A woman stops at nothing; when she wears
Rich emeralds round her neck, and in her ears
Pearls of enormous size,--these justify
Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye.
More shame to Rome! in every street are found
The essenced Lypanti, with roses crowned;
The gay Miletan and the Tarentine,
Lewd, petulant, and reeling ripe with wine!"
In the sixth satire of Juvenal is found the most severe delineation of woman that ever mortal penned. Doubtless he is libellous and extravagant, for only infamous women can stoop to such arts and degradations as would seem to have been common in his time. But with all his probable exaggeration, we are forced to feel that but few women, even in the highest class, except those converted to Christianity, showed the virtues of a Lucretia, a Volumnia, a Cornelia, or an Octavia. The lofty virtues of a Perpetua, a Felicitas, an Agnes, a Paula, a Blessilla, a Fabiola, would have adorned any civilization; but the great mass were, what they were in Greece even in the days of Pericles, what they have ever been under the influence of Paganism, what they ever will be without Christianity to guide them,--victims or slaves of man, revenging themselves by squandering his wealth, stealing his secrets, betraying his interests, and deserting his home.
Another essential but demoralizing feature of Roman society was to be found in the games and festivals and gladiatorial shows, which accustomed the people to unnatural excitement and familiarity with cruelty and suffering. They made all ordinary pleasures insipid; they ended in making homicide an institution. The butcheries of the amphitheatre exerted a fascination which diverted the mind from literature, art, and the enjoyments of domestic life. Very early they were the favorite sport of the Romans. Marcus and Decimus Brutus employed gladiators in celebrating the obsequies of their fathers, nearly three centuries before Christ. "The wealth and ingenuity of the aristocracy were taxed to the utmost to content the populace and provide food for the indiscriminate slaughter of the circus, where brute fought with brute, and man again with man, or where the skill and weapons of the latter were matched against the strength and ferocity of the first." Pompey let loose six hundred lions in the arena in one day; Augustus delighted the people with four hundred and twenty panthers. The games of Trajan lasted one hundred and twenty days, when ten thousand gladiators fought, and ten thousand beasts were slain. Titus slaughtered five thousand animals at a time; twenty elephants contended, according to Pliny, against a band of six hundred captives. Probus reserved six hundred gladiators for one of his festivals, and slaughtered on another two hundred lions, twenty leopards, and three hundred bears; Gordian let loose three hundred African hyenas and ten Indian tigers in the arena. Every corner of the earth was ransacked for these wild animals, which were so highly valued that in the time of Theodosius it was forbidden by law to destroy a Getulian lion. No one can contemplate the statue of the Dying Gladiator which now ornaments the capitol at Rome, without emotions of pity and admiration. If a marble statue can thus move us, what was it to see the Christian gladiators contending with the fierce lions of Africa! "The Christians to the lions!" was the cry of the brutal populace. What a sight was the old amphitheatre of Titus, five hundred and sixty feet long and four hundred and seventy feet wide, built on eighty arches and rising one hundred and forty feet into the air, with its four successive orders of architecture, and enclosing its eighty thousand seated spectators, arranged according to rank, from the Emperor to the lowest of the populace, all seated on marble benches covered with cushions, and protected from the sun and rain by ample canopies! What an excitement, when men strove not with wild beasts alone, but with one another; and when all that human skill and strength, increased by elaborate treatment, and taxed to the uttermost, were put forth in needless slaughter, until the thirsty soil was wet and saturated with human gore! Familiarity with such sights must have hardened the heart and rendered the mind insensible to refined pleasures. What theatres are to the French, what bull-fights are to the Spaniards, what horse-races are to the English, these gladiatorial shows were to the ancient Romans. The ruins of hundreds of amphitheatres attest the universality of the custom, not in Rome alone, but in the provinces.