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On our return to "civilization" we were rejoiced to find that as a result of our three months' labors, the former tumult of Armenia had died away into a peaceful echo, but a new murmur fast growing to clamor had taken its place. Cuba had entered the ceaseless arena of American, gladiatorial, humanitarian contest.
Any Roman governor could make a fortune in a year; and his fortune was spent in banquets and fêtes and races and costly wines, and enormous retinues of slaves. The theatres, the chariot races, the gladiatorial shows, the circus, and the sports of the amphitheatre were then at their height. The central spring of society was money, since it purchased everything which Epicureanism valued.
He would find it difficult to comprehend why the men who were overcome in a fair gladiatorial strife in the open arena of debate, with brain pitted against brain, and manhood against manhood, should resort to the rough logic of "blood and iron," when the nobler kind of logic, that which is developed in the struggle of mind with mind, had failed to accomplish the purposes which their hearts and wills, independent of their understandings, were bent on accomplishing.
In the gladiatorial arena of the court-room, Mr. Palma was regarded as a large-brained, nimble-witted, marble-hearted man, of vast ambition and tireless energy in the acquisition of his aims; but his colleagues and clients would as soon have sought chivalric tenderness in a bronze statue, or a polished obelisk of porphyry.
Strong palings at these passages prevented any unwelcome eccentricity in the movements of the beasts, and confined them to their appointed prey. Around the parapet which was raised above the arena, and from which the seats gradually rose, were gladiatorial inscriptions, and paintings wrought in fresco, typical of the entertainments for which the place was designed.
Lemures and Larvæ are often confused, but Lemures is the regular word for the dead not at rest the "Lemuri," or spirits of the churchyard, of some parts of modern Italy. They were evil spirits, propitiated in early days with blood. Hence the first gladiatorial games were given in connection with funerals. Both in Greece and in Rome there were special festivals for appeasing these restless spirits.
At the theatre, at the great gladiatorial shows, at the chariot races, senators and emperors and generals were always present in conspicuous and reserved seats of honor; behind them were the ordinary citizens, and in the rear of these, the people fed at the public expense.
It was they who barred and broke the gladiatorial games at Rome; it was they, who, steered the "Mayflower" across the Atlantic, and started the great Republic of the United States; And it is they, who are possibly sowing the seed a great Movement which will spread all over Europe, and ultimately by opposing compulsory military service inaugurate a world-era of Peace.
Some waiting-maids from Judæa fetched goodly money; an innkeeper of Etruria bought them, for they were well-looking and knew how to handle and carry wine jars without shaking up the costly liquor; and the negroes were sought after by the lanistae for training to gladiatorial combats. Scribes were also in great demand for copying purposes.
The ruins of the amphitheatre situate near the river Tame were grand even in their decay, and all the imaginative faculties of the boy were aroused, as one of the most learned inhabitants described the scenes of former days, of which tradition had been preserved, the gladiatorial combats, the wild beast fights.
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