OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

153

The dens of the amphitheatre disgorged at once chap.

a hundred lions; a hundred darts from the un-_

erring hand of Commodus laid them dead asthey ran raging round the arena. Neither thehuge bulk of the elephant, nor the scaly hide ofthe rhinoceros, could defend them from hisstroke. Ethiopia and India yielded their mostextraordinary productions; and several animalswere slain in the amphitheatre, which had beenseen only in the representations of art, or per-haps of fancy . 1 In all these exhibitions, thesecurest precautions were used to protect theperson of the Roman Hercules from the despe-rate spring of any savage, who might possiblydisregard the dignity of the emperor, and thesanctity of the god. m

But the meanest of the populace were affected Acts as awith shame and indignation when they beheld sIad ‘ ator •their sovereign enter the lists as a gladiator, andglory in a profession which the laws and mannersof the Romans had branded with the justest noteof infamy." He chose the habit and arms of

r 1 Commodus killed a Camelopardalis or giraffe (Dion, 1. Ixxii,p. 1211), the tallest, the most gentle, and the most useless of thelarge quadrupeds. This singular animal, a native only of the inte-rior parts of Africa, has not been seen in Europe since the revival ofletters ; and though M. de Buffon (Hist. Naturelle, tom. xiii.) hasendeavoured to describe, he has not ventured to delineate the gi-raffe.

m Herodian, 1. i, p. 37. His August, p. 60.

n The virtuous, and even the wise, princes forbade the senators andknights to embrace this scandalous profession, under pain of infamy,or, what was more dreaded by those profligate wretches, of exile. Thetyrants allured them to dishonour by threats and rewards. Nero onceproduced, in the arena, forty senators and sixty knights. See Lipsius,Saturnalia, 1. ii, c. 2. He has happily corrected a passage of Sueto-nius , in Ncrone, c. 12.