and descending now and then to urge the hesitating fighters, who were at once monsters and victims. Under Nero, senators, and even women of the noble families, appeared as combatants. Titus ordered a gladiatorial show that lasted a hundred days; and Trajan, in one triumphal show, exhibited five thousand pairs of gladiators. Domitian, at the Saturnalia of 90 A.D., ordered a battle between dwarfs and women. It was over a hundred years later (200 A.D.) that a law was passed against female gladiators.
Throughout the whole Roman empire had spread this horrible passion for human conflict to the death. "From Britain to Syria," says F. Storr, "there was not a town of any size that could not boast its arena and annual games." The following inscription from the pedestal of a statue shows the feeling of the provinces:
"In four days, at Minturnæ, he showed eleven pairs of gladiators, who did not cease fighting till one half, all the most valiant men in Campania, had fallen. You remember it well, noble fellow-citizens."
Gladiators were commonly drawn from prisoners of war, slaves, or criminals condemned to death. The populace of Rome, drunken with the cruel sights, gloated on every fresh batch of tattoed Britons who were marched in chains into the
