nd
aesculapius, on account of his vigilance, inferred from his early
rising--the natural consequence of his 'early to bed'--and also to Mars,
on account of his magnanimous and daring spirit.

It seems, then, that at first cock-fighting was partly a religious,
and partly a political, institution at Athens; and was there
continued--according to the above legend--for the purpose of cherishing
the seeds of valour in the minds of youth; but that it was afterwards
abused and perverted, both there and in other parts of Greece, by being
made a common pastime, and applied to the purpose of gambling just as
it was (and is still secretly) practised in England. An Attic law ran
as follows--'Let cocks fight publicly in the theatre one day in the
year.'(69)

(69) Pegge, in Archoeologia, quoting aelian, Columella, &c.

As to cock-fighting at Rome, Pegge, in the same work, gives his opinion,
that it was not customary there till very late; but that quails were
more pitted against each other for gambling purposes than cocks. This
opinion seems confirmed by the thankfulness expressed by the good
Antoninus--'that he had imbibed such dispositions from his preceptor, as
had prevented him from breeding quails for the fight.'

'One cannot but regret,' wrote Pegge in 1775, 'that a creature so useful
and so noble as the cock should be so enormously abused by us. It is
true the massacre of Shrove Tuesday seems in a declining way, and in a
few years, it is to be hoped, will be totally disused; but the cock-pit
still continues a reproach to the humanity of Englishmen. It is unknown
to me when the pitched battle first entered England; but it was probably
brought hither by the Romans. The bird was here before Caesar's arrival;
but no notice of his fighting has occurred to me earlier than the time
of William Fitz-Stephen, who wrote the Life of Archbishop Becket, some
time in the reign of Henry II. William describes the cocking as the
sport of school-boys on Shrove Tuesday. "Every year, on the day which is
called Carnelevaria (Carnival)--to begin with the sports of the London
boys,--for we have all been boys--all the boys are wont to carry to
their schoolmaster their fighting-cocks, and the whole of the forenoon
is made a holiday for the boys to see the fights of their cocks in their
schoolrooms." The theatre, it seems, was their school, and the master
was the controller and director of the sport. From this time at least
the diversion, however ab