Race follows race, with an interval for the midday meal.  During that time there will be interludes of acrobatic and other performances.  One rider, for example, will stand upright on the back of two or more horses, and will spring continually from one to the other while they are at the gallop.  Most of the company will take their refreshments where they are.  When a man of some standing was reproached by Augustus for this rather undignified proceeding, he replied:  “That is all very well for you, Sire, but your place is sure to be kept.”  We need not proceed further into details concerning the “events” in the Circus.  It may however be worth while to add that the Romans cared nothing for the modern form of race by jockeys on single horses.

The Circus is quite a different thing from the oval amphitheatre, a structure for once of native Roman devising, without which no Roman town could consider itself complete.  Though the Colosseum was not yet built, there already existed an amphitheatre in the Campus Martius, and such buildings were to be found in all considerable towns which contained a large Roman element.  There is one, though of later date than Nero, still to be seen in fair preservation at Verona; the well-known amphitheatre at Pompeii was in full use in the year 64, and other cities—­Capua, Puteoli, Nimes, Antioch, or Caesarea—­were provided with the joys of the gladiatorial shows and the beast-fight.  Only in the thoroughly Greek or thoroughly Oriental part of the empire was the amphitheatre absent.  Where there was no fixed building of stone or wood, a temporary structure was erected and a company of gladiators would perform in the place at the expense of some local officer or of some wealthy citizen with social ambitions.  Whatever may be thought of the Greeks in other respects, they felt no liking, but only an openly expressed repulsion, for the barbarous exhibitions of bloodshed in which the Roman revelled.  Outside Jerusalem an amphitheatre was built by the romanizing Herod, but it was done to the horror of all orthodox Jews.

[Illustration:  FIG. 87.—­AMPHITHEATRE AT POMPEII.]

[Illustration:  FIG. 98—­BARRACKS OF GLADIATORS (Pompeii.)]

The performances were of two main kinds; fights between men and beasts—­occasionally between two kinds of wild beast—­and fights between men and men.  There was no make-believe about these combats; they meant at least serious wounds, even when they did not mean death.  Those who fought with beasts might in some cases be volunteers; in general they were captives or condemned criminals, and it perhaps hardly needs pointing out that, when St. Paul says he had “fought with beasts at Ephesus,” he is merely speaking in metaphor adapted to the times.  It was not intended that the criminal should escape death, but only that he should be able to make a fight for his life.  Meanwhile the gladiators who fought with men and not with beasts were in the position of professionals, who might be slaves, condemned