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The neck on which Sahira had hung a splendid cord of sapphires from Persia, linked together with milky pearls from India, was thin and haggard. Her skin, fair and beautiful on that day when she sat so proudly by her husband and daughter in the Circus, watching the gladiatorial contest, was yellow and drawn. The jewels were a mockery in the shadow of threatened death.
THE GLADIATORIAL WAR. Pompeius had the opportunity still further to distinguish himself on his way back from Spain. A gladiator, Spartacus, started a revolt among his companions. He called about him slaves and outlaws until with an army of one hundred thousand men he defeated the Roman generals, and threatened Rome itself. For two years they ravaged Italy at their will.
"You may reach the highest honours," he says, "more easily by your natural advantages of character, diligence, and fortune, than by gladiatorial exhibitions. The power of giving them stirs no feeling of admiration in any one: it is a question of means and not of character: and there is no one who is not by this time sick and tired of them."
So extended was the pompous parade that though it began with the dawn of day, the ninth hour had arrived when it ascended to the Capitol, and night had fallen when the emperor returned to his palace. Then followed theatrical representations, games in the circus, gladiatorial combats, wild-beast shows, and naval engagements. Not for generations had Rome seen such a festival.
He was prevented, however, from doing this, and an act was passed prohibiting any senator from taking part in gladiatorial combats, any slave from serving as lictor, and any burning of dead bodies from being carried on within fifteen stadia of the city.
It was a scene of bustle and life, as if the whole vicinity had poured forth its inhabitants to a village wake, or rural feast. But the earnest desire to look on blood and death, is not peculiar to those dark ages; though in the gladiatorial exercise of single combat and general tourney, they were habituated to the bloody spectacle of brave men falling by each other's hands.
It was only now that the general levy was called out, and superior officers were ordered to the several regions of Italy that each might suppress the insurrection in his own district; while at the same time the gladiatorial slaves were ejected from the capital, and patrols were ordered on account of the apprehension of incendiarism. The Conspirators in Rome Catilina was in a painful position.
And the mode in which justice was occasionally administered is shown by the scene in the camp of the consul Lucius Quinctius Flamininus at Placentia . To compensate a favourite youth for the gladiatorial games of the capital, which through his attendance on the consul he had missed the opportunity of seeing, that great lord had ordered a Boian of rank who had taken refuge in the Roman camp to be summoned, and had killed him at a banquet with his own hand.
The gladiatorial part of the show was now over, but there was greater excitement still awaiting the audience, for they knew Nero had ordered that some of the Christians were to be given to the lions.
There was no dignity of character; women were degraded; only passing vanities made any impression on egotistical classes; games and festivals were multiplied; gladiatorial sports outraged humanity; the descendants of the proudest families prided themselves chiefly on their puerile frivolities; the worst rites of paganism were practiced; slaves performed the most important functions; the circus and the theatre were engrossing pleasures; the baths were the resort of the idle and the luxurious, who almost lived in them, and were scenes of disgraceful orgies; great extravagance in dress and ornaments was universal; the pleasures of the table degenerated to riotous excesses; cooks, buffoons, and dancers received more consideration than scholars and philosophers; everybody worshiped the shrine of mammon; all science was directed to utilities that demoralized; sensualism reigned triumphant, and the people lived as if there were no God.
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