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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.
The endless stream of caravans amazed me. I had seen beast-fights without number in the Colosseum, but had never thought of the enormous labor and expense incident on the preparations for even one morning's exhibition of, say, a hundred lions and other beasts in proportion.
Causidiena, whose eyes troubled her greatly, found that watching the triumphal procession caused her so much pain that she absented herself from the remaining shows. To all of these, races, beast-fights and combats of gladiators, she insisted that the other five Vestals should go together.
Peter, on the Vatican Hill, built A.D. 324, on the site and with the ruins of temples consecrated to Apollo and Mars. It stood about twelve centuries, at the end of which it was superseded by the modern church bearing the same name. The Cirei were buildings oblong in shape, used for public games, races, and beast-fights.
Everybody else is alert and keyed up with anticipation. His eyes are dull and he looks as if he wished that the show was over and he could go home." "You have read him right," Manlia told her. "He detests all kinds of spectacles, takes no interest in races and hates beast-fights. Most of all he loathes gladiatorial combats.
They also confirmed my impression that few animals destined for beast-fights in the amphitheatres reached Rome overland; as I had thought, practically all had hitherto come by sea and up the Tiber. Still curious, I made friends with the teamsters. Some were from Ravenna, and even these grumbled at the two hundred and fifty miles as ruinous to their cattle.
The beast-fights are popular, chiefly because they afford such glorious opportunity for betting. Besides cocks and quails, tigers and buffaloes, other animals, the least pugnacious possible, are stimulated to a contest. Locusts are made to enter the lists, and are tickled on the head with a straw until they reach the fighting pitch.
By the end of my second winter with Falco I had come to know intimately all his town and country palaces and all his dilettanti friends and had enjoyed to the full the many delights of the colony, not only its climate and fruits, its scenery and cities, its statuary and pictures, its libraries and public-baths, but its excellent performances of tragedies and comedies, and its spectacles creditable, not only as to chariot-racing but also as to beast-fights and exhibitions of gladiators.
Customarily, while Palus flourished, each day began with beast-fights, the noon pause was filled in by exhibitions of athletes, acrobats, jugglers, trained animals and such like, and the surprise; then the gladiatorial shows lasted from early afternoon till an hour before sunset. Palus and Murmex appeared about mid-afternoon and were matched against the victors in the earlier fights.
But the great entertainment of the amphitheatre was the combats of men with men. After the beast-fights, which were held in the mornings, and amounted in estimation to a matinee, there followed the fights of the gladiators.
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