; the rhinoceros of Gaul, taken with the net;
lions, lassoed in the deserts; Lucanian bears, Spanish bulls; and, in
remoter dens, men, unarmed, that waited.

By way of foretaste for better things, a handful of criminals, local
desperadoes, an impertinent slave, a machinist, who in a theatre the
night before had missed an effect--these, together with a negligent
usher, were tossed one after the other naked into the ring, and bound
to a scaffold that surmounted a miniature hill. At a signal the
scaffold fell, the hill crumbled, and from it a few hyenas issued, who
indolently devoured their prey.

With this for prelude, the gods avenged and justice appeased, a
rhinoceros ambled that way, stimulated from behind by the point of a
spear; and in a moment the hyenas were disembowelled, their legs
quivering in the air. Throughout the arena other beasts, tied together
with long cords, quarrelled in couples; there was the bellow of bulls,
and the moan of leopards tearing at their flesh, a flight of stags, and
the long, clean spring of the panther.

Presently the arena was cleared, the sand reraked and the Bestiarii
advanced--Sarmatians, nourished on mares' milk; Sicambrians, their hair
done up in chignons; horsemen from Thessaly, Ethiopian warriors,
Parthian archers, huntsmen from the steppes, their different idioms
uniting in a single cry--"Caesar, we salute you." The sunlight,
filtering through the spangled canopy, chequered their tunics with
burning spots, danced on their spears and helmets, dazzled the
spectators' eyes. From above descended the caresses of flutes; the air
was sweet with perfumes, alive with multicolored motes; the terraces
were parterres of blending hues, and into that splendor a hundred
lions, their tasselled tails sweeping the sand, entered obliquely.

The mob of the Bestiarii had gone. In the middle of the arena, a band
of Ethiopians, armed with arrows, knives and spears, knelt, their oiled
black breasts uncovered.

Leisurely the lions turned their huge, intrepid heads; to their jowls
wide creases came. There was a glitter of fangs, a shiver that moved
the mane, a flight of arrows, mounting murmurs; the crouch of beasts
preparing to spring, a deafening roar, and, abruptly, a tumultuous
mass, the suddenness of knives, the snap of bones, the cry of the
agonized, the fury of beasts transfixed, the shrieks of the mangled, a
combat hand to fang, from which lions fell back, their jaws torn
asunder, while ot