What has not been written concerning the gladiators?  The origin of their bloody sports; the immolations, voluntary at first, and soon afterward compulsory, that did honor to the ashes of the dead warriors; then the combats around the funeral pyres; then, ere long, the introduction of these funeral spectacles as part of the public festivals, especially in the triumphal parades of victorious generals; then into private pageants, and then into the banquets of tyrants who caused the heads of the proscribed to be brought to them at table.  The skill of such and such an artist in decapitation (decollandi artifex) was the subject of remark and compliment.  Ah, those were the grand ages!

As the reader also knows, the gladiators were at first prisoners of war, barbarians; then, prisoners not coming in sufficient number, condemned culprits and slaves were employed, ere long, in hosts so strong as, to revolt in Campania at the summons of Spartacus.  Consular armies were vanquished and the Roman prisoners, transformed to gladiators, in their turn were compelled to butcher each other around the funeral pyres of their chiefs.  However, these combats had gradually ceased to be penalties and punishments, and soon were nothing but barbarous spectacles, violent pantomimic performances, like those which England and Spain have not yet been able to suppress.  The troops of mercenary fighters slaughtered each other in the arenas to amuse the Romans (not to render them warlike).  Citizens took part in these tournaments, and among them even nobles, emperors, and women; and, at last, the Samnites, Gauls, and Thracians, who descended into the arena, were only Romans in disguise.  These shows became more and more varied; they were diversified with hunts (venationes), in which wild beasts fought with each other or against bestiarii, or Christians; the amphitheatres, transformed to lakes, offered to the gaze of the delighted spectator real naval battles, and ten thousand gladiators were let loose against each other by the imperial caprice of Trajan.  These entertainments lasted one hundred and twenty-three days.  Imagine the carnage!

Part of the gladiators of Pompeii were Greeks, and part were real barbarians.  The traces that they have left in the little city show that they got along quite merrily there.  ’Tis true that they could not live, as they did at Rome, in close intimacy with emperors and empresses, but they were, none the less, the spoiled pets of the residents of Pompeii.  Lodged in a sumptuous barrack, they must have been objects of envy to many of the population.  The walls are full of inscriptions concerning them; the bathing establishments, the inns, and the disreputable haunts, transmit their names to posterity.  The citizens, their wives, and even their children admired them.  In the house of Proculus, at no great height above the ground, is a picture of a gladiator which must have been daubed there by the young lad of the house.  The gladiator whose likeness was thus given dwelt in the house.  His helmet was found there.  So, then, he was the guest of the family, and Heaven knows how they feasted him, petted him, and listened to him.