I have described the arena and the seats; let me now pass on to the show itself.  Would yon like to have a hunt or a gladiatorial combat?  Here I invent nothing.  I have data, found at Pompeii (the paintings in the amphitheatre and the bas-reliefs on the tomb of Scaurus), that reproduce scenes which I have but to transfer to prose.  Let us, then, suppose the twenty thousand spectators to be in their places on thirty-four ranges of seats, one above the other, around the arena; then, let us take our seats among them and look on.

First we have a hunt.  A panther, secured by a long rope to the neck of a bull let loose, is set on against a young bestiarius, who holds two javelins in his hands.  A man, armed with a long lance, irritates the bull so that it may move and second the rush of the panther fastened to it.  The lad who has the javelins, and is a novice in his business, is but making his first attempt; should the bull not move, he runs no risk, yet I should not like to be in his place.

Then follows a more serious combat between a bear and a man, who irritates him by holding out a cloth at him, as the matadors do in bull-fights.  Another group shows us a tiger and a lion escaping in different directions.  An unarmed and naked man is in pursuit of the tiger, who cannot be a very cross one.  But here is a venatio much more dramatic in its character.  The nude bestiarius has just pierced a wolf through and through, and the animal is in flight with the spear sticking in his body, but the man staggers and a wild boar is rushing at him.  At the same time, a stag thrown down by a lasso that is still seen dangling to his antlers, awaits his death-blow; hounds are dashing at him, and “their fierce baying echoes from vale to vale.”

But that is not all.  Look at yon group of victors:  a real matador has plunged his spear into the breast of a bull with so violent a stroke that the point of the weapon comes out at the animal’s back; and another has just brought down and impaled a bear; a dog is leaping at the throat of a fugitive wild boar and biting him; and, in this ferocious menagerie, peopled with lions and panthers, two rabbits are scampering about, undoubtedly to the great amusement of the throng.  The Romans were fond of these contrasts, which furnished Galienus an opportunity to be jocosely generous.  “A lapidary,” says M. Magnin, “had sold the emperor’s wife some jewels, which were recognized to be false; the emperor had the dishonest dealer arrested and condemned to the lions; but when the fatal moment came, he turned no more formidable creature loose upon him than a capon.  Everybody was astonished, and while all were vainly striving to guess the meaning of such an enigma, he caused the curion, or herald, to proclaim aloud:  “This man tried to cheat, and now he is caught in his turn."”

I have described the hunts at Pompeii; they were small affairs compared with those of Rome.  The reader may know that Titus, who finished the Coliseum, caused five thousand animals to be killed there in a single day in the presence of eighty thousand spectators.  Let us confess, however, that with this exhibition, of tigers, panthers, lions, and wild boars, the provincial hunts were still quite dramatic.