Volume I Part 22 (2/2)

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.)

<script>