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. They wear helmets with visors, and carry spears and the round shield (_parma_), but they are lightly armed. Only one of their arms--that which sustains the spear--is covered with bands or armlets of metal. Their names and the number of their victories already won are known. The first is Bebrix, a barbarian, who has been triumphant fifteen times; the second is Nobilior, a Roman, who has vanquished eleven times. The combat is still undecided. Nobilior is just delivering a spear thrust, which is vigorously parried by Bebrix. Would you prefer a still more singular kind of duel--one between a _secutor_ and a _retiarius?_ The retiarius wears neither helmet nor cuirass, but carries a three-pronged javelin, called a trident, in his left hand, and in his right a net, which he endeavors to throw over the head of his adversary. If he misses his aim he is lost; the secutor then pursues him, sword in hand, and kills him. But in the duel at which we are present, the secutor is vanquished, and has fallen on one knee; the retiarius, Nepimus, triumphant already on five preceding occasions, has seized him by the belt, and has planted one foot upon his leg, but the trident not being sufficient to finish him, a second secutor, Hippolytus by name, who has survived five previous victories, has come up. Hippolytus rests one hand upon the helmet of the vanquished secutor who vainly clasps his knees, and with the other, cuts his throat. Death--always death! In the paintings; in the bas-reliefs that I describe; in the scenes that they reproduce; in the arena where these combats must have taken place, I can see only unhappy wretches undergoing assassination. One of them, holding his shield behind him, is thinking only how he may manage to fall with grace; another, kneeling, presses his wound with one hand, and stretches the other out toward the spectators; some of them have a suppliant look, others are stoical, but all will have to roll at last upon the sand of the arena, condemned by the inexorable caprice of a people greedy for blood. "The modest virgin," says Juvenal, "turning down her thumb, orders that the breast of yonder man, grovelling in the dust, shall be torn open." And all--the heavily armed Samnite, the Gaul, the Thracian, the secutor; the _dimachoerus_, with his two swords; the swordsman who wears a helmet surmounted with a fish--the one whom the retiarius pursues with his net, meanwhile singing this refrain, "It is not you that
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