File:Library of the world's best literature, ancient and modern (1896) (14801312183).jpg

Identifier: worldsbestlitera15warn (find matches)
Title: Library of the world's best literature, ancient and modern
Year: 1896 (1890s)
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Publisher: N.Y.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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of emperors, and stillmore the delirium of popular enthusiasm that centred upon thesuccessful gladiator, outweighed all the dangers of the profession.A complete recklessness of life was soon engendered both in thespectators and the combatants. The Manistae,^ or purveyors ofgladiators, became an important profession. Wandering bandsof gladiators traversed Italy, hiring themselves for the provincialamphitheatres. The influence of the games gradually pervadedthe whole texture of Roman life. They became the common-place of conversation. The children imitated them in their play.The philosophers drew from them their metaphors and illustra-tions. The artists portrayed them in every variety of ornament.The Vestal Virgins had a seat of honor in the arena. The Colos-seum, which is said to have been capable of containing more thaneighty thousand spectators, eclipsed every other monument ofImperial splendor, and is even now at once the most imposingand the most characteristic relic of pagan Rome.
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WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY 8937 In the provinces the same passion was displayed. From Gaulto Syria, wherever the Roman influence extended, the spectaclesof blood were introduced; and the gigantic remains of amphi-theatres in many lands still attest by their ruined grandeur thescale on which they were pursued. In the reign of Tiberius,more than twenty thousand persons are said to have perished bythe fall of the amphitheatre at the suburban town of Fidenae.Under Nero, the Syracusans obtained as a special favor anexemption from the law which limited the number of gladiators.Of the vast train of prisoners brought by Titus from Judea, alarge proportion were destined by the conqueror for the provin-cial games. In Syria, where they were introduced by AntiochusEpiphanes, they at first produced rather terror than pleasure; butthe effeminate Syrians soon learned to contemplate them with apassionate enjoyment, and on a single occasion Agrippa causedfourteen hundred men to fight in the amphith

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