is a grave deduction from the admiring judgment of
the glory of the Antonine age, that its most splendid remains are the
stately buildings within whose enclosure for centuries the populace were
regaled with the sufferings and the blood of the noblest creatures of
the wild animal world and of gallant men. The deserts and forests of
Africa and the remotest East contributed their elephants and panthers
and lions to these scenes."[2020]

+625. Spread of gladiatorial exhibitions.+ The Romans carried
gladiatorial exhibitions wherever their conquests extended. "The
Teutonic regions of the North and Greece were almost the only provinces
in which the bloody games were not popular. The one Greek town where the
taste for them was fully developed was the mongrel city of Corinth,
which was a Roman colony. In the novel of Apuleius we meet a high
Corinthian magistrate traveling through Thessaly to collect the most
famous gladiators for his shows. Plutarch urges public men to banish or
to restrain these exhibitions in their cities. When the Athenians, from
an ambition to rival the splendor of Corinth, were meditating the
establishment of a gladiatorial show, the gentle Demonax bade them first
to overturn their altar of Pity. The apostles of Hellenism,--Dion,
Plutarch, and Lucian,--were unanimous in condemning an institution which
sacrificed the bravest men to the brutal passions of the mob."[2021] At
Byzantium the lack of any standard of decency and propriety in the
exhibitions was even more complete, and they lasted indefinitely.[2022]
Constantine in 325 A.D. absolutely forbade gladiatorial exhibitions,
because bloody shows were unfit for a time of peace. He forbade the
condemnation of criminals to be gladiators. His laws, however, failed of
effect.[2023] At the end of the fourth century Symmachus, "who was
regarded as one of the most estimable pagans of his age," collected some
prisoners to fight in honor of his son. They committed suicide to escape
the destiny for which he designed them. He lamented the misfortune which
had befallen him from their "impious hands," but endeavored to calm his
feelings by recalling the patience of Socrates and the precepts of
philosophy. He will not, he says, use such people any more, but Libyan
lions, more docile than men.[2024] He serves to point a moral on the
mores of his age.

+626. The folk drama.+ The culture classes pass by the sports of the
"vulgar" with contempt; but the student of the mores