y which could afford
to give up so much time to the demoralizing sports! What facilities for
transportation were afforded, when so many wild beasts could be brought
to the capitol from the central parts of Africa without calling out
unusual comment! How imperious a populace that compels the government to
provide such expensive pleasures! The games of Titus, on the dedication
of the Colosseum, lasted one hundred days, and five thousand wild beasts
were slaughtered in the arena. The number of the gladiators who fought
surpasses belief. At the triumph of Trajan over the Dacians, ten
thousand gladiators were exhibited, and the Emperor himself presided
under a gilded canopy, surrounded by thousands of his lords. Underneath
the arena, strewed with yellow sand and sawdust, was a solid pavement,
so closely cemented that it could be turned into an artificial lake, on
which naval battles were fought. But it was the conflict of gladiators
which most deeply stimulated the passions of the people. The benches
were crowded with eager spectators, and the voices of one hundred
thousand were raised in triumph or rage as the miserable victims sank
exhausted in the bloody sport.

Yet it was not the gladiatorial sports of the amphitheatre which most
strikingly attested the greatness and splendor of the city; nor the
palaces, in which as many as four hundred slaves were sometimes
maintained as domestic servants for a single establishment,--twelve
hundred in number according to the lowest estimate, but probably five
times as numerous, since every senator, every knight, and every rich man
was proud to possess a residence which would attract attention; nor the
temples, which numbered four hundred and twenty-four, most of which
were of marble, filled with statues, the contributions of ages, and
surrounded with groves; nor the fora and basilicas, with their porticos,
statues, and pictures, covering more space than any cluster of public
buildings in Europe, a mile and a half in circuit; nor the baths, nearly
as large, still more completely filled with works of art; nor the Circus
Maximus, where more people witnessed the chariot races at a time than
are nightly assembled in all the places of public amusement in Paris,
London, and New York combined,--more than could be seated in all the
cathedrals of England and France. It is not these which most
impressively make us feel the amazing grandeur of the old capital of the
world. The triumphal procession