[532] Cf. Chapter XVIII.
[533] The citizen army, which had been the seed plot of those heroic virtues that cast such a halo around the earlier history of Rome, had been replaced by a mercenary force in which only the coarser military virtues could find sphere for exercise.
[534] “The unchecked power of the master ... produced those cold hearts which gloated over the agony of gallant men in the arena.”—Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (1904), p. 12.
[535] Friedlander, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms (1888), Bd. i, S. 479–481; English ed., Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, vol. i, pp. 243 f.
[536] “The senator was forbidden down to the last age of the empire, both by law and sentiment, to increase his fortune by commerce.”—Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 102.
[537] De Off. i. 42.
[538] Lecky, History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 271.
[539] Friedlander, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms (1889), Bd. ii, S. 414; English ed., Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, vol. ii, p. 77.
[540] “The unusual enthusiasm for the shows is expressed in many a rude sketch which has been traced by boyish hands upon the walls.”—Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 238.
[541] In an eloquent passage Lecky thus sums up the demoralizing effects of the spectacles: “Those hateful games, which made the spectacle of human suffering and death the delight of all classes, had spread their brutalising influence wherever the Roman name was known, had rendered millions absolutely indifferent to the sight of human suffering, had produced in many, in the very centre of an advanced civilization, a relish and a passion for torture, a rapture and an exultation in watching the spasms of extreme agony, such as an African or an American savage alone can equal”. (History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 467).