History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne Volume I Part 22

17.) After the defeat of Perseus, Paulus Emilius celebrated a show in Macedonia. (Livy, xli. 20.)

486 These are fully discussed by Magnin and Friedlaender. There is a very beautiful description of a ballet, representing the "Judgment of Paris," in Apuleius, _Metamorph._ x.

487 Pacuvius and Accius were the founders of Roman tragedy. The abridger, Velleius Paterculus, who is the only Roman historian who pays any attention to literary history, boasts that the latter might rank honourably with the best Greek tragedians. He adds, "ut in illis [the Greeks] limae, in hoc pne plus videatur fuisse sanguinis."-_Hist. Rom._ ii. 9.

488 Thus, e.g., Hobbes: "Alienae calamitatis contemptus nominatur crudelitas, proceditque a propriae securitatis opinione. Nam ut aliquis sibi placeat in malis alienis sine alio fine, videtur mihi impossibile."-_Leviathan_, pars i. c. vi.

489 Sueton. _Claudius_, x.x.xiv.

490 "Et verso pollice vulgi Quemlibet occidunt populariter."-Juvenal, _Sat._ iii. 36-37.

491 Besides the many incidental notices scattered through the Roman historians, and through the writings of Seneca, Plutarch, Juvenal, and Pliny, we have a curious little book, _De Spectaculis_, by Martial-a book which is not more horrible from the atrocities it recounts than from the perfect absence of all feeling of repulsion or compa.s.sion it everywhere displays.

492 These are but a few of the many examples given by Magnin, who has collected a vast array of authorities on the subject. (_Origines du Theatre_, pp. 445-453.) M. Mongez has devoted an interesting memoir to "Les animaux promenes ou tues dans le cirque." (_Mem. de l'Acad.

des Inscrip. et Belles-lettres_, tome x.) See, too, Friedlaender.

Pliny rarely gives an account of any wild animal without accompanying it by statistics about its appearances in the arena.

The first instance of a wild beast hunt in the amphitheatre is said to be that recorded by Livy (x.x.xix. 22), which took place about 80 B.C.

493 Capitolinus, _Gordiani_.

494 Vopiscus, _Aurelian_.

495 Xiphilin, lxviii. 15.

496 Tacit. _Annal._ xv. 44.

497 Xiphilin, lxvii. 8; Statius, _Sylv._ i. 6.

498 During the Republic, a rich man ordered in his will that some women he had purchased for the purpose should fight in the funeral games to his memory, but the people annulled the clause. (Athenaeeus, iv.

39.) Under Nero and Domitian, female gladiators seem to have been not uncommon. See Statius, _Sylv._ i. 6; Sueton. _Domitian_, iv.; Xiphilin, lxvii. 8. Juvenal describes the enthusiasm with which Roman ladies practised with the gladiatorial weapons (_Sat._ vi.

248, &c.), and Martial (_De Spectac._ vi.) mentions the combats of women with wild beasts. One, he says, killed a lion. A combat of female gladiators, under Severus, created some tumult, and it was decreed that they should no longer be permitted. (Xiphilin, lxxv.

16.) See Magnin, pp. 434-435.

499 Martial, _De Spectac._ vii.

500 Ibid. _Ep._ viii. 30.

501 Tertullian, _Ad Nation._ i. 10. One of the most ghastly features of the games was the comic aspect they sometimes a.s.sumed. This was the case in the combats of dwarfs. There were also combats by blind-folded men. Petronius (_Satyricon_, c. xlv.) has given us a horrible description of the maimed and feeble men who were sometimes compelled to fight. People afflicted with epilepsy were accustomed to drink the blood of the wounded gladiators, which they believed to be a sovereign remedy. (Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ xxviii. 2; Tertul.

_Apol._ ix.)

502 "Nec unquam sine humano cruore cnabat"-Lactan. _De Mort. Persec._ Much the same thing is told of the Christian emperor Justinian II., who lived at the end of the seventh century. (Sismondi, _Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire Romain_, tome ii. p. 85.)

