Sometimes the condemned were compelled to fight, but more often slaves and prisoners of war.  Each victory thus brought to the amphitheatre bands of barbarians who exterminated one another for the delight of the spectators.[153] Gladiators were furnished by all countries—­Gauls, Germans, Thracians, and sometimes negroes.  These peoples fought with various weapons, usually with their national arms.  The Romans loved to behold these battles in miniature.

There were also, among these contestants in the circus, some who fought from their own choice, free men who from a taste for danger submitted to the terrible discipline of the gladiator, and swore to their chief “to allow themselves to be beaten with rods, be burned with hot iron, and even be killed.”  Many senators enrolled themselves in these bands of slaves and adventurers, and even an emperor, Commodus, descended into the arena.

These bloody games were practised not only at Rome, but in all the cities of Italy, Gaul, and Africa.  The Greeks always opposed their adoption.  An inscription on a statue raised to one of the notables in the little city of Minturnae runs as follows:  “He presented in four days eleven pairs of gladiators who ceased to fight only when half of them had fallen in the arena.  He gave a hunt of ten terrible bears.  Treasure this in memory, noble fellow-citizens.”  The people, therefore, had the passion for blood,[154] which still manifests itself in Spain in bull-fights.  The emperor, like the modern king of Spain, must be present at these butcheries.  Marcus Aurelius became unpopular in Rome because he exhibited his weariness at the spectacles of the amphitheatre by reading, speaking, or giving audiences instead of regarding the games.  When he enlisted gladiators to serve against the barbarians who invaded Italy, the populace was about to revolt.  “He would deprive us of our amusements,” cried one, “to compel us to become philosophers.”

=The Roman Peace.=—­But there was in the empire something else than the populace of Rome.  To be just to the empire as a whole one must consider events in the provinces.  By subjecting all peoples, the Romans had suppressed war in the interior of their empire.  Thus was established the Roman Peace which a Greek author describes in the following language:  “Every man can go where he will; the harbors are full of ships, the mountains are safe for travellers just as the towns for their inhabitants.  Fear has everywhere ceased.  The land has put off its old armor of iron and put on festal garments.  You have realized the word of Homer, ‘the earth is common to all.’” For the first time, indeed, men of the Occident could build their houses, cultivate their fields, enjoy their property and their leisure without fearing at every moment being robbed, massacred, or thrown into slavery—­a security which we can hardly appreciate since we have enjoyed it from infancy, but which seemed very sweet to the men of antiquity.