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We may feel confident that the Roman populace, if offered the choice, would have voted for the chariot-races or the gladiators, not for the college or the hospital. The entertainments provided were of several kinds, by no means equally popular.
Those who meant to take part in the athletic exercises were required to attend at Olympia thirty days previous to the games, for preparation and practice. It would appear by some Etruscan vases found at Veii, that the Etruscans practised all the Greek games leaping, running, cudgel-playing, etc., and were not restricted, as Niebuhr supposes, to boxing and chariot-races.
Peter's Church; circuses where, it is said, three hundred and eighty-five thousand persons could witness the games and chariot-races at a time; bridges, still standing, which have furnished models for the most beautiful at Paris and London; aqueducts carried over arches one hundred feet in height, through which flowed the surplus water of distant lakes; drains of solid masonry in which large boats could float; pillars more than one hundred feet in height, coated with precious marbles or plates of brass, and covered with bas-reliefs; obelisks brought from Egypt; fora and basilicas connected together, and extending more than three thousand feet in length, every part of which was filled with "animated busts" of conquerors, kings, statesmen, poets, publicists, and philosophers; mausoleums greater and more splendid than that Artemisia erected to the memory of her husband; triumphal arches under which marched in stately procession the victorious armies of the Eternal City, preceded by the spoils and trophies of conquered empires.
Moreover, gladiatorial exhibitions were part of the Roman public worship, which largely proceeded on the naive assumption that the gods liked just about what men liked and that, the best way to please the gods and win their favor was to delight them with such spectacles as men enjoyed, acrobatic exhibitions, dramas, beast-fights, fights of beasts with men or of men with men, chariot-races and similar exciting displays, and so put the gods in a good humor.
His black Numidian horses, which he had been training for the world-renowned chariot-races of Antioch, won the victory over a score of rivals. Hermas received the prize carelessly from the judge's hands, and turned to drive once more around the circus, to show himself to the people. He lifted the eager boy into the chariot beside him to share his triumph.
The stage had long played an important part in these recreations; the chariot-races formed strictly the principal amusement in all of them, but these races uniformly took place only on one, viz. the concluding, day, while the earlier days were substantially devoted to stage- entertainments.
The shepherd loved him, and the fisher; the trader and the mechanic sighed when he sang; the soldier and the king felt him at their hearts. The old returned in their thoughts to youth, young men and maidens trembled in heavenly sound and light. You would think that all the world loved Ibycus. "Corinth, the jeweled city, planned her chariot-races and her festival of song.
At the thought of that glorious year my pen fails me. Why mention the dread possibility of the negro-worshiper Lincoln being elected the very next month? Why listen, to the rumblings in the South? Pompeii had chariot-races to the mutterings of Vesuvius. St. Louis was in gala garb to greet a Prince. That was the year that Miss Virginia Carvel was given charge of the booth in Dr.
The stage was never more than an artificial taste with them; their delight was the delight of barbarians, in spectacles, in athletic exercises, in horse-races and chariot-races, in the combats of wild animals in the circus, combats of men with beasts on choice occasions, and, as a rare excitement, in fights between men and men, when select slaves trained as gladiators were matched in pairs to kill each other.
The difference between us and them lies rather in the way in which the holidays were employed. Originally the holidays did not imply any giving of shows and games in the way of chariot-races, gladiatorial combats, and the like.
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