bove the ankle. "Oh,
beautiful! Who are these?" asked the widow.

"The one is named Berbix: he has conquered twelve times. The other
assumes the arrogant Nobilior. They are both Gauls."

While thus conversing, the first formalities of the show were over. To
these succeeded a feigned combat with wooden swords between the various
gladiators matched against each other. Among these the skill of two
Roman gladiators, hired for the occasion, was the most admired; and next
to them the most graceful combatant was Lydon. This sham contest did not
last above an hour, nor did it attract any very lively interest except
among those connoisseurs of the arena to whom art was preferable to more
coarse excitement; the body of the spectators were rejoiced when it was
over, and when the sympathy rose to terror. The combatants were now
arranged in pairs, as agreed beforehand; their weapons examined; and the
grave sports of the day commenced amid the deepest silence--broken only
by an exciting and preliminary blast of warlike music.

It was often customary to begin the sports by the most cruel of all; and
some bestiarius, or gladiator appointed to the beasts, was slain first
as an initiatory sacrifice. But in the present instance the experienced
Pansa thought better that the sanguinary drama should advance, not
decrease, in interest; and accordingly the execution of Olinthus and
Glaucus was reserved for the last. It was arranged that the two horsemen
should first occupy the arena; that the foot gladiators, paired off,
should then be loosed indiscriminately on the stage; that Glaucus and
the lion should next perform their part in the bloody spectacle; and the
tiger and the Nazarene be the grand finale. And in the spectacles of
Pompeii, the reader of Roman history must limit his imagination, nor
expect to find those vast and wholesale exhibitions of magnificent
slaughter with which a Nero or a Caligula regaled the inhabitants of the
Imperial City. The Roman shows, which absorbed the more celebrated
gladiators and the chief proportion of foreign beasts, were indeed the
very reason why in the lesser towns of the empire the sports of the
amphitheatre were comparatively humane and rare; and in this as in
other respects, Pompeii was the miniature, the microcosm of Rome. Still,
it was an awful and imposing spectacle, with which modern times have,
happily, nothing to compare; a vast theatre, rising row upon row, and
swarming with human beings, fro