popular he became for the time being. In the Roman world you
must pay for your ambitions, and this was the most approved way of
paying. We might moralise over the enormous frivolity which could
waste day after day thousands and thousands of pounds upon such
transitory pleasures, instead of conferring lasting benefits in the
way of hospitals or schools. But it is not the object of this book to
moralise. We may feel confident that the Roman populace, if offered
the choice, would have voted for the chariot-races or the gladiators,
not for the college or the hospital.

[Illustration: FIG. 78: BOXING-GLOVES.]

The entertainments provided were of several kinds, by no means equally
popular. There were plays in the theatres; there were contests of
running, wrestling, boxing, throwing of spears and disks, and other
"events," corresponding to our athletic sports; there were
chariot-races in the Circus, answering to our horse-races at Epsom or
Newmarket; and there were spectacles in the amphitheatre, to which,
happily, we have no modern parallel. These included huntings and
baitings of animals, fights with wild beasts--performances far more
dangerous than those of the Spanish bull-ring--and, above all, the
combats of the gladiators or professional "swordsmen." So far as there
exists a later analogue to the last it is to be found in the more
chivalrous tourney in the lists, but the resemblance is not very
close. Least valued among the real Romans were the athletic sports.
For genuine enjoyment of these we must look to the Greek part of the
empire. At Rome they appeared tame, for the mind of the Roman populace
was naturally coarse in grain; what it delighted in was something
sensationally acrobatic, or provocative of a rather gross laughter, or
else involving a thrilling anticipation of danger and bloodshed. In
taste the Romans were in fact similar to those modern spectators who
love to see a man plunge from a lofty trapeze into a narrow tank, with
a reasonable chance of breaking his neck. It is a strange
contradiction with other Roman attitudes when we find that they
objected to the Greek wrestling or running on grounds of decorum,
because it was innocently nude. On the athletic sports, although they
were never wanting in the "games" at Rome, we need not therefore
dwell. It may be sufficient to show by an illustration what sort of
notion the ancient world entertained of interesting pugilism. It is
only fair to say that the "boxin