503 Winckelmann says the statue called "The Dying Gladiator" does not represent a gladiator. At a later period, however, statues of gladiators were not uncommon, and Pliny notices (_Hist. Nat._ x.x.xv.

33) paintings of them. A fine specimen of mosaic portraits of gladiators is now in the Lateran Museum.

504 Plutarch's _Life of Caesar_.

505 Dion Ca.s.sius, li. 7.

506 Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius, was especially accused of this weakness. (Capitolinus, _Marcus Aurelius_.)

507 Seneca, _De Provident._ iv.

508 Arrian's _Epictetus_, i. 29.

509 Seneca, _De Provident._ iii.

510 Aulus Gellius, xii. 5.

511 Cicero, _Tusc._ lib. ii.

512 Some Equites fought under Julius Caesar, and a senator named Fulvius Setinus wished to fight, but Caesar prevented him. (Suet. _Caesar_, x.x.xix.; Dion Ca.s.sius, xliii. 23.) Nero, according to Suetonius, compelled men of the highest rank to fight. Laws prohibiting patricians from fighting were several times made and violated.

(Friedlaender, pp. 39-41.) Commodus is said to have been himself pa.s.sionately fond of fighting as a gladiator. Much, however, of what Lampridius relates on this point is perfectly incredible. On the other hand, the profession of the gladiator was constantly spoken of as infamous; but this oscillation between extreme admiration and contempt will surprise no one who has noticed the tone continually adopted about prize-fighters in England, and about the members of some other professions on the Continent. Juvenal dwells (_Sat._ viii. 197-210) with great indignation on an instance of a patrician fighting.

513 "Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit, quis vultum mutavit unquam?"-Cic. _Tusc. Quaest._ lib. ii.

514 E.g. Clem. Alex. _Strom._ iii. There is a well-known pa.s.sage of this kind in Horace, _Ars Poet._ 412-415. The comparison of the good man to an athlete or gladiator, which St. Paul employed, occurs also in Seneca and Epictetus, from which some have inferred that they must have known the writings of the Apostle. M. Denis, however, has shown (_Idees morales dans l'Antiquite_, tome ii. p. 240) that the same comparison had been used, before the rise of Christianity, by Plato, aeschines, and Cicero.

_ 515 Confess._ vi. 8.

516 "[Servi] etsi per fortunam in omnia obnoxii, tamen quasi secundum hominum genus sunt."-Florus, _Hist._ iii. 20.

517 Macrinus, however, punished fugitive slaves by compelling them to fight as gladiators. (Capitolinus, _Macrinus_.)

518 Tacit. _Annal._ xii. 56. According to Friedlaender, however, there were two cla.s.ses of criminals. One cla.s.s were condemned only to fight, and pardoned if they conquered; the others were condemned to fight till death, and this was considered an aggravation of capital punishment.

519 "Ad conciliandum plebis favorem effusa largitio, quum spectaculis indulget, supplicia quondam hostium artem facit."-Florus, iii. 12.

_ 520 Tusc. Quaest._ ii. 17.

521 See his magnificent letter on the subject. (_Ep._ vii.)

522 In his two treatises _De Esu Carnium_.

523 Pliny. _Ep._ iv. 22.

524 Xiphilin, lxxi. 29. Capitolinus, _M. Aurelius_. The emperor also once carried off the gladiators to a war with his army, much to the indignation of the people. (Capit.) He has himself noticed the extreme weariness he felt at the public amus.e.m.e.nts he was obliged to attend. (vii. 3.)

525 Sueton. _t.i.tus_, viii.

526 "Visum est spectaculum inde non enerve nec fluxum, nec quod animos virorum molliret et frangeret, sed quod ad pulchra vulnera contemptumque mortis accenderet."-Pliny, _Paneg._ x.x.xiii.

527 "Praeterea tanto consensu rogabaris, ut negare non constans sed durum videretur."-Plin. _Epist._ vi. 34.

528 Symmach. _Epist._ ii. 46.

529 Sueton. _Domitian_, iii. It is very curious that the same emperor, about the same time (the beginning of his reign), had such a horror of bloodshed that he resolved to prohibit the sacrifice of oxen.

(Suet. _Dom._ ix.)