats.

There was a gladiatorial combat in the Sæpta, and a naval battle of "Persians" and "Athenians" was given on the spot, where even at the present day some relics of it are still exhibited.

This feeling was especially marked on an occasion when Claudius himself and all the rest were anxious to kill Sabinus (former governor of the Celtæ in the reign of Gains) in a gladiatorial fight, but the latter approached Messalina and she saved him.

[Vitellius witnessed gladiatorial combats at Lugdunum and again at Cremona, as if the crowds of men who had perished in the battles and were even then exposed unburied to the elements did not suffice.

[Sidenote:10] Vitellius when he heard about it remained where he was and went on with his luxurious living even to the extent of arranging gladiatorial combats.

He did not particularly enjoy gladiatorial combats of men, although Titus during the youthful sports which were celebrated in his own land had once had a sham fight in heavy armor with Alienus.

There, on the first day, a gladiatorial combat and slaughter of beasts took place; this was done by building a structure of planks over the lake that faced the images and placing benches round about it.

Once, at a gladiatorial contest, when the crowd was urging its petition strongly, he not only would not grant its wish, but further ordered this command of Domitian's to be proclaimed: "Be silent."

" The passage referred to the Roman gladiatorial shows, and to the philosophic detachment by which Marcus Aurelius was able to see and yet not to see them; and the whole book was the spiritual story of a young Roman's soul, a priestlike artistic temperament, born in the haunted twilight between the setting sun of pagan religion and philosophy and the dawn of the Christian idea.

Who has not yet heard of the Coliseum at Rome, that great masterpiece of Architecture, wherein Rome held her gladiatorial combats, her peace jubilees, and other solemnities!

As in bull-fights or gladiatorial shows, the spectators watched the expensive but entertaining scene of blood and death from a safe and comfortable distance.

Gladiatorial beasts are kept as sepulchres for criminals.

[Sidenote:19] Before leaving Nicomedea the emperor held a gladiatorial contest there in honor of his birthday, for not even on that day did he refrain from slaughter.

wherefore the gladiatorial spectacle was held in the stadium for many years